Today, January 30, 2017, KDE had the great pleasure of announcing the release and general availability of the KDE Plasma 5.9 desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems.
The development cycle of KDE Plasma 5.9 took only a few months, but considering the fact that it’s not a long-term supported (LTS) version like KDE Plasma 5.8, which is the recommended version right now for all users, we think that it’s a pretty hefty update adding quite a bunch of new features and improving Wayland support.
Probably the most important one, which will make many KDE users upgrade from KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS or previous versions, is the return of Global Menus, a feature that was available in the KDE 4 series of the desktop environment. Only now, after numerous requests from users, did the KDE developers manage to implement Global Menus again in KDE Plasma 5.9.
“Global Menus have returned. KDE’s pioneering feature to separate the menu bar from the application window allows for new user interface paradigm with either a Plasma Widget showing the menu or neatly tucked away in the window bar,” reads today’s announcement. Below you can check out our gallery to see Global Menus in action in Plasma Widget and the Window Bar.
Wayland improvements, new tools to enhance your productivity
Quite a multitude of improvements have landed in the KDE Plasma 5.9 desktop environment for those who use the next-generation Wayland display server. These include the ability to take screenshots, support for using the color picker, implementation of borderless maximized windows for full-screen support, and support for dragging apps by clicking on an empty area of the user interface using the Breeze style.