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 It was originally made to look like the Common Desktop Environment from 1993.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