14 DAY TRIAL // The KDE Community has released the Plasma 5.1.0, the first major update to the new desktop that was initially made available a few months ago. This is not just a simple maintenance iteration, but a full-fledged new version with a lot of new features.
KDE developers usually push smaller updates that take care of bugs and other issues, but Plasma 5.1.0 is so much more. You can even say that it's one of the biggest upgrades in a long time for Plasma and it shows the commitment of the devs towards this project.
The new Plasma desktop is still young and it's being updated a lot. Despite the fact that it feels like it comes with a fresh new approach and a refined UI, not all users are looking forward to the day when the KDE SC 4.14.x branch will reach end of life and when the new Plasma and other components will land.
To makes matters even worse, the new systems adopted by KDE with Plasma, Framework, and Applications seem to pose a problem to maintainers. One in particular, from Slackware, has said that he won't upgrade the packages until the KDE devs "get their act together" and synchronize all the projects properly. He even claims that the project is still far from being mature.
Old features make a comeback in Plasma 5
It looks like there is still a lot of room for improvement and the devs have been listening to the community. They decided to bring some of the old features back and added them to the new Plasma, although with a touch of modernity.
"Plasma 5.1 sports a wide variety of improvements, leading to greater stability, better performance and new and improved features. Thanks to the feedback of the community, KDE developers were able to package a large number of fixes and enhancements into this release, among which more complete and higher quality artwork following the new-in-5.0 Breeze style, re-addition of popular features such as the Icon Tasks taskswitcher and improved stability and performance."
"Aside from the visual improvements and the work on features, the focus of this release lies also on stability and performance improvements, with over 180 bugs resolved since 5.0 in the shell alone," said the developers.
Fortunately for the users, the new KDE Plasma update can be found in some repositories, so installing it should not be a problem. You can also download the latest Kubuntu 14.10 Plasma Beta 2 image from Softpedia and upgrade to the current build, which features a very good Plasma integration.
