14 DAY TRIAL // Clive Johnston from the Kubuntu team announced recently that the latest KDE Plasma 5.9.3 desktop environment landed in the software repositories of the upcoming Kubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) operating system.
Until a few days ago, the KDE Plasma 5.9.3 packages were lying in the "proposed" repos of Kubuntu 17.04, but they were finally pushed to the main channel for early adopters to be able to update their installations. KDE Plasma 5.9.3 is the third maintenance update to the short-lived KDE Plasma 5.9 desktop environment.
Kubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) is launching next month on April 13, and it now looks like it will ship with the KDE Plasma 5.9 desktop by default. The KDE Plasma 5.9.4 point release is hitting the streets on March 21, so that could be the default version included in the final Kubuntu 17.04 Live ISO images.
However, the good news is that one of the Kubuntu developers managed to backport the Folder View desktop mode from the upcoming KDE Plasma 5.10 desktop environment, due for release on May 30, 2017. Therefore, Kubuntu 17.04 will have a brand-new new look, and you can see it right now if you click on the attached screenshot on the right.
"Rik cherry-picked the commit and patched Plasma 5.9.3 which he then uploaded along with a new version of kubuntu-settings," said Clive Johnston in the mailing list announcement. "We have moved kubuntu-settings from bzr to git and removed the patch which allowed the installer icon to be displayed in a folder containment."
KDE Applications 16.12 and KDE Frameworks 5.31.0 also available
Besides the KDE Plasma 5.9.3 packages, users who want to get an early taste of the Kubuntu 17.04 operating system can also install the latest KDE Frameworks 5.31.0 and KDE Applications 16.12 packages, which are now available in the main repositories. As expected, these are also available for Ubuntu 17.04 and any other official flavor.
Unfortunately, both KDE Plasma 5.9 and KDE Applications 16.12 are nearing end of life, so if you're installing Kubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) after its April 13 release, chances are you'll be stuck with these versions and you won't get the KDE Plasma 5.10 and KDE Application 17.04 major updates any time soon, but fingers crossed.
The Final Beta of Kubuntu 17.04 is expected later this month on the 23rd, and it looks like the operating system already ships with some of the latest GNU/Linux technologies, including the Linux 4.10 kernel. Until then, the Kubuntu developers need to polish the new Folder View desktop mode as a few issues need to be resolved.