The Latest KDE Software
KDE neon builds packages of KDE software using latest Ubuntu LTS as a base. Every couple of years there’s a new Ubuntu LTS and so we build all our package and infrastructure onto that. We’ve just finished the move onto Ubuntu 22.04 (jammy) and installable ISO images are now based on that.
We’ll enable to upgrade for existing installs on Monday.
We are just about ready to launch the rebase of KDE neon on Ubuntu 22.04 Firefox is the browser again now as a Snap package. This breaks plasma-browser-integration but is otherwise working fine. Release now with Snaps or spend a couple more weeks working on other package formats?
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).
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 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).
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
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 🙂
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.
When rolling out a new feature that lets you skip (offline) updates on boot-up earlier this week we have messed up and also brought in a nasty bug that prevents updates from applying. Unfortunately we can’t automatically rectify this problem because, well, updates are never applied.
In case you find Discover showing the same updates over and over again, even after rebooting to apply the update, you may be affected.
To resolve this problem simply press the ‘c’ key on your keyboard when the boot screen is saying “Preparing system updates… press ‘c’ to cancel”. When you have done this once, ‘c’ will behave correctly for future updates and cancel the update if you want to cancel the update temporarily to get to your desktop quickly.
If pressing ‘c’ for one update does not resolve your problems you are definitely afflicted by a different issue. Particularly when discover informs you of pending updates, but when you open the application there are none listed that’d be a different problem.
See also Bug 438809 – offline updates are not installed on restart
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.
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.
Xephyr :2 -screen 1024x768 & docker run -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix -e DISPLAY=:2 --security-opt seccomp=unconfined kdeneon/plasma:user startplasma-x11Recently 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.