The 2022 Academy was held these days in Barcelona, and among the news that the annual conference of the project brings us is what can be read in the title: KDE Plasma 6 will arrive in the middle of 2023 . That is, at least, the intended intention, though it depends on several things, yes, well directed indeed.
Specifically, plans are to release KDE Plasma 5.27 as the latest release from the current branch, to make the leap to the next release of what should be KDE Plasma 6, based on KDE Frameworks 6 and, therefore, on Qt6. This is how the developer Kai Uwe developed it on his blog in an article summarizing his time at the 2022 Academy.
“[…] We decided to set a timeline for the KDE Frameworks 6 fork, with the feature frozen in KF5 at the end of December this year and Plasma 5.27 likely to be the last release in the Plasma 5 series,” Uwe explains. “I started by porting the largest KDE application, Kolourpaint, to Qt 6,” he jokes.
In summary, KDE Plasma 5.26 will be released this week , as planned; KDE Plasma 5.27 will be released in February or March 2023, as planned … And for the next version of the desktop environment, the transition will take place more or less in the summer – June or July – to KDE Plasma 6. At that time, certain requirements must be met .
The first is to move all core KDE Plasma stuff, libraries and applications to the new infrastructure. Among them all, the one that causes the most problems is the KWin window manager, although according to Uwe, there has been good progress recently and the migration is expected to be completed soon. this location It lists everything that is left to be compiled into Qt6.
Another great plugin waiting in line is the KDE Frameworks, of which KDE Frames 5.99.0 It was published yesterday and there will still be another release – the one that came with KDE Plasma 5.27 – before the new numbering is adopted, although as indicated by Uwe, the feature freeze is expected later this year.
There is no more data at this time, but guesses can be made. As if KDE Plasma 5.27 is the latest version of the current branch, it is It will be – or should be – the LTS version , supported for at least two years, not in terms of features, but in terms of fixes. That is, as long as the deadlines are strictly adhered to. In fact, we see KDE Plasma 6.0 appear next summer.
Of course, the big question about the upcoming change is: Will it cost or not? Will it be as painful as that from KDE 3 to KDE 4, or more roughly, like that from KDE 4 to KDE 5? The truth is that on this occasion they took things calmly and a couple of years ago a saying was raised: go plasma 6 with homework done. Now it remains to be realized.