KDE Releases Plasma 5.4.0 With Alternative Launcher

The KDE community released version 5.4.0 of Plasma on Tuesday, which includes the new alternative launcher Application Dashboard. In addition, the latest Plasma release allows users to start experimental Wayland sessions.

The Application Dashboard can be set as an alternative launcher in the KDE environment. The program offers a full-screen start menu, which is scalable for multiple devices. There are columns for favorites and regular programs. In addition, you can search for apps, documents and contacts directly in the menu.

Plasma 5.4.0 also includes 1400 new icons, so that applications such as Inkskape, Firefox and LibreOffice now also have a ‘native’ icon based on the Breeze theme. In addition, the developers worked on another volume applet and expanded the KRunner launcher, which now also remembers previous searches.

Another big change is the preview in KDE Plasma of the Wayland display server. Kernel modifications allow Wayland sessions to be started on systems with free graphics drivers. The developers do warn that users should not yet see this as a replacement for Xorg, and that it is still a test version.