This is why it’s good to read these developer notes sometimes.
For some reason, running KDE on an Arch-based distro is noticeably slower than running Cinnamon. Yes, KDE is a bit more resource-intensive, but in this case, that’s not why. Or, at least, not the only reason.
Something about my system in combination with whatever the Arch maintainers do when they package KDE does not work well together.
I know this because I also currently have KDE installed on MX Linux on the same HDD and openSUSE Tumbleweed installed on a portable HDD. Even the portable HDD runs KDE like I’m using Openbox or i3. It’s fast in both, but not when using Arch.
And it’s not a static release vs rolling release issue since Tumbleweed is rolling. Nor is it a Wayland vs X11 thing, since I alternate in MX Linux and see no difference.
Anyway, I say all this to say, in the developer notes there is a link to a bug report for using i3 inside KDE (X11 obviously). I followed the steps, but for Openbox, and now KDE is not slow anymore on Arch Linux.
I have no doubt many of you have KDE running smooth as butter on Arch, so I know this is somewhat a “my system” thing, but also, it’s kinda not?
Anyway, ymmv is the rule. 
Making the move to trash function x50 faster is hilarious.. - I’d love to know what was causing that slowdown beyond just pure inode obfuscation.
Borderless frames!
This is one of the reasons I plan to move from Kvantum to the Breeze application style. I’ll just set the View Background, Window Background, and Button Background to the same color.
Plasma 6.6 is released.
Plasma 6.6 is in Arch’s Extra-Testing repo!
There’s LOTS I’m looking forward to. But I’ve been waiting for THIS for years…
So many awesome new features, the frames feature is much needed, and saving new global themes is huge! I had to do this individually with themes and colour schemes to adjust for low vision which varies on any given day, now it’ll just be a global theme change, sweet!
Just landed in extra-testing.
I’m looking forward to the release!
It’s a great new feature innit?!
Waiting… 
A pretty complete overview on what to expect from Plasma 6.6.
I’m assuming Plasma Login Manager wil replace sddm automatically, not sure if this is a distro-specific change that gets decided by EOS. Apparently the refresh rate fix for animations being locked to 60Hz is crazy smooth. Looking forward to it coming out hopefully this week.
Has EOS ever touched existing installations for something? I don’t think so. Maybe it changes on the iso for future installations, but I assume that’s it.
I think this will eventually be the case, and it will come from KDE upstream.
Eventually may come sooner or later.
It won’t come for this release. I had to manually install plasma-login-manager.
And while I was at it I did deinstall sddm.
Distros will switch over to plasma-login-manager as the default login-manager for their “plasma” installation in the coming months and years. But that’s it.
Beyond that I don’t see plasma-login-manager becoming a hard requirement with no other login-manager possible. In the foreseeable future that’s imho in the “virtually impossible” column.
Plasma login manager is an option, KDE is continuing support SDDM.
Plasma login manager is systemd-only so it will likely never be mandatory on all platforms.
As for EOS, we will likely switch to it when we feel it is ready. However, that would be for new installs. We rarely make changes to existing installs.
Plasma 6.6 will be held back from updates ?
or
Plasma login manager will not be an automatic update?
As that’s an opinionated switch, it seems one option is to require manual intervention for existing systems if users choose to switch to it (SDDM → Plasma Login Manager).
As of now, are there trouble reports with switching to Plasma login manager?
It is out of beta/released?