KDE Plasma 5.10 Released, This Is What’s New

KDE Plasma 5.10, the latest version of the modern desktop environment created by KDE, has been formally released.

Plasma 5.10 features a range of improvements across the stack which, the release announcement says, aims to “give users an experience which lives up to our tagline: simple by default, powerful when needed.”

But precisely what is new and improved in Plasma 5.10? Let’s take a look.

What’s new in Plasma 5.10?

Spring Loading Folders

Folder View Desktop

The “big” change in this release of Plasma is the adoption of Folder View as the default desktop view.

“After some years shunning icons on the desktop we have accepted the inevitable and changed to Folder View as the default desktop which brings some icons by default and allows users to put whatever files or folders they want easy access to,” KDE devs say of the change.

This is a good decision; those who don’t like Folder View can disabled it, but for the vast majority of users who expect to be able to use the desktop as a traditional workspace, it’s a sane default.

A stack of improvements have been made to the folder view as a result of this change. Performance tweaks, better spacing, bug fixes and the like. The most user-visit;e change is spring loading of folders (see the gif above) that makes drag and drop file arrangement a totally lush experience.