It will depend on Qt 5.12 and KDE Frameworks 5.66

Sep 12, 2019 15:10 GMT  ·  By

The KDE Project announced that the next LTS (Long Term Support) series of their acclaimed KDE Plasma desktop environment for Linux-based operation systems will be KDE Plasma 5.18.

The current LTS (Long Term Support) series of the KDE Plasma desktop environment is KDE Plasma 5.12 LTS, which recently got its last scheduled maintenance update, KDE Plasma 5.12.9, which means that it actually reached end of life and will no longer receive point release except only if critical security issues or bugs need to be addressed.

Therefore, the KDE Project talked with various GNU/Linux distribution vendors about which next LTS series of the KDE Plasma desktop environment will suit them, and two of the biggest distros requested that the next long-term supported KDE Plasma series will be KDE Plasma 5.18, which was slated for release early next year.

KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS will be released on February 11th, 2020

While the KDE Plasma 5.17 desktop environment is not out yet, expected to be released later this fall on October 15th, the KDE Project already published the release date of the final KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS desktop environment as February 11th, 2020. The beta version will be available for testing on January 16th, 2020.

Being a long-term supported series, the KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS desktop environment will depend on the Qt 5.12 LTS open-source application framework, as well as the KDE Frameworks 5.66 open-source software suite. However, KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS will also be compatible with the newer Qt 5.13 release to allow more distros to offer it on their archives.

In related news, the KDE Project also published the planned release dates for the KDE Plasma 5.19 and KDE Plasma 5.20 desktop environments, which will hit the streets on June 9th and October 13th respectively. Furthermore, they announced that the next LTS series after KDE Plasma 5.18 LTS will be KDE Plasma 6.0, but no release date was specified.