14 DAY TRIAL // Today the KDE Project released the fourth of five maintenance updates to its latest and greatest KDE Plasma 5.15 desktop environment series, version 5.15.4.
Coming about three weeks after the third maintenance update, KDE Plasma 5.15.4 is here today with more than three dozen of bug fixes and improvements in an attempt to make the KDE Plasma 5.15 desktop environment series as stable and reliable as possible for all users. This point release adds a total of 39 changes across various components.
Highlights of KDE Plasma 5.15.4 include improvements to the Flatpak and Fwupd (firmware update) backends in the Plasma Discover package manager, better support for the latest Nvidia graphics drivers in the KWin window and composite manager, along with proper support for restoring the current desktop from session.
Plasma NetworkManager (plasma-nm) has been updated as well in this release to better support OpenVPN connections by no longer limiting the reneg-sec property and improving the IPv4 and IPv6 settings by no longer removing the manually configured "route-metric" property.
Last but not least, KDE Plasma 5.15.4 changes Klipper's default behavior to accept images and prevents subpixel font placement in desktop notifications. Monochrome icons in tooltips now look better in System Settings, and the Info Center, plasma-browser-integration, SDDM KCM, Breeze, and drkonqi components received minor improvements.
"Today KDE releases a bugfix update to KDE Plasma 5, versioned 5.15.4. Plasma 5.15 was released in February with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience. This release adds a fortnight's worth of new translations and fixes from KDE's contributors. The bugfixes are typically small but important," reads today's announcement.
KDE Plasma 5.15.5 expected to arrive on May 7th
The fifth and last maintenance update to the KDE Plasma 5.15 desktop environment series is expected to arrive in about five weeks from now, on May 7th, 2019. KDE Plasma 5.15.5 will also mark the end of life of the KDE Plasma 5.15 desktop environment series, which will no longer receive further maintenance updates after May 7th.
Until then, all users of the KDE Plasma 5.15 desktop environment series are urged to update their installations to the KDE Plasma 5.15.4 point release as soon as possible. The KDE Plasma 5.15.4 packages should soon arrive in the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distributions, but you can also compile it from sources.