Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
In the latest issue of This Week in Plasma, the KDE team talks mostly about the fact that Plasma 6.4 has become stable with the second beta version. A ton of polishing has gone into version 6.4 in preparation for the general release scheduled for later in June.
The KDE team also brings up Plasma 6.5, mentioning that it will include a new keyboard shortcut to advance to the next wallpaper slideshow. Also, the KWin Magnifier and Zoom effects now share the same initial zoom level and zoom factor settings. The Digital Clock widget's calendar add-ons page has been overhauled, and Plasma now warns you that keeping the "Raise maximum volume" setting active for too long could damage speakers.
Perhaps the most notable news is that Plasma 6.5 will reduce memory usage by keeping fewer unnecessary copies of each screen's wallpaper in memory. According to David Edmundson, "We want initial loading to be as atomic and lightweight as possible. Debug showed the DesktopView rendering a black rectangle for an additional frame. This was caused by an animation workaround. Disabling the entire transition is cleaner and simpler."
Essentially, the developers are working hard to reduce Plasma's memory footprint. The way it handles wallpaper should go a long way to help (because it currently keeps too many copies of each wallpaper in memory).
Of course, the wait for Plasma 6.5 will happen after version 6.4, which is scheduled for June 17.
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