The Latest KDE Software
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.
KDE neon is our installable Linux with continuous integration and deployment. It’s based on Ubuntu who had a new Long Term Support Release recently so we’ve rebased it on Ubuntu 20.04 now.
You should see a popup on your install in the next day or so. It’ll ask you to make sure your system is up to date then it’ll upgrade the base to 20.04 which takes a while to download and then another while to install.
Afterwards it should look just the same because it’s the same wonderful Plasma desktop.
The installable ISOs are also updated and this time they all use the Calamares installer.
Testing and Unstable edition, these are built from the soon-to-be-released Git branches and the untested Git branches. Alas trying the installable ISOs today we found some bugs in the Git Calamares installer so they’re not published yet but the upgrader will still popup on existing installs. Update these are up now
We implemented OEM install mode in Calamares so the other way to get neon is to buy a KDE Slimbook III and it’ll use that.
We also implemented a full disk encryption tickbox in Calamares.
The Docker images are still to be updated and the Snap packages also need moved over.
Here at KDE neon base camp we have been working on moving the base of our system to Focal, Ubuntu 20.04. If you’re interested in the mechanics you can see the status, and indeed help out, on our 20.04 workboard.
But probably you’re more interested in giving it a try. This is in testing mode still and comes with a no money back warranty. Instrucitons are on the testing forum thread. You can either do an upgrade or a full install from the preview ISOs. Let us know how you get on!
KDE’s flagship project Plasma has released 5.18 LTS. That means we’ve crunched the code and ran the QA and slid out the packages and installable images.
Upgrade your KDE neon to get Plasma 5.18. Download the ISOs to install the live images. And to give it a try run the Docker images with neondocker.
KDE neon 5.17 is out. You can upgrade your existing KDE neon User Edition install or install fresh from an ISO image or run the Docker image. Featuring Plasma 5.17 it is packed full of new features according to OMG Ubuntu.
Plasma 5.17 Beta is out for testing and it needs you to give it a try. Do the panels show up where they should? Can you control your media players from the task manager? Do the obscure plasmoids you like still work? Download the KDE neon Testing edition ISO now to give it a try.
KDE neon 5.16 is out featuring Plasma 5.16. Download the ISO now or upgrade your installs.
With Diversity in mind this edition features an Ice Cold themed wallpaper to make those in the southern hemisphere feel included.
Plasma 5.16 beta was released last week and there’s now a further couple of weeks to test it to find and fix all the beasties. To help out download the Neon Testing image and install it in a virtual machine or on your raw hardware. You probably want to do a full-upgrade to make sure you have the latest builds. Then try out the new notifications system, or the new animated wallpaper settings or anything else mentioned in the release announcement. When you find a problem report it on bugs.kde.org and/or chat on the Plasma Matrix room. Thanks for your help!
KDE’s bundle of apps KDE Applications 19.04 has been released. Here at KDE neon the build servers have built all the .debs and the QA servers are now checking over them before publishing shortly.
That’s great if you run KDE neon but what about every other distro? Well for the first time ever you can install 50-odd apps from the bundle from one of the new cross-distro Linux App Stores, the Snap Store.
Our software store app Discover also supports Snaps so they should be available through that if you have snapd installed.
Snaps is a new container based format from Canonical and they can be installed on any Linux distro. The spec and software is all open source managed from a centralised Store in much the same way as Google Play or Steam or F-Droid. Here at KDE neon we have been experimenting for some time with this format and waiting for the needed features to be added so we could give a great exprience. There’s still a couple of rough edges such as printer support or which directory the File Open dialog uses by default, which is mostly down to Qt and how it supports the xdg-portals spec. The store does not yet pick up all the meta-data such as icons and screenshots from Appstream metadata files.
Of the 50 apps we have ready today most are simple ones, games and edu features a lot. Hopefully we can get some of the more flagship apps up before long.
This is an exciting change in the way we deliver our software to you the user. Hopefully other App Stores will be supported in the near future too such as Flatpak/Flathub and Appstream/Appstreamhub.
The new format puts app authors and maintainers incharge of their software. Currently it’s done through KDE neon but there’s no reason why that needs to be the case, it can and should be done through the same KDE repos the apps are in with continuous integration and deployment done from our new GitLab setup invent.kde.org. Watch out for blogs on details of how it works shortly.
KDE neon offers a few different editions depending on what you’re interested in.
We’ve renamed our editions a bit as the current names were causing confusion. This affects the URLs used for repos and filenames used for installable ISOs and Docker images.
The editions are now:
User Edition: the main event, built from released tars of KDE software, continuously updated as soon as releases are made assuming all the QA tests pass (which sometimes they don’t and so it gets held back until we fix them). Use this if unsure.
Testing Edition: built from the beta Git branches of KDE apps (often the same as unstable), no automated QA, will contain bugs and breakage, useful for testing beta software. (Formerly Dev Stable Edition.)
Unstable Edition: built from unstable master Git branches of KDE apps, no automated QA, will contain bugs and muchos breakage, useful for testing features in development software. (Formerly Dev Unstable Edition.)
Developer Edition: An ISO with the unstable edition plus development headers pre-installed. Useful to not have to install all of Qt and KDE dev headers.
And some more obscure editions:
Pinebook Remix: an ARM64 build with a couple of non-free drivers for the Pinebook ARM laptop.
Plasma LTS Edition: formerly User LTS this is only useful for testing the Plasma LTS releases, everything else is still moving and updating so it’s no more stable or long supported than anything else.
Korean Edition: testing edition plus the Korean locale pre-configured for our friends in the far East.
Many people will want the User edition for the extra QA and then to use Docker images for testing. Or use the Docker images on any distro of course.
Happy KDE!