Plasma 5.26 Beta Testing

Plasma 5.26 Beta was released yesterday

https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.25.90/

And now we need your help testing it. Download KDE neon Testing edition and install it on a machine (do backups etc or use a spare computer if you can).

https://neon.kde.org/download

Please help with reporting but also reviewing bugs that others have reported.

One big addition in this release is Plasma Bigscreen, a plasma workspace for your television. Install it along with auro-browser and plank-player and plasma-remotecontrollers and log into the Bigscreen session. We plan to make a KDE neon edition with a dedicated Bigscreen install soon.

KDE neon Docker Images now on 22.04LTS

KDE neon has Docker images which are great for easily testing out KDE software built from Git master, Git testing or releases without touching your host system.

The images have just been updating to use KDE neon on the new Ubuntu LTS base 22.04 (jammy).

Documentation on the wiki.

Run neondocker to get started or

Xephyr -screen 1024x768 :1 &
docker run -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix kdeneon/plasma:unstable

or single app

xhost +
docker run -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix -e DISPLAY=:0 --security-opt seccomp=unconfined kdeneon/plasma:unstable dolphin

KDE neon: Jammy Porting Update

Jammy porting is happening at full pace. Almost all the packages are now compiled and that leaves ISOs to be built and upgrade to be tested.

As with any software or engineering project there’s not much point in putting a deadline on it, it’ll be ready when it’s ready. As a moving target the builds are often two steps forward and one step back cos suddenly there’s a new KDE Gear that needs built.

But we’ll be with you soon 🙂

Neon: Maliit Keyboard Now Available on Wayland

We have updated the Maliit keyboard package to Maliit 2 and released it to Neon user edition. This gives a virtual keyboard which you can use, handy for convertible laptops with a removeable keyboard. It only runs when using Wayland so make sure to select that at login. There is a module in System Settings to select the keyboard and it should be intelligent enough to only run when you don’t have a physical keyboard plugged in.

KDE neon now on Linux 5.8

Here at KDE neon we pride ourselves on giving you the latest from KDE built pronto and QAed and shipped to you with no questions asked. We also base on the stable Ubuntu LTS 20.04 release giving a generally stable system. If you want an updated version of an app which isn’t from KDE we advise you to use a non-distro package from the Snap store, AppImage or Flatpak. But Linux has one property which is still inconvenient for the end user even the more nerdy of end users, which is that drivers are shipped with the Linux version you get and there’s no stable programmer interface for them so they can’t easily be shipped externally. That means if you use Linux 5.4 which is what comes with KDE neon and Ubuntu 20.04 you will get drivers which are a few years old, which is no good for those shiny new AMD Radeon graphics chips. So we’ve now switched the installable images to the HWE build which brings in Linux 5.8. Neon installs should just install it on upgrade and use it on the next boot. Chat on our forum and report bugs on bugs.kde.org as ever.

KDE neon 5.22 is Here

Plasma 5.22 was released yesterday and so the hard working continuous automation and continuous deployment guinea pigs at KDE neon compiled it all and bumped the version number and spun new installable ISOs and Docker images for you to try it. Existing users can just upgrade as normal.

Download the ISO from https://neon.kde.org/download and boot it up
Or try the docker image. Xephyr :2 -screen 1024x768 & docker run -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix -e DISPLAY=:2 --security-opt seccomp=unconfined kdeneon/plasma:user startplasma-x11

KDE neon’s Qt is Now Built from KDE’s Git Branches

Recently KDE started to maintain a collection of patches for Qt 5. This is because Qt 5 came to end of life with Qt 6 now released (KDE Frameworks has started the slow process of moving to Qt 6). With many Qt 5 users out there the Qt Company are selling a maintained verson of Qt 5 but for the community KDE has started a collection of patches to fix the bugs. In KDE neon we like to build everything in KDE directly from KDE so we have now moved to building Qt too. This means our Qt now calls itself 5.15.3. We also updated PyQt to 5.14. Let us know if you find any problems.

KDE neon Unstable Qt 6 Package Available

Today at KDE neon tower we are feeling cute. And sixy. We have an early-prototype-preview-no-stability-guaranteed Qt 6 package.

This is in the KDE neon Unstable edition so if you run that you can just

sudo apt install qt6
/usr/examples/widgets/widgets/digitalclock/digitalclock

And you’ll have a digital clock.

Or if you run any other distro you can use the Docker image, which would be something like:

docker run -v `pwd`:/workspace -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix -e DISPLAY=:0 --security-opt seccomp=unconfined -ti kdeneon/plasma:unstable bash
neon@68c3ba3fc955:~$ sudo apt update
...
neon@68c3ba3fc955:~$ sudo apt install qt6
...
export QT_PLUGIN_PATH=/usr/plugins
/usr/examples/widgets/widgets/digitalclock/digitalclock

It’s installed into /usr and Qt isn’t too smart about where it goes under that so the paths don’t follow FHS or Debian policy yet, that might change.

KDE neon 5.20

Our beautiful desktop Plasma 5.20 has been released and with it the version bump in KDE neon User Edition to 5.20.

KDE neon 5.20 installed running KDE neon 5.20 on Virtualbox and KDE neon 5.20 Docker image

To get it you can

Bad Snapshot Today

A bad snapshot in KDE neon user edition today caused an incomplete build to get into user editions. If you are affected downgrade with


sudo apt-get install libkwaylandserver5=5.19.5-0xneon+20.04+focal+build10

Sorry about that, we’ll add additional QA checks to prevent similar issues from happening again.