The latest KDE development report has revealed some of the changes coming to the KDE Plasma 6.8 branch, set for release on October 14th. One significant change is the default enabling of triple output buffering on systems with NVIDIA GPUs. Previously disabled due to artifacts caused by a synchronization error in the KWin composite manager, this bug has been fixed, allowing for the smooth operation of triple buffering.
Triple buffering utilizes three screen buffers to improve rendering performance, reducing jerks that may occur with double buffering on devices with low power. While this boosts frame rates, it does come at the cost of increased latency in output.
Other updates in the KDE Plasma 6.8 branch include the introduction of a manual slideshow mode for desktop wallpaper, requiring users to trigger wallpaper changes through keyboard shortcuts or context menu selections. Additionally, the visual highlighting of settings in the menu editor kmenuedit has been adjusted, removing frames with different background colors.
In the KDE Plasma 6.7 branch, the 6.7.1 corrective release has been issued to address issues like freezes when connecting additional monitors to laptops with NVIDIA and AMD GPUs, as well as KWin crashes when using DisplayLink interfaces and locking screens on NVIDIA GPU systems.
Preparations for the upcoming KDE Plasma 6.7.2 release are underway, focusing on improving full-screen video performance in Chromium-based applications and enhancing text alignment in the System Monitor app’s tree mode for process display. Fixes include addressing KWin crashes during variable refresh rate (VRR) activation on multi-monitor setups, RDP server malfunctions with systemd usage, and freezing problems with Chromium apps overlaid on other windows.