KDE finally lets you limit virtual desktops to the primary screen

Throughout the week, the KDE team worked on the various parts of its desktop environment, finally addressing a 19-year-old (yes, really!) request from users. The developers also fixed a ton of bugs and improved performance.

Starting with the new feature, Kristen McWilliam implemented the ability to limit virtual desktops to only the primary screen. For anyone with a multi-monitor setup, this means you can switch workspaces on your main display without everything on your secondary monitors flying away with it.

This feature request has been floating around since way back in the KDE 3 era, first logged on June 12, 2005. For 19 years, users have been asking for this functionality, which was held back by technical limitations in the old X11 windowing system. You can look for this in Plasma 6.6 when it comes out next year.

Other features planned for Plasma 6.6 include a new button in the Network widget for connecting to a network with a QR code.

Image via KDE

The DrKonqi crash reporter will now also notice when non-KDE applications crash and prompt you to report them upstream. Hot-corner effects are also getting an update to trigger for all screens by default, though you can turn this off.

You should also expect lower memory usage, with the system dropping over 100MiB by changing how it unloads wallpaper images that are not in use. This change technically removed tiled wallpapers, but a new "Tiled" wallpaper plugin brings the functionality right back.

KDE Plasma 6.5.2 landed this week, with several bug fixes. This release corrected an issue that prevented users from adding a new widget by clicking on it. It also resolved a source of high CPU usage on the SDDM login screen. For those who use the Font Viewer application, a fix was included for an issue that made some toolbar items invisible.

The next bugfix release, 6.5.3, scheduled for 18th November, will bring even more corrections. This release will fix a potential Plasma crash when you remove widgets or panels. It also fixes a regression where inactive windows would become active if you hovered over an element that produced a tooltip.

You can learn more from the official KDE blog post.