14 DAY TRIAL // KDE Frameworks 5, the new series that is scheduled to take the place of KDE Applications and Development Platform 4.x, has already landed in Arch Linux.
The first beta for KDE Frameworks 5 has been available for a little over a month, and, as it was to be expected, Arch Linux is the first platform that allows users to test it. It's not like it was impossible to test it before, but integrating it in the repositories helps a lot and offers more users the chance to give it a try.
“Since Beta 2, KF5 packages are co-installable with KDE 4 and for this reason those packages are built with the /usr prefix, not /opt/kf5 as previously on AUR. The only exception here was kactivities: both versions (the KDE 4 version and the KDE Framework one) ship a kactivitymanagerd binary.”
“The packages are part of two groups to simplify installation: kf5 and kf5-aids (PortingAids). Plasma Next packages will (hopefully!) follow in the next days, but they will go in [kde-unstable] instead. Also, their prefix will be /opt/kf5 to allow co-installable,” said Andreas Scarpino, the maintainer of the KDE packages in the Arch repository.
The new KDE Frameworks 5 might not be something to look for, at least not until the Plasma Next package also lands in Arch. It's a little bit different from what is now available in the KDE 4.x branch and it will definitely cause some stir in the community.
In any case, when the final version of KDE Frameworks 5 stable becomes available, more and more Linux distributions will be able to offer it to their users.