KDE Plasma 6.3.6 Released: Stability & Fixes

KDE Plasma 6.3.6 Arrives with Key Enhancements

The final maintenance update for the KDE Plasma 6.3 desktop environment series, KDE Plasma 6.3.6, has been officially released. This update, arriving two months after 6.3.5, focuses on enhancing stability and user experience through numerous bug fixes and feature refinements across the popular desktop environment.

What’s New and Improved?

This release addresses a range of issues and introduces several key improvements. Users will find better keyboard navigation in the System Tray widget’s pop-up and a more intelligent Power And Battery widget that no longer prompts for power-profiles-daemon installation on unsupported systems. The Weather Report widget also sees improved support for the Environment Canada provider.

Plasma System Monitor now correctly displays current table columns while the configuration dialog is open, and users can once again delete files directly from Plasma notifications’ context menus. A significant fix prevents Plasma from freezing when opening the “Add Action” window from the clipboard configuration dialog.

The Night Light feature gets more accurate day/night transition time calculations thanks to a dedicated solar transit simulator. KWin, KDE’s window manager, now allows immediate changes to screen tearing settings without requiring a restart and accurately applies Legacy X11 App Support settings regardless of keyboard layout.

Other notable changes include Adaptive Sync being disabled by default for new installations to mitigate graphics driver bugs, proper display of theme previews using the full tinting feature, and a visible keyboard shortcut for “Launch KRunner” in the desktop context menu. The “visual bell” accessibility feature has also been limited to prevent potential seizures.

Under the Hood Fixes

KDE Plasma 6.3.6 also brings a host of stability improvements. Support for XWayland apps on multi-screen setups has been improved, and the “Mount” action for audio CDs and blank optical disks has been removed from the Disks & Devices widget as it was deemed pointless. Visual issues with selection rectangles for files/folders on the desktop when using non-default fonts have been resolved.

Crucially, numerous bugs have been squashed, including a fix for keyboard shortcuts getting lost during system upgrades on certain distributions, a regression causing KRunner’s completion text to overflow, and stuttering issues when playing videos on variable-refresh-rate (VRR) screens. Screen flicker during full-screen games, random KWin crashes, and visual glitches in KWin’s “Slide Back” effect and radio button animations have also been addressed.

Finally, the update fixes an issue preventing the “Prefer color accuracy” setting from working during full-screen videos, KWin crashes when disconnecting multiple KVM-connected screens, and KWin crashes when drawing windows without decorations. A visual glitch on screen after logging in but before the Plasma splash screen or desktop loads has also been rectified.

Update Your System

Users are encouraged to update their GNU/Linux distributions as soon as the KDE Plasma 6.3.6 packages become available in their stable software repositories. This update promises a more stable and reliable Plasma desktop experience. For a complete list of changes, refer to the full changelog.