Hi everyone!

My experience on multi GPU setups like most gaming laptops has always been that kwin and plasmashell stay stuck on the integrated graphics despite the HDMI port being hard wired to the dGPU, even when I keep the integrated screen completely off.

The problem with this is that when you fire up a game on the dGPU it still needs to copy the frame to the iGPU for compositing (kwin) and draw stuff like the start menu (plasmashell) and then all the way back to the dGPU for transmitting over HDMI.

Now, migrating plasmashell is just a matter of restarting it with a different env var, and this tool does it, but kwin was impossible until 6.8 as far as I can tell, at least not without logging out (which closes all your apps) and logging back in.

6.8 introduced a live migration feature that is meant to make the system tolerant to eGPUs being unplugged, but it doesn't expose a setting to trigger it.

So what my plugin does is expose this setting and automating the migration based on what monitors are in use.

Hope it can be useful for someone else!

"FreeDawn" is my new sound theme for Linux/KDE. It's available now on the KDE store

https://www.opendesktop.org/p/2379312/

This took me a few months since I made everything from scratch using synthesizers, I put quite a bit of effort in it so I hope someone out there likes it.

The default sound theme in KDE is already pretty great, but I did notice it can be a bit loud at times so I tried to tone things down.

It has a very "vanilla" sound style, I tried to compose sounds that convey the meaning of the action as best as I could.

It's "Free Under CC0" so re-use it as you like for whatever!

With the 6.8 release and this bug occurring on my end too, I researched how to change from SDDM to Plasma Login Manager.

From the Arch Wiki, I figured it would suffice disabling the SDDM service and enabling the Plasma Login Manager service, which did the track for the most part.

The problem I'm now experiencing is that fprintd doesn't seem to work with it and I can't change the background or anything using System Settings. I may have misconfigured some things, hence my question.

How can I fix this? Where should I look? What might need editing?

I want to switch to KDE plasma (I'm currently using GNOME) but I really like GNOME's ecosystem (and don't like KDE's one). So is there a way to install pure KDE plasma DE without all it's apps like Dolphin or KDE-connect

ScreenGuard a software for Digital wellbeing natively on Linux, was my personal project which i uploaded to share with the community. Ever since , thanks to constant support and request by although a camparitively tiny but rreally enthusiatic group of ppl , I have been able to provide constant support and improvements to the application and the once raw unpolished system in starting to look...less unpolished. There are still multiple things scrambled which need to be fixed however this major pre release is most possile the final testing phase before v0.1.1 so please do try it out and report and bugs if found.

Major Fixes and Improvements:

Native C Helpers — trasitioning toward a C-Based Core daemon bit by bit

• screenguard-notify (C): Desktop notification delivery no longer runs inside the Dart runtime. A tiny native helper talks to D-Bus directly, so alerts work identically on systemd and non-systemd systems (OpenRC, runit, …) where the old path could misbehave.
• screenguard-killer (C): Process termination offloaded from Dart as well — an escalating, data-safe close chain: polite window close request → SIGTERM → full process-tree SIGKILL → Proton-native wineserver -k → guarded pattern-kill. Another step toward making the daemon core C-based.

Both helpers ship in every package (.rpm, .deb, tarball) and are wired into install, uninstall, and build-tooling.

Full Database Control (Settings → Data)

• New Data tab in Settings: live storage stats, per-day deletion chips, date-range delete, and a full wipe behind a double confirmation. Settings and limits are always preserved — only usage history is touched.
• Orphaned sessions from unclean stops (logout, power loss) are now closed on next start instead of silently inflating Past-30-days stats.

Focus Enforcement, Data-Safety First

• Strict auto-close is now opt-in. The default never destroys unsaved work: a violating app is minimized and shown a persistent warning screen.
• The warning screen offers +1 minute save grace, +15 minutes, edit limit, and close — with the screen re-appearing every 5 seconds until you decide, and re-warninng immediately when a grace window expires.
• Turning on Strict auto-close (Settings) restores the legacy instant close+kill for those who want hard enforcement — your choice, your data.

Steam & Proton Games: First-Class Citizens

• Steam games no longer show up as mystery IDs (steam_app_2730970) — real names resolve from your Steam library manifests, with per-game icons rendered from the active icon theme.
• Their usage is fully tracked and limit/focus rules now apply to them; the escalating close chain (above) is what actually makes Close work on Proton games that shrug off normal signals.
• Fullscreen games now leave fullscreen before minimize (they silently ignore minimize requests otherwise), and the GNOME extension reports the real minimized state.

UI & Cosmetic

• Settings reorganized into a clean sidebar layout with five sections: General, Limits & Pomodoro, Diagnostics, Updates, and Data.
• Crash reporting moves into the new Diagnostics tab next to daemon status and autostart, with its badge on the tab itself.
• The Focus screen's app picker can switch to a GNOME app-grid style layout — icon over name, check-badge selection — via the Grid layout toggle.

Fixes & Optimizations

• Dead-code removal across the daemon (verified zero callers before each removal) plus notification-path optimization for non-systemd systems.
• Warning screens for both focus mode and daily limits rebuilt with consistent behavior and honest reporting ("was closed" vs "could not close").

Summing Up:

ScreenGuard still has a very long way to go with my aim being:

proper category wise classification of apps and category usage stats by v0.1.5

support for 3 other desktop environments i.e. KDE, Hyprland and Mint on wayland with improved optimization for non systemd systems (like gentoo users) by v 2.0 (also more fraction of the daemon to be translated to native C)

however all of this will definitely take a lot of time primarily discovering and learning how things work out first, thus if you do like the project , then u can give me a hand by contributing to things i am currently unknown to such has other Desktop environments other than GNOME or with C programming

Most importantly, my personel project that begun "Late Nights in The Middle of June" has indeed come a long way.

Link to the pre release: https://github.com/adityakrishnan005-a11y/ScreenGuard/releases/tag/v0.1.1-beta.6

Tried out the new feature in Plasma 6.8, and everything looks so much more consistent now.

I even noticed that it works for turning OFF shadows for CSD windows with forced shadows, not just vice versa. Great work!

I am using Garuda Linux Mokka edition, Kde Plasma. Recently I am facing a problem related to windows button after a system update

Here between application Launcher and windows title I have windows button. And here is the error it's showing

file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.windowbuttons/contents/ui/main.qml:13:1: Cannot load library /usr/lib/qt6/qml/org/kde/appletdecoration/libappletdecorationplugin.so: libPlasma.so.7: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

DISCLAIMER: This fix worked for me; it might not work for you. Try at your own risk. I won't be responsible if your computer stops working.

Symptoms: After installing Plasma 6.8 and rebooting, your login screen switches back to SDDM instead of the regular KDE Plasma login screen.

Possible fix: I found that the plasmalogin.service was disabled and not running, while the sddm.service was enabled and running. I stopped and disabled the sddm.service via systemctl:

systemctl stop sddm.service
systemctl disable sddm.service

I then enabled the plasmalogin.service:
systemctl enable plasmalogin.service

Note: After starting plasmalogin.service, my computer locked and then did not unlock, despite entering my password. I rebooted and all was well. You might want to just reboot instead, to start plasmalogin.service that way.

(Optional) start plasmalogin.service:
systemctl start plasmalogin.service

Hopefully that made some sense. And more hopefully, your login screen didn't change when you installed Plasma 6.8. :)

Disclaimer: this program was written with AI agents.

https://github.com/YaBulochka/appvol

I made this because I needed to control the volume of individual apps from the keyboard. It seemed like a pretty good idea, so here it is: appvol!

I used to get by with a hacky bash script bound to a hotkey that adjusted Spotify, but it had its problems and couldn't be scaled to more programs.

Plasma's volume applet and pavucontrol do per-app volume too, but with the mouse. appvol is for the keyboard.

What it does

- Change the volume of an app straight from the keyboard, without losing focus.

- Control the volume of whichever window you are currently focused on.

- Profiles: a profile controls a group of chosen apps, or ALL apps except the ones you exclude.

- Auto mode: the keys cycle through the focused window and every app that is currently playing audio.

- Native integration with Plasma Shortcuts and the Plasma OSD, plus a Qt GUI for profiles and settings.

Where it's useful for me

You’re sitting there playing, really getting into the vibe, and you just want to crank

the music volume way up—no need to Alt-Tab or jump over to a second monitor;

you just hit a hotkey, and—BOOM—it’s louder, or you can turn it back down. It’s fantastic.

In games while I'm in a voice chat: with two key presses I can make the game

louder or mute Discord completely, and then unmute it the same way. Or say

you're in a really tense clutch in CS2: one hotkey mutes EVERYTHING except CS2.

Packages

The program is split into two packages:

1. `appvol`: the CLI and the daemon
2. `appvol-gui`: the interface for profiles and other settings

Available for Arch (`.pkg.tar.zst`), Debian-based (`.deb`) and Fedora-based (`.rpm`), plus an install script for any other distribution (as long as its dependencies are met).

Status and limits

- Tested on Arch, KDE Plasma 6.7/6.8 (Wayland) only. Plasma 5 is not supported.

- KDE only for now. I may port it to other desktops in the future.

- Bug reports from other setups (distro, Plasma version, `appvol list` output) are very welcome, and so is any feedback.

I hope someone finds it useful :)

A sticky note widget with my name on it appeared on my desktop. i did not do that i swear to god.what the hell is/was that?!

In a previous version of Dolphin all windows/tabs were saved in .config/session as separate files that would then reopen when KDE launches. However now it seems that only the most recent window is saved in the file dolphin_dolphin_dolphin.

Is this by design that only a single window may be saved as a part of the session? Is there a way to restore the previous functionality? Or is this something already addressed by a newer version of Dolphin than what is in SteamOS? (25.04.3 as of this writing)

Hello!

As an openSUSE KDE onuser, I always struggled to find a simple, native-feeling sticky notes application. Most available options are built with GNOME/GTK in mind or feel out of place on Plasma.

So, I wrote my own sticky notes app optimized for Plasma desktop users.

You can check out the source code, installation steps, and releases here:
https://github.com/danielearrighi/kde-sticky-notes

Feel free to try it out, leave feedback, or report any issues. Hope you find it useful!

Ciao

I updated to Plasma 6.8 and my notifications went from nicely being on my 2nd monitor , to being very rudely on my main monitor. I can't find any setting to change it back , only change the position of the notification on the main monitor , which is unacceptable for me. How do I fix this ?

The new KDE update just doesn't seem right, the boot time has become slower, the sddm is slow asf too, it used to log into system immediately before, now it just waits there, also DE itself takes longer to load than before, it used to be so quick I couldn't even take a look at the splash screen properly. Also, when the machine wakes up from sleep, on entering password, the DE instantly used to show the screen, now it shows a black screen for a split second, like why man? We didn't need that at all... The new UI for sddm also doesn't seem great, the removed the ALT key navigation for "Desktop sessions" tab, now you have to press tabs to navigate towards instead of "ALT + D"ing it. NOT HAPPY AT ALL!!!

Possibly this may help people who cares about correct colors and are for some reason forced to use 6.8 wayland only release.

Situation: As you may know situation with colors on wayland is quite unfortunate. And those issues are fundamental and design level, so not only related to one particular implementation. One issue is you will have either incorrect colors or your monitor output is restricted to small color space (because there is almost no apps that use the color protocol). Even their own plasma image viewer doesn't support it. (Krita6 is an exception, it supports the protocol but only if you execute it with the right env variable)

Workaround: It seems that someone has developed proxy app which is able to tell wayland what color space the real application output is encoded. So you can for example use Gimp and set the monitor profile in gimp preferences to some wide gamut c. space e.g. rec2020 with gama 2.2 to avoid clipping the gamut. Execute gimp via cm-shim (cm-shim -s rec2020_g22 run gimp) to tell wayland what the app output is and have both correct colors and be not restricted to something small like srgb when your monitor supports more. (if you profiled the display and using the profile in plasma settings)

Source:

https://github.com/dedenholm/wayland-cm-shim/

https://discuss.pixls.us/t/cm-shim-lets-any-application-talk-to-waylands-color-management-protocol

A new major new improvement have been introduced in Material Decoration compared with the last release.

Shadow-Only Decoration (Plasma 6.8)

Plasma 6.8 introduces the option to force kwin to render only a window’s shadow, which is useful for certain applications such as Steam, WPS Office and Wine applications without decoration. Material-Decoration is now compatible with this option.

Further improvements

Various optimisations to the search functions, shadow rendering and button design

How to get it

• Build from source: https://github.com/guiodic/material-decoration
• On Arch and derivatives, install material-kwin-decoration-git from the AUR. Precompiled package is available in chaotic-aur. There is not yet a PKGBUILD for the stable version, it will be available soon. The -git version can be regarded as effectively stable, as it is used by the developer on a daily basis in a work environment.
• (K)Ubuntu (26.04+): a deb package is available: https://github.com/guiodic/material-decoration/releases/tag/26.10.16

Requirements

• Plasma 6.5+ for the master branch, working older versions are in other branches but are not updated/maintained.
• Works both on Wayland and X11 session!

Feature requests? Bugs?

• open an issue here: https://github.com/guiodic/material-decoration/issues