14 DAY TRIAL // Linux Mint is one of the most used open source operating systems, especially with the Cinnamon and MATE flavors, but the developers also have a few other distros in the works, including a KDE one. It looks like the latest KDE version won't arrive by default too soon.
Linux Mint users will remember that starting with the 17.x branch, developers have decided to base their major releases only on Ubuntu LTS versions. This allows them to provide much better support and to release updates much faster than they normally would. From the looks of it,the team will have kept the old KDE SC in place until Linux Mint 18.x will be released, in 2016.
KDE SC has been split into KDE Frameworks, KDE Applications, and KDE Plasma, and the new components have been implemented in all kinds of distros. The new KDE Plasma 5.x branch has been well received by the community, and it's a big step up from the previous version. It's only natural that some users have started to ask questions about the upgrade for Linux Mint.
Linux Mint with KDE is not evolving just yet
Making such a big change for Linux Mint would be difficult to push just as an update for the 17.x, so the developers are waiting for the 18.x branch to do it. The only problem is that this particular version will land in 2016 after Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will be made available.
"With every release we keep a keen eye on the development of Plasma 5, but I think our role more and more is to bank on mature technology for now, so we're very likely to switch to it for Mint 18 and to keep using KDE 4 until then. With that said you can enable Plasma 5 on top of Mint 17.x via PPA," wrote Clement Lefebvre.
The good news is that users will be able to install it from a PPA, but you can imagine that the support for that version won't be stellar.