Now available on the KDE Neon Developer Unstable Edition

Jan 11, 2017 01:20 GMT  ·  By

Jonathan Riddell is continuing to improve the KDE Neon Linux distribution with the latest Open Source software and GNU/Linux technologies, and he had the pleasure to announce the availability of a new development version of KDE Neon Developer Edition.

Tomorrow, we should be able to get our hands on the Beta release of the upcoming KDE Plasma 5.9 desktop environment, but KDE Neon users can already test drive it if they download the new KDE Neon Developer Unstable Edition operating system, which also switches to the next-generation Wayland display server.

"Plasma is nearing a new release and with 5.9 coming shortly we have the question of should we switch Neon to use Wayland by default for the Developer Unstable edition. To evaluate it I updated the Plasma Wayland ISO and found it pleasingly functional on VirtualBox. Time to install this setup on my real hardware and see what breaks," said Jonathan Riddell.

Users report issues with the new Plasma Wayland ISO

Looking at the comments posted by various users on the developer's announcement, we can't help but notice that many of them are reporting issues when attempting to run the new Plasma Wayland ISO image of KDE Neon Developer Edition. Some are not even able to get past the login screen, others say some things are still missing.

Well, after all, this is an unstable branch of KDE Neon, so you shouldn't expect too much from it, but the conclusion here is that Wayland does not appear to be ready for mainstream just yet when using the KDE Plasma desktop environment, despite the fact that Plasma 5.9 should bring more KWayland improvements.

KDE Plasma 5.9 is hitting the streets at the end of the month, but until then, you're invited to test drive the latest KDE Neon Developer Unstable Edition Plasma Wayland ISO image, which you can download right now from the project's website. Don't forget to report if it works for you or not, on real hardware not a virtual machine.