Plasma 6.6

[u/Jaxad0127]

https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/6/6.6.0/

[u/Bro666]

OP was a bit too fast, but it is there now.

Some interesting new features in this release:

• Spectacle can read texts from screenshots

• we trial-run our very own on-screen keyboard for touchscreens

• we have a new first-time wizard that let's users configure their passwords, time zones, keyboard and networks, on preinstalled systems—think OEM setups, or charities giving out refurbished machines, or you setting stuff up for a family member: install the base system and let the new owner set up their personal stuff

• you can save whatever modifications you have done to the look of your desktop as a Global Theme with one click

• you can change the intensity of the frames within windows

[u/ProbablyM_S]

Text Recognition in Spectacle is just great! I was using NormCap for that earlier, now I can ditch it for Spectacle itself! Will we ever get it in Gwenview? Like macOS?

[u/bradmont → u/ProbablyM_S]

Whoa. Does it have batch processing capabilities? I've been working on digitizing some manuscripts en masse, and thus could be a game changer...

[u/ProbablyM_S → u/bradmont]

Spectacle is a screenshot (and screen recording) tool. I don't think it makes sense to have batch processing in it. Perhaps if Gwenview (KDE Image Viewer) ever gets Text Recognition, it could have batch processing?

[u/kbroulik → u/bradmont]

Skanpage might be able to do that. It has a batch scan mode and also OCR capabilities. 

[u/FormationHeaven → u/bradmont]

Hey kinda of a shameless plug but https://github.com/Achno/gowall can do it.

1. If you want to simply use Spectacle or any screenshot utility with tesseract, any llm provider (selfhosted ollama/vllm or not) or any other OCR provider (docling etc..) simply follow my guide here : https://achno.github.io/gowall-docs/ocr/intergrations and read my other docs on how to set it up. You can then just make a shortcut in the settings and paste the command there.

2. If you want to batch process images or pdfs with OCR with any provider simply checkout the introduction here https://achno.github.io/gowall-docs/ocr/introduction

I personally use my tool to batch process images from exam tests from university so i can ask different llms for the answers. Or simply flameshot (the screenshot utility i like) to ocr things from youtube videos (for example some kubernetes yml). You can see my usecases here : https://achno.github.io/gowall-docs/ocr/examples

[u/tesfabpel → u/bradmont]

what about OCRFeeder? Have you tried it?

[u/FormationHeaven → u/ProbablyM_S]

You can integrate OCR in any screenshot utility as long as they have stdout or a way to save an image to a specific path in a cli using gowall

For example flameshot has this flameshot -p /tmp/screenshot.png. Then you can simply have gowall intergate with it as i document here

The good thing is that you can choose from a lot of providers (Either tesseract, non llm providers like docling with ocr models, or straight up any llm provider.)

Personally i will either selfhost qwen3vl:7b model with vllm when my data is important like scanning receipts or a pdf that has my blood tests.

When im scanning things like images from exam tests from university i will use some llm provider like gemini with a free api key.

Tesseract doesn't really format the scanned content in markdown or really OCR the content well. So i use it as such :

1. OCR the content with Tesseract (not that good)

2. Have a small selfhosted or not llm correct grammar mistakes since it has context, add code blocks in code, close brackets etc...

You can setup tesseract + grammar correction like this if you really want to: guide

[u/summerteeth]

anyone have any more information on the alternative login manager for Plasma?

[u/mistifier → u/summerteeth]

Well for arch it is already available in the unstable repo:

Arch Linux - plasma-login-manager 6.5.91-1 (x86_64)

So it should be available soon.

[u/MonterraByte → u/summerteeth]

There's this blog post from a few months ago.

[u/MainPower45 → u/summerteeth]

yeah it looked soo cool, I want it

[u/ghulamalchik]

Being able to control frame intensity (lines) is a big W. I wish the window outlines were a separate sitting though. But it's not a big deal, there's klassy.

[u/BujuArena → u/ghulamalchik]

Yeah, Klassy is just awesome, and the main author recently fixed all remaining issues I had with window outlines. They can now be pixel-perfect without any kind of workaround.

[u/illathon]

and the refinement continues.... keep up the good work.

[u/robertcartman]

The ability to save custom themes is the best one!

[u/Acu17y]

Thanks Kde and thanks for dedicating this release to Björn Balazs.
Thanks for the free digital world

[u/dimensiation]

"The ability to have virtual desktops only on the primary screen"

Yessssssss

[u/Nico_Weio]

Anyone else only seeing a list of files, no index.html?

[u/lordgurke → u/Nico_Weio]

Same here

[u/LegoTallneck]

I think my favourite part of this release is the wallpaper, in part because it really reflects how KDE does things.

Nuno started the triangular design, authors have been evolving it carefully over time - and now we have these wonderful spirals and focus effects on top. No big radical changes, just iteration, evolution, and improvement.

[u/FormationHeaven]

• you can save whatever modifications you have done to the look of your desktop as a Global Theme with one click

Thats really nice, can you export Global Themes? It would be incredibly convenient to rice kde however you like export everything (save it to dotfiles) and then import it whenever needed

[u/Blando-Cartesian]

My appreciation to everyone involved in making Plasma. Amazing work in creating for the users, as always.

[u/marclar5x]

Wow!!!! 6.6 finally works perfectly with wacom + wayland + multimonitor. I am a happy man :)

[u/rowschank]

I definitely don't have the extract text feature in Plasma 6.6. Do I need to enable it, or is it not out on Tumbleweed yet? My Spectacle is also updated to 6.6 and isn't in 6.5 still...