The KDE Community has released a beta version of Plasma 5.3. The Unix desktop environment comes with many new features, including improved power management software and better Wayland support. Plasma Media Center is now also part of the environment.
The developers announced in a blog post that thanks to the new power management software, KInfoCenter shows statistics of programs that use too much electricity. In addition, the battery monitor now shows which program is consuming too much energy.
The developers also worked on various Plasma widgets, including the one for Clipboard. They have also added a module in Plasma 5.3 to configure the gestures for touchpads. They also state that the Plasma Media Center media center will now come standard with KDE Plasma. This is a preview for the time being, but the software already works stable.
Finally, Plasma 5.3 provides further support for the Wayland display server, seen by many as the successor to X11. Thanks to this support, Plasma’s window manager, KWin, can now serve a nested XWayland server. This means that KWin can handle both Wayland and X11 and the software thus bridges the gap between both display servers. In Plasma 5.4 there should be full Wayland support.
Those who want to try out the new test version can do so by downloading a live CD. Later, the existing Linux distributions will offer the beta version of Plasma 5.3, if this is indicated in the preferences. Also, the software can be compiled manually.