KDE has officially released the Plasma 6.8 desktop environment. The new version adjusts window appearance rules and improves memory usage, loading speed, and HDR color profile handling, while also introducing accessibility changes and a new system monitoring tool.
New window rules allow adding rounded corners, shadows, and outlines to applications that draw their own window decorations, helping these windows, which often don't follow KDE themes, maintain a more consistent appearance. KDE is also continuing to develop the Union theme engine, aiming to support Qt Widgets applications while preserving the visual effects of standard themes.
KDE states that Plasma 6.8 will reduce memory usage and speed up loading. When using NVIDIA graphics cards, KWin now enables triple buffering by default. The new version also improves the underlying handling of HDR and ICC color profiles to enhance HDR content presentation when using ICC profiles.
KDE has fully adopted Wayland and continues to support X11 applications through XWayland. SteamOS, which powers the Steam Deck, has also introduced some players to KDE Plasma. Currently, these performance and display changes are part of the Plasma 6.8 update, with no specific adaptations or benchmark results for the Steam Deck yet.