The KDE Plasma desktop environment has released another update, Plasma 6.2. The update does a lot to improve Plasma, but a good chunk of the update is for digital artists.
Plasma 6.2 introduces a suite of drawing tablet features, including a calibration wizard, test mode, and the ability to define the screen area covered by the tablet. There’s no need to worry about having the correct software from device manufacturers, because this functionality is integrated directly into Plasma. There are also color management improvements in Plasma 6.2. The update also improves support for the Wayland color management protocol, which means more consistent color reproduction across monitors. It also includes updates for brightness handling, HDR profiles, and HDR performance. This helps with graphics design, gaming, and video playback. There’s also a new tone mapping feature in KWin that helps fix the issue of images exceeding the display’s brightness capabilities.
Plasma 6.2 also helps with energy management. Users can now override applications that get in the way of system sleep or screen locking. This will help conserve power in situations where it wasn’t possible before. Individual brightness adjustments for connected monitors are also supported. The Power and Battery widget gives power level information and lets users adjust power profiles to their own preferences. There’s also New shortcuts for cycling through power options, and visual indicators for power save and performance modes have been added.
What’s interesting is that there is a “We care about your Input” project that was created to expand support for “unusual input devices.” On top of that expansion project, accessibility features have also been updated, like the addition of colorblindness filters. Finally, the accessibility page in System Settings has been revamped, and full “sticky keys” support is now available on Wayland.
You can try out Plasma 6.2 with KDE neon Unstable Edition, and it should be rolling out to regular KDE neon and other Linux distributions soon—some distros will be slower to update than others. The upcoming Kubuntu 24.10 update will use Plasma 6.1 out of the box, not 6.2.
Source: KDE
