14 DAY TRIAL // KDE Frameworks 5 Beta and Plasma Next, the two pieces of software that will eventually replace the current KDE SC paradigm on the desktops, have just landed in the Fedora 20 repository.
The KDE developers have been working on KDE Frameworks 5 and Plasma Next for quite some time, but it's difficult to test it in a real environment, unless you happen to have an Arch Linux system that already has those packages in place.
Fedora is usually shipping with GNOME as the default desktop environment, but that doesn't mean that it can't also have KDE in its repos. In fact, there is a KDE spin of Fedora 20 already available, but it takes a little bit of work to get the latest Beta ready to the users.
“The Fedora KDE SIG brings you all the new and cool stuff from KDE Frameworks and Plasma Next worlds! First, our Copr repository with KDE Frameworks has been updated to 4.99.0 release, so go get it! All frameworks are co-installable with KDE 4, so you can develop against KF5 without needing any special setup.”
“Also KDE Frameworks 5 were approved as feature for Fedora 21, which means that in next Fedora release, we will ship all Frameworks in the Fedora repositories! There are already some packages imported into rawhide, the rest will follow in next weeks,” said Daniel Vrátil from the Fedora Project.
KDE Frameworks has been approved already by the Fedora developers for integration in the upcoming Fedora 21 (Fedora Next), so it's no surprise that they would try to experiment with it. There is no usable version of Fedora 21 right now and it's not known when we'll be able to download one, so the next best thing is to test the new KDE in Fedora 20.
According to Daniel, this version of Fedora 20 comes with Rekonq, Dolphin, System Settings, Baloo, Milou, and a few others and the packages have been built against Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5.
You have to keep in mind that this is not an installable image and it's for testing purposes only. You won't be able to do much with it, except complain about how you don't like the Plasma Next desktop environment, which apparently is now the favorite pastime of the KDE user community.
KDE Frameworks 5 is now under heavy development and it will take some time to be completed, but until then you can test it in this Live environment been provided by the Fedora Project and you can download the ISO from Softpedia.