If you’ve been following iWillFolo for (at least) the past few weeks, you’ve probably noticed many confusing announcements with regards to KDE.
For instance, the following 2 posts both mention that KDE Plasma 5 has already been released: KDE Plasma 5 is Finally Out! , KDE Releases Plasma 5.1 BETA Bringing More New Features…
However the vast majority of Linux distros does not yet incorporates KDE 5 by default to their stable branches, and to add even more to the mystery, non of these posts are showing any new KDE 5 Apps (as opposed to widgets).
So what’s going on here? and where on earth are the new KDE 5 Apps?? It’s highly confusing I agree, hence please allow me to break it down for you.
KDE 5 is Split
KDE new music player
For starters, here’s how a KDE 5 based App should typically look like (see following image), this App is designed according to the VDG (Visual Design Group) principles and is actually being developed as we speak.
I doubt the average user had any chance to play with an App similar to this one as of yet…
So here’s the deal: the thing you should know about KDE 5 is that there’s no more a huge collection of libraries and applications commonly dubbed as the KDE SC (Software Compilation).
Instead, the new KDE 5 has been decided to break the bundle into a few (3) smaller components which are: KDE Frameworks – currently version 5.4 , Plasma Workspaces – V 5.2 and KDE Applications – 4.14.
Whereas the term KDE itself should now represent the people who made it.
Greatly put by KDE’s longtime community member Jos Poortvliet, who suggests a usefull way of perceiving the new terms and the things they are referring to:
“To understand the relation, compare KDE to another organization which creates (among other things) software: Microsoft. Like KDE, they create products and technologies like Office (KDE makes Calligra), Windows (KDE develops Plasma), .NET (KDE releases Frameworks), C# (KDE uses C++). Nobody confuses Microsoft Office with Microsoft 8.1 so this should be easy enough, I hope!”
Jos recent blog post: Where is KDE 5 and when can I use it? (which I highly recommend reading) also goes into great lengths as to explain why the sudden change and, of course, as its title suggests – when will they be available for usage.
Where Are KDE 5 Apps?
The straight answer is: they are currently being developed or ported (from version 4) and probably be available sometime around next year, hopefully, at first quarter, no guarantees though.
The reason these Apps are not out yet, is probably in part due to the lesson learned from latest KDE major version bump which was a bit of a rocky ride, to say the least…
Whether this waiting period will pay off is left for time to say, here’s hoping that it will. In the meanwhile we shall keep track over what’s going on, and be sure to check from time to time, see if there are any news reports regarding the matter.
