14 DAY TRIAL // A few moments ago, the KDE project announced the general availability of the first point release of the KDE Plasma 5.9 desktop environment for Linux-based operating systems.
That's right, we're talking about KDE Plasma 5.9.1, the first bugfix release to the latest stable series of the acclaimed and modern desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions. This maintenance update comes only one week after the launch of KDE Plasma 5.9, and it fixes a total of 62 issues discovered or reported by users since then.
"Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 5, versioned 5.9.1. Plasma 5.9 was released in January with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience," reads today's announcement. "This release adds a week's worth of new translations and fixes from KDE's contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important."
According to the changelog, KDE Plasma 5.9.1 patches various bugs or adds under-the-hood improvements to the Breeze, Oxygen, Discover, Plasma Addons, Plasma Desktop, KScreen, Plasma Networkmanager (plasma-nm), Plasma Workspace, Plasma Audio Volume Control, KSSHAskPass, KWin, SDDM KCM, kactivitymanagerd, and libkscreen components.
We recommend all users who are using the KDE Plasma 5.9 desktop environment to update to KDE Plasma 5.9.1 point release as soon as the packages arrive in the stable software repositories of their favorite distros. KDE Plasma 5.9 brought us many improvements, including Global Menus and better Wayland support.
KDE Plasma 5.9.2 to land on Valentine's Day
KDE Plasma 5.9 appears to have a fast release cycle, so expect to see more such point releases soon. The next one, KDE Plasma 5.9.2, is scheduled to land on Valentine's Day (February 14), and the third one, KDE Plasma 5.9.3, is coming at the end of the month, on February 28, 2017.
After that, KDE Plasma 5.9.4 will arrive three weeks later, on March 21, with more bug fixes, and the last one, KDE Plasma 5.9.5, will mark the end of life of the KDE Plasma 5.9 desktop environment on April 25, when developers will concentrate all of their efforts on the next major release, KDE Plasma 5.10, due for release on May 30, 2017.