14 DAY TRIAL // Now that everyone is enjoying the KDE Plasma 5.6 desktop environment on their GNU/Linux distributions of choice, it is time for KDE devs to concentrate all of their efforts on the new features for the next major version.
Yes, we're talking about KDE Plasma 5.7, for which a preliminary release schedule has been published recently on the project's community wiki, suggesting a release date of Monday, July 5, 2016. But until then, KDE will publish three more maintenance releases for the KDE Plasma 5.6.
Work on KDE Plasma 5.7 will start soon, most probably in the coming days or weeks, and the repository freeze is currently set for June 2, and the final freeze is in effect two weeks later, on June 16, when the first and only Beta build will be available for public testing.
An interesting entry in the KDE Plasma 5.7 release schedule, called "Beta testing day," suggests that KDE is urging the community to come and help test the Beta of the upcoming desktop environment, sometimes around June 19 and 20, but we don't know whether it will be an official event or not.
KDE Plasma 5.7 launches July 5
On July 5, the final release of the KDE Plasma 5.7 desktop environment will be available worldwide, and will be followed closely by the first maintenance build, KDE Plasma 5.7.1, on July 12, and the second one, KDE Plasma 5.7.2, is coming one week later, on July 19, 2016.
After that, the KDE Plasma 5.7.3 update is supposed to land on August 3, followed three weeks later by the KDE Plasma 5.7.4 maintenance release, on August 23. Finally, the last update for the KDE Plasma 5.7 desktop environment, version 5.7.5, is arriving on September 27, 2016. Until then, you should update your KDE Plasma 5.6 desktop to yesterday's 5.6.2 build.