openSUSE Tumbleweed's June update brings KDE Plasma 6.4 and critical security fixes

If you're looking to try out the new KDE Plasma 6.4, you can check out openSUSE Tumbleweed, as it was one of many bleeding-edge updates the distribution got in June.

The openSUSE Project has just provided an overview of everything that was added to its rolling release, openSUSE Tumbleweed, in June. If you’ve been wanting to try out the KDE Plasma 6.4 desktop, which came out in mid-June, you could install openSUSE Tumbleweed and have it right there to start using. The new update gives you a smoother, more customizable desktop with flexible tiling and improved window management.

Included in the new desktop is a redesigned version of Spectacle, the screenshot and annotation tool; accessibility enhancements for keyboard navigation and Wayland; UI changes that improve contrast and readability, especially in dark mode; updates to notifications so that they support direct update installs, full-screen “Do Not Disturb”, and mic-mute alerts; KRunner visualizes color codes; and System Monitor adds GPU tracking.

For those unfamiliar with Tumbleweed, it’s openSUSE’s rolling release; this means that rather than getting a big update, say like Windows 11 and Windows 10, it receives a steady stream of updates, removing the need to do big upgrades.

It wasn’t only KDE Plasma that got updated in June; the Linux kernel has been upgraded to version 6.15 and then 6.15.3 with PCIe hotplug fixes, improved I/O scheduling, and improved Wi-Fi driver compatibility. This is the latest stable kernel, so if you try out this distribution, it should work with the newest hardware.

Other bits of important software included from June are GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 15 which includes new language support for Modula-2 and Cobol plus performance gains; Mesa 25.1.3 which comes with rendering fixes for games including DOOM: The Dark Ages and driver improvements; PipeWire 1.4.6 with fixes for ALSA plugin crashes and improved latency reporting; and Python 3.13.5 and 3.11 which include stability and security fixes, while Python 2.7 support has been deprecated.

Aside from major updates, openSUSE Tumbleweed saw a significant number of CVEs addressed across included packages, including Mozilla Firefox, Python, libssh, ClamAV, gdm, and more. This should make the system a bit safer.

So, if you’re in the US with a day off on Friday for Independence Day, and have been waiting for a chance to try the latest KDE 6.4, then you could download openSUSE Tumbleweed as the distribution to give it a go. You can learn more about it and download it over on the openSUSE website.