14 DAY TRIAL // The Kubuntu team proudly announced today, January 5, 2017, the general availability of KDE's Plasma 5.8.5 desktop on the backports repositories of the Kubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) and Kubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating systems.
This exciting announcement comes almost one month after users were invited to test drive the latest KDE Plasma 5.8.5 LTS desktop environment on their Kubuntu or Ubuntu installations by using the Backports Landing testing repository, as reported right here on Softpedia.
But the wait is now finally over, and you can update your KDE Plasma 5 environment to the KDE Plasma 5.8.5 bugfix release announced in December 2016, which attempts to address over 50 issues across many of the desktop's components. Follow the instructions below to install KDE Plasma 5.8.5 LTS on Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Linux Mint KDE.
"Plasma 5.8.5 brings bug-fixes and translations from the month of December, thanks to the hard work of the Plasma team and the KDE Translation team," reads today's announcement. "To update, use the Software Repository Guide to add the following repository to your software sources list: ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports"
Here's how to install KDE Plasma 5.8.5 LTS on Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Linux Mint KDE
If you're using either Kubuntu 16.04 LTS, Kubuntu 16.10, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Ubuntu 16.10, or Linux Mint 18 KDE, you can upgrade the KDE Plasma 5, KDE Applications, and KDE Frameworks 5 components to the latest versions provided by the Kubuntu team in their Kubuntu Backports PPA by simply running the following two commands in your favorite Terminal app.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade
Once you do that and your system is upgraded to the latest KDE Plasma 5.8.5 LTS release, we recommend that you reboot your computer. On the other hand, if you're running the Linux Mint 18 KDE "Sarah" operating system, which is based on Kubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), you should follow the next instructions provided by Clement Lefebvre to update the KDE Plasma 5 desktop.
Open the “Software Sources” tool
Click on the “PPA” tab
Click on the “Add a PPA” button
Enter “ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports-landing“
Validate and click the “Refresh the cache” button