Compiled by Larry Cafiero
Bobby Barisov of Linuxiac reported on Saturday that the developers at KDE have made improvements to KDE Plasma 6.8, including making auto-hide panels 10 times faster and smartening the automatic brightness, among others.
“One of the first changes users will notice is with auto-hide panels,” the article states. “KDE has shortened the time it takes for a panel to hide after the pointer leaves it from 500 milliseconds to just 50 milliseconds, making the panels feel much more responsive.”
Also, “System Settings will also have a better search feature for people using Plasma in languages other than English,” the article continues. “With Plasma 6.8, you can use English keywords along with those from your chosen language. For example, searching for ‘mouse’ on a system set to French will still bring up the ‘souris’ settings page.”
Plasma’s automatic brightness feature is also getting smarter. “The system will now remember your manual brightness changes and use them to learn your preferred brightness levels in different lighting conditions,” the article says. “In Discover, the system will remember whether you’ve already marked a review as useful and will stop you from rating the same review again.”
Bazzite gets ‘biggest’ update
Bobby Barisov of Linuxiac also reported on Friday that Bazzite has released an update which the project called “the biggest update in Bazzite history.”
For the uninitiated, Bazzite is an immutable Linux distro built on Fedora Atomic Desktop technology and developed as part of the Universal Blue project.
Released last Tuesday, Bazzite Linux 44 was sent out with Linux kernel 7.2, a new gaming stack and GUI updates, as well as a new SteamOS-aligned gaming stack, graphical updater, a redesigned portal and more.
“One of the largest changes is a complete overhaul of the software stack for Bazzite’s handheld images,” the article says. “The old setup is replaced by a SteamOS-aligned stack built around InputPlumber for controller handling, emulation, and remapping; SteamOS-Manager for session switching and TDP management; PowerStation for power controls on hardware not fully supported by SteamOS-Manager; and OpenGamepadUI for additional controls Steam does not expose.”
Users of Bazzite on the desktop get several environment-specific changes. “On KDE Plasma, Konsole replaces Ptyxis as the default terminal since Konsole provides comparable container functionality,” the article states. “The Oxygen theme and icon set are included by default, along with Bazzite Portal integration with KDE’s search interface.”
And Gnome? “Gnome receives its own Bazzite Portal search provider and out-of-the-box support for rounded blur through Blur My Shell,” the article says. “Both desktop options also get three new wallpapers.”
For additional details, see the release announcement.
And that’s all for today. Don’t forget: Distro of the Week appears Wednesday – and it’s always a good one on hand – and Bits and Bobs will return with news over the week on Friday.