KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS Desktop Officially Released (softpedia.com)

prisoninmate writes from a report via Softpedia: KDE will celebrate 20 years of activity on October 14, 2016, and they've just released the first LTS (Long Term Support) version of the KDE Plasma desktop environment. Prominent new features of KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS include support for desktop widgets, a new system-wide search functionality that promises to let users easily search their KDE desktops for everything they want, including apps, music, videos, files, folders, etc., a new tool to get hot new stuff for your KDE Plasma desktop, such as wallpapers, widgets, desktop effects, or window styles, and infinite customization possibilities. Moreover, KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS comes with a unified look for the default Breeze theme so that, no matter what type of application you're using (Qt4, GTK2, GTK3, or Qt5), it will look the same, mobile phone notifications, along with the ability to use your smartphone as a PC remote, transfer files or mute music during calls, all with the new KDE Connect plasmoid. There's also Right-to-Left (RTL) language support, simplified global shortcuts, improvements to many applets, and much better Wayland support. KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS will receive nine point releases until 2018. "Today KDE releases its first Long Term Support edition of its flagship desktop software, Plasma," reads the announcement. "This marks the point where the developers and designers are happy to recommend Plasma for the widest possible audience be they enterprise or non-techy home users. If you tried a KDE desktop previously and have moved away, now is the time to re-assess, Plasma is simple by default, powerful when needed."

Comments

F.Ultra sucks LP's cock.

[Hognoxious]

If KDE was any good it would depend on systemd.

Does multi monitor work now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or does the whole thing still crash horrendously when you turn off a display port monitor?

Re:Does multi monitor work now?

[TopherC]

I think that was fixed in 5.6, although on my laptop I still have issues connecting to and from a docking station with external monitors. I've been using Cinnamon recently and thinking about even going (back to) XFCE. The problems are most likely related to X.org drivers and xrandr support, but the various DEs handle failure cases differently.

I like KDE in general because it supports what I find to be efficient workflows, and the customization is relatively user-friendly and complete. But I've gotten increasingly frustrated with it over the years because it seems bugs are addressed slowly if at all, and there is rarely backporting of bugfixes like that display-port-related crash. That may be a little unfair, but that's the impression I get when using KDE.

I remember when...

[wjcofkc]

The main goal of KDE was to be a solid WIndows 95 clone. The first time I used it was version 0.6.something. I may have read about it on Chips and Dips. It was awful and development initially stalled. Today it is my favourite IDE. Although I frequently turn to OpenBox and and awesome for brain decompression.

Re:I remember when...

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE was never meant to be a Windows 95 clone. It was originally made to look like the Common Desktop Environment from 1993.

Re:KDE=bloated pig with bad lipstick

[Frank Burly]

Baloo has replaced nepomuk and is much better behaved. Akonadi and Telepathy are frequent sources of frustration for me though. Also, the Network Manager can crash all Plasma widgets and window decorations, which is very annoying—I don't know if this is an OpenSuse or KDE bug. As I mentioned a couple months ago (modded +5!), it remains the least annoying DE for me.

The problem with KDE (and Gnome, and Unity)

[OneHundredAndTen]

For me, desktop environment should just be in the background, waiting to do what you tell it do, fast, efficiently and using as few resources as possible. KDE, Gnome and Unity have decided to take the opposite approach - they are the stars of the show, they may, or may not, allow you to do what you want to do, they are not particularly fast or responsive, and they consume more system resources than just about any other application. Since it is those desktops what the Linux community is pushing to compete against Windows and Mac, I am only too glad that they are not making any significant headway in that undertaking.

Am I the only one around here...

[w1z7ard]

who still loves KDE and thinks this is great news?

Please not another new desktop search

[Gavagai80]

First thing I have to do after installing KDE is kill the baloo semantic desktop search indexer to stop it from using 100% of the CPU.

Re:Whoopie!

[Ash-Fox]

TRY WRITING SOMETHING THAT LETS US USERS DO SOME USEFUL WORK.

Sounds like a great idea, when is your first release?

Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING

Re:KDE=bloated pig with bad lipstick

[Grishnakh]

KDE4 is still maintained for a long time, very stable and usable. Why not just keep using that?

Because you have to use whatever your chosen distro decides to ship with and maintain. Putting your own DE on a distro isn't that easy usually, and ends up with rough edges. All the distros seem to have finally switched to KDE5 (Mint just now switched, with the recently-released Mint 18 KDE Edition). If I have to go to extra trouble to use KDE4, I might as well just jump ship and use XCFE, since there's distros that feature that instead.