The Many Features of the KDE Plasma 5.21 Desktop Environment

KDE Plasma 5.21 promises to ship with a new look and feel called consisting of a new “Breeze Twilight” global theme that features a Dark mode for Plasma and a Light mode for apps, smaller shadows for inactive windows, more distinct colors for Plasma pop-ups, notifications and windows, as well as colorful icons for sidebars in settings windows. You can see a preview in the image above! Apart from the new look and feel, under the hood, KDE Plasma 5.21 promises faster startup and load times due to the use of the systemd init system on GNU/Linux distribution where it’s available. While the use of systemd will be optional in Plasma 5.21, the KDE devs say that it brings several benefits like better logging, better session cleanup during logout, improved responsiveness and clarity in system monitoring apps, and much more.