Plasma 5.11 beta is available now; features redesigned settings app, improved notifications & more

The KDE community has announced immediate availability of KDE Plasma 5.11 beta, development release prior to upcoming stable release planned for Mid-October. This beta release gives a clear overview of what we can expect from final release. It includes a redesigned settings app, improved notification systems and a better and powerful task manager.

In addition to changes in existing visual components, Plasma 5.11 will be the first release to provide a Vault, a system to encrypt and open set of documents in secure and user friendly way. This feature will make Plasma a good choice for people who keep more concern on their security and privacy.

Redesigned Settings App in Plasma 5.11 beta (Credit : Release announcement)

The redesigned System Settings, in Plasma makes navigation between different sections easier by providing a navigation menu on left side of menu. It resembles with GNOME 3.26 control center remotely. This interface is made optional and users can either stick with traditional experience or get matured for this new design.

Other highlights in Plasma 5.11 includes:

• Considering the demand from users, a notification history is added. This will help users to see the notifications shown in their absence and expired notifications. This is an experimental feature in 5.11 beta release. It may or may not be in final release based on tester feedback.
• There are multiple functionality changes in task manager, and also it offers a smooth experience.
• As mentioned earlier, Vault will help users to open groups of documents in secure and user friendly way.
• Multiple improvements in application menu which includes better search results, disabling of favorites section if there is nothing to show, folder view is now default desktop ..etc
• A lot of work has been put into Plasma on Wayland. KWin, Plasma's Wayland compositor, can now automatically apply scaling based on the pixel density of a screen and even do so for each screen individually. This will significantly improve user experience on setups with multiple monitors, such as when a regular external monitor is connected to a modern high-resolution laptop. Moreover, legacy applications not supporting this functionality may be upscaled to remain readable.

For more information on Plasma 5.11 beta, see release announcement published in KDE website.

KDE Frameworks 5.38.0 released with numerous bug fixes and improvements

The KDE community has announced availability of KDE Frameworks 5.38.0, latest stable release of Qt addon libraries which provides various commonly used functionalities with high reliability and stability. This release of KDE Frameworks includes various bug fixes and improvements, especially in Kirigami, a set of QtQuick components which can be used to build user interfaces based on the KDE UX guidelines.

Following are some important bug fixes and improvements included in KDE Frameworks 5.38.0 release.

• Directory based search has been fixed in baloo, the file indexing and searching library for Qt.
• KActivitiesStart has been updated with refracted query which combines linked and used resources, Reloading the model when the resource gets unlinked, and also the issue with query when merging linked and used resources is fixed.
• Added support for uninstalled plugins in kcoreaddons_add_plugin
• klauncher: fix appId matching for flatpak apps
• Port the webshortcuts KCM from KServiceTypeTrader to KPluginLoader::findPlugins
• Add mimetype filtering capabilities to KUrlCompletion
• Remove busy loop check in TransferJobPrivate::slotDataReqFromDevice

Changes in Kirigami 

• hide scrollbars when useless
• Add basic example for adjusting column width draggable handle
• ider layers in handles positioning
• fix handle placing when overlaps the last page
• don't show fake handle on the last column
• don't store stuff in the delegates (bug 383741)
• as we already set keyNavigationEnabled, set wraps as well
• better left-alignment for the back button (bug 383751)
• don't take into account the header 2 times when scrolling (bug 383725)
• never wrap the header labels
• address FIXME: remove resetTimer (bug 383772)
• don't scroll away applicationheader in non mobile
• Add a property to hide the PageRow separator matching AbstractListItem
• fix scrolling with originY and bottomtotop flow
• Get rid of warnings about setting both pixel and point sizes
• don't trigger reachable mode on inverted views
• take page footer into account
• add a slightly more complex example of a chat app
• more failsafe to find the right footer
• Check item validity before using it
• Honour layer position for isCurrentPage
• use an animation instead of an animator (bug 383761)
• leave needed space for the page footer, if possible
• better dimmer for applicationitem drawers
• background dimming for applicationitem
• fix properly back button margins
• proper margins for back button
• less warnings in ApplicationHeader
• don't use plasma scaling for icon sizes
• new look for handles

For more information on KDE Frameworks 5.38.0 release, see original release announcement published in KDE website.

Solus gets support for Plasma Destkop; though not official at the moment

Increasing the amount of diversity, Solus project now supports Plasma Desktop, a full featured modern desktop developed by KDE community. Currently, Plasma Desktop can be installed from Solus Software Center, however it is not officially supported at the moment.

Peter O’Connor,a core member of Solus project is working on KDE project maintenance for a long time. Over the time, he was able to pack  many demanding KDE projects like Krita, KDEnlive, K3b ..etc for Solus. Maintaining these packages brings a lot of dependencies including Qt stack. Peter is doing a good work by maintaining all these dependencies to provide a fair experience for KDE applications in Solus.

KDE Desktop in Solus Software Center (Courtesy : Solus Project)

Currently, Peter is working closely to provide more support Plasma Desktop in Solus. Once it is mature enough, it will also come as on officially supported desktop environment for Solus. This will add up to officially supported desktop environments at the moment, which are Budgie, MATE and GNOME.

For the sake of clarity, please note that the Plasma Desktop from KDE is not officially supported at this moment in time. It is however a project that Peter is working on, and slowly building up to be something useful. This in itself was enabled by the vast amount of KF5 (KDE Frameworks) software required in the repositories already for the “Big Items” (Kdenlive, etc).

Peter’s ambition is to eventually support a full Plasma stack on Solus, and through his long standing commitments to this work already, and to Solus as a project, he will be the official maintainer for KDE items in the distribution. The argument of stack complexity is already met and nullified.

For more information, see original announcement published on Solus project blog.

Linux Mint KDE flavor is beautiful and easy to use : Review

Linux Mint project a well known Ubuntu based, non-canonical project that attracts people because of it's modern yet familiar desktop design metaphor. The project officially ships MATE and Cinnamon flavors. In addition to that, there are community contributors associated with Linux Mint which delivers this distribution in Xfce & KDE flavors.

The Linux and Ubuntu portal has published a review by exploring Linux Mint KDE flavor. This review observes, Linux Mint KDE flavor is simply beautiful and it is relatively easy to use. This review goes through different aspects of operating system including Applications used, desktop organization, security updates and bug fixes, easy of use and installation ..etc.

Unlike Windows, You have everything ready in mint. As you can see below, this is called welcome screen. It has 8 icons. The first one shows you the new features.
The second is Documentation which you should read over once if you are new to computer or Linux world.

​Then we have app which is like play store in android. It is a package management software or at least its front-end. We can install apps from it easily.

 

If any of your hardware needs proprietary drivers, then you should use them. It will increase performance. But mostly you won't need it unless your hardware is too recent. 

For complete review, checkout original post in Linux and Ubuntu portal.

Manjaro 17.0 Gellivara Plasma & Xfce flavors released

Mr Philip Muler, leader and developer at Manjaro project has announced release of Manjaro 17.0, latest stable snapshot of Arch based, rolling GNU/Linux distribution that comes with usability improvements such as user friendly installer, intelligent driver installation, pre-packed desktop environment & multimedia codecs ..etc. This release announcement is applicable for both Xfce and Plasma flavors of Manjaro which are supported by Manjaro team.

Manjaro 17.0 Gellivara KDE flavor ( Courtesy : Manjaro blog)

Manjaro 17.0 which referred by the code name Gellivara is a result of 3 months of development, testing and quality assurance effort by Manjaro team and other associated community members.

One of the key highlight of this release is improved Manjaro Settings Manager (aka. MSM), which comes with option to easily install & remove different versions of Linux Kernel to support a wide range of devices. When manjaro 17.0 is getting released, there are nine different kernel images available in repositories which ranges from extremely stable versions to most recent release which is 4.10. In addition to these, Manjaro also provides two real time kernels. Probably, Manjaro may be the only distribution that maintains this much number of kernels simultaneously.

Some of the common features of Xfce & Plasma flavors of Manjaro 17.0 can be summarized as:

• We updated the stock kernel to linux49 4.9 LTS
• We updated the Xorg-Stack to v1.19 series
• We released Pamac v4.3.0 with native AUR-Support
• We enhanced and improved our Manjaro Tools & Profiles
• MHWD we adopted a more efficient way to handle libglx binaries
• Some of our themes got updated and new got designed

For more information, see separate release announcement for Xfce & Plasma flavors of Manjaro.

Kubuntu 17.04 Beta 1 released with Plasma 5.9.0

Following the official announcement of Ubuntu Budgie, Kubuntu has also announced availability of Kubuntu 17.04 beta 1 for testing. This development release of Kubuntu will give an impression of planned features/changes for upcoming Kubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus stable release. However this release is not recommended for newbies and unexperienced users as it is likely to break at any moment.

Courtesy : Kubuntu Project

Kubuntu , an official community flavor of Ubuntu featuring modern KDE Plasma desktop brings a new yet stable release of Plasma Desktop (currently 5.9.0) by default in 17.04 release. While this can be upgraded to latest plasma release by enabling Kubuntu backports repository. Plasma 5 desktop in Kubuntu will deliver a smooth desktop experience. Other important updated packages included in this release is KDE Applications 16.12.1 which is a collection of KDE applications which will find use in daily life and most of these applications have been ported to KDE Frameworks 5. This release also brings LibreOffice 5.2 - a relatively new and stable version of productivity suite developed by the Document Foundation and Firefox 50.1.

Plasma 5, the new generation of KDE's desktop has been developed to make it smoother to use while retaining the familiar setup. The ninth set of updates to Plasma 5 is the default in this version of Kubuntu.

Kubuntu comes with KDE Applications 16.12.1 containing all your favourite apps from KDE, with the exception of okular and PIM and related products. This is the 16.12.1 update with bugfixes and translation updates. Most applications have been ported to KDE Frameworks 5 but those which aren't should fit in seamlessly. Non-KDE applications include LibreOffice 5.2 and Firefox 50.1.

Fore more information see release announcement and release notes published in Kubuntu blog and Ubuntu wiki respectively.

KaOS 2017.02 snapshot released with latest Plasma desktop

Following the monthly release schedule, KaOS project has announced release of KaOS 2017.02, latest monthly snapshot for us based, independently developed rolling GNU/Linux distribution delivering most modern bleeding edge KDE Plasma experience.

KDE components packed with this monthly snapshot includes KDE Frameworks 5.31.0, Plasma Desktop 5.9.2, KDE Applications 16.12.2 and some other KDE applications which are still under development. All these packages are build against Qt 5.8.0.

Most notable major updates to the base of the system are Qt 5.8.0, Readline 7.0, Bash 4.4 Perl 5.24.1, Systemd 232, Xorg-Server 1.19.1, Linux 4.9.10, Glibc 2.25, GCC 5.4.1, Binutils 2.27 Protobuf 3.2.0, Libwebp 0.6.0, Gstreamer 1.10.3 and a move to qtwebkit-tp replacing no longer maintained qt5-webkit.

KaOS repositories no longer provide Qt 4. It is a good three years ago that development for Qt 4 stopped, late 2015 all support including security fixes ended. Any application that has not made the transition to Qt 5 in all this time can no longer be supported in KaOS. Either they actually are no longer maintained or their development is ignoring the implications of building on a possible insecure toolkit.

For more details, see release announcement in KaOS website.

Manjaro 17.0-rc1 Xfce & KDE flavors announced with Linux 4.9 LTS

After finishing release cycle for Manjaro 16.09 Gellivara successfully, it is time to finish another release cycle for Manjaro. Announcing the progress on this release cycle, Philip Muller, the manjaro project lead has announced Manjaro 17.0-rc1 first release candidate for upcoming manjaro release. As usual convention of project, this official release announcement is applicable for both Xfce and KDE flavors.

For those who are not familiar with Manjaro, it is an Arch based rolling GNU/Linux distribution that makes use of Arch principles such as rolling packages, simplicity and customizability and adds usability on top of it by integrating automated device detection & driver installation, graphical installer and pre-configured desktop environments.

The main highlights of both Xfce and KDE plasma flavors can be summarizes as:

• We updated the stock kernel to linux49 4.9 LTS
• We updated the Xorg-Stack to v1.19 series
• We enhanced and improved our Manjaro Tools & Profiles
• MHWD we adopted to handle a more efficient way to handle libglx binaries
• Some of our themes got updated and new got designed

For more information, see separate release announcement for Xfce and KDE flavors.

openSUSE Leap 42.2 GNOME flavor is better than Plasma counterpart : Review

By the time, openSUSE Leap is familiar to all GNU/Linux enthusiasts. It is a conservative, stable, enterprise quality GNU/Linux distribution funded and backed by SUSE Foundation, team behind SEL(SUSE Enterprise Linux).

Since it's inception, there has been multiple reviews on openSUSE Leap 42.2. Most of these reviews praises the stability of the distribution and power of YaST, tool for system configuration and administration. While these reviews also criticizes the difficulty to do the initial configurations. For some people it is related to hardware support such bluetooth, network and printer support ..etc. While for some others it is related to installation of packages such as multimedia codecs.

A customized version of openSUSE Leap 42.2 (CREDIT : dedoimedo)

The dedoimedo portal has published a review on openSUSE Leap 42.2 GNOME edition. The main point made out of the review is, GNOME edition is much better comparing to KDE Plasma counterpart. It provides some relatively easy options for customizing user interface. However, still there some inherent issues like initial configuration, hardware support etc. There are other issues like reduced power efficiency, repeated wifi password queries ..etc. The reviewer puts the blame of QA(Quality Assurance) team for these issues.

OpenSUSE Leap 42.2 Gnome is a better product than its Plasma counterpart, and no mistake. It is more stable, it is faster, more elegant, more easily customizable, and most of the critical everyday functions actually work. For example, you can print to Samba, if you are inclined to fight the firewall, copy files to Samba without losing timestamps, use Bluetooth, use your Ubuntu Phone, and all this without the crippling effects of constant crashes. The entire stack is just more fully featured and better supported.

However, Leap is still only a reasonable release and nothing more. It struggles in many core areas that other distros do with more panache and elegance, and there are some big, glaring problems in the overall product that are a direct result of bad QA. At the very least, this lack of quality has been an almost consistent element with openSUSE these past few years. Now and then, you get a decent hatchling, but most of them are just average. That's probably the word that best defines openSUSE Leap. Average. You should try and see for yourself. You will most likely not be amazed. Such a shame, because for me, SUSE has a sweet spot, and yet, it stubbornly refuses to rekindle the love. 6/10. Have a go, play with your emotions.

Read complete review in dedoimedo portal

Linux Mint 18.1 Serena Xfce & KDE editions released

The Linux Mint community has announced release of Linux Mint 18.1 Serena Xfce and KDE editions. These releases includes packages updates and usability improvements to provide a better user experience.

Linux Mint 18.1 a long term supported (LTS) release based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and it will continue to get critical security updates till 2021. Thereafter, the release will be discarded and users are expected to upgrade their system to a newer release.

Linux Mint 18.1 Xfce Desktop

The major highlights in both KDE & Xfce flavors can be summarized as follows:

• KDE Plasma 5.8
• Whisker application menu in Xfce flavor is upgraded to version 1.6.2
• A new cross desktop compatible collection of common applications, X-Apps developed by Linux Mint project which includes text editor, media player, document viewer..etc. All these apps are inspired by old gnome school applications.
• Improved update manager which include option to sort package updates based on origin and displays kernel versions in a more clear way.
• Better language support which includes translated text for more packages.
• World Wide availability of packages
• Updated MDM - Mint Display Manager
• Banshee music player is replaced with Rhythmbox
• Improved artwork
• Linux Kernel 4.4

For more details, see separate release announcements for Xfce & KDE flavors of Linux Mint 18.1.