Plasma 5.19 coming to Debian
The KDE Plasma desktop is soon getting an update to 5.19, and beta versions are out for testing.
In this release, we have prioritized making Plasma more consistent, correcting and unifying designs of widgets and desktop elements; worked on giving you more control over your desktop by adding configuration options to the System Settings; and improved usability, making Plasma and its components easier to use and an overall more pleasurable experience.
There are lots of new features mentioned in the release announcement, I like in particular the much more usable settings application as well as the new info center.
I have been providing builds of KDE related packages since quite some time now, see everything posted under the KDE tag. In the last days I have prepared Debian packages for Plasma 5.18.90 on OBS, for now only targeting Debian/sid and amd64 architecture.
These packages require Qt 5.14, which is only available in the experimental suite, and there is no way to simply update to Qt 5.14 since all Qt related packages need to be recompiled. So as long as Qt 5.14 doesn’t hit unstable, I cannot really run these packages on my main machine, but I tried a clean Debian virtual machine installing only Plasma 5.18.90 and depending packages, plus some more for a pleasant desktop experience. This worked out quite well, the VM runs Plasma 5.18.90.
I don’t have 3D running on the VM, so I cannot really check all the nice new effects, but I am sure on my main system they would work.
Well, bottom line, as soon as we have Qt 5.14 in Debian/unstable, we are also ready for Plasma 5.19!
I came across some links to the work you were doing getting KDE onto Debian, but have not yet tried to install the packages you have created. The primary reason for this is there seems to be a problem with Virtualbox. I’ve tried Debian testing and sid as well as the latest version of Kubuntu, and each has a problem running virtualbox (I’ve also run into problems with OpenAL sound). Any insight regarding these issues, or when we might see 5.18 in testing?
I don’t know about VirtualBox, I always use KVM/virtsh for VMs. Concerning 5.18 for testing – I sent merge requests to the Debian packaging team and try to help them sort that out, but it might take a while until official packages arrive.
Thanks for the reply. Sorry I’m late responding. I thought I’d receive notification of a response via email but instead received a copy of another topic you posted to your blog. Just happened to re-open this link and saw your response.
I really appreciate your work on this, even though it seems the Debian team doesn’t. I really, really don’t understand why KDE doesn’t receive more Debian support. It SHOULD be their default desktop, since it’s clearly the best DE available, and since so few other distros package it as the default.
There also seems to be some issue with Virtualbox. It’s no longer even listed as a package in Buster. I have it working on a testing/sid mismash on my laptop, but haven’t been able to get it working otherwise.
Anyway, like I said, thanks for the response and keep up the good work!
At least recently the KDE team finally moved a bit, but redoing all the work and ignoring my 200+ merge requests. I also have the feeling that the team is primarily good in fending off new contributors. Anyway, as soon as at 5.14 is in Debian unstable I will prepare packages of Plasma 5.19 at OBS, let the Debian packages rot away in 2 year old versions. I cannot do more then present the work done on a silver platter 😉
I’m really surprised to hear that about the Debian team. I’ve been using Debian for more than 10 years and used to follow their newsletters. They always seemed like a welcoming community with out reach efforts etc. Perhaps the problem is limited to the KDE folks? In any case, really sorry to hear that. I’ve always thought that Debian and KDE would make a perfect match. Power to the user so to speak. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
My comment was not about the whole of the Debian community, which is normally welcoming (with some exceptions), but about the KDE packaging team in Debian.