Developers are still working on the switch

Apr 22, 2015 12:33 GMT  ·  By

Chakra Linux is a distribution specially built to take advantage of KDE and the Plasma desktop, but the project has been lagging a little behind the KDE project. The developers of the OS have rectified some of the issues with the release of some interesting updates.

The Chakra Euler series received a third maintenance release back in March, but as some users have noticed, the devs chose to stick with the old KDE Application 14.12.2, kdelibs 4.14.5, and kde-workspace 4.11.16. On the other hand, KDE Frameworks 5 was implemented, but without the Plasma desktop, which still hasn't been added.

Chakra uses a customized desktop, and this might be the reason why the developers need more time to transition to the next-gen Plasma desktop that is slowly being adopted by many of the KDE-based operating systems out there. The fact that the developers have made these updates is a good indication that they are not far from making the switch.

Chakra users get lots of updated packages

As you can imagine, not everything in the Chakra world is related to the KDE project, and there are plenty of other packages that need to be upgraded, as the proprietary drivers or the Linux kernel.

"KDE's first release of its 15.04 series of Applications and Frameworks 5.9.0 are now available to all Chakra users. With this release, kde-workspace has also been updated to version 4.11.18 and kdelibs to 4.14.7. Have in mind that the applications that have been ported to Frameworks 5 will not be updated but remain at their previous versions, as they are being prepared to be included in the upcoming Plasma5 switch," is noted on the official website.

Also, the Linux kernel has been upgraded to version 3.19.4, Nvidia 346.59 drivers are now available in the repos, VLC has been upgraded to version 2.2.1, and numerous other packages have been updated as well.

A complete list of new features and updates can be found in the official announcement. You can download Chakra Linux 2015.03 right now from Softpedia and upgrade afterwards to get all the latest packages.