KDE Plasma 5.8.4 is now available, the fourth maintenance update a KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS graphical environment that will enjoy support until April 2018. The new version has arrived three weeks after v5.8.3 and comes with the main objective of improving the stability, security and reliability of one of the most visually attractive and customizable graphical environments that exist in Linux.
El launch took place yesterday, November 22, so at this time it should already be available in the stable repositories of any Linux distribution that uses Plasma as a graphical environment. As the KDE developers say, «today's release is a bug fix update for KDE Plasma 5, version 5.8.4. Plasma 5.8 was released in October with many refinement features and new modules to complete the desktop experience. This release adds three valid weeks of new translations and fixes from contributors. Bug fixes are usually small but important«.
KDE Plasma 5.8.5 is coming December 27
Among the latests Moravia's compositions fixes including KDE Plasma 5.8.4 we have various bugs reported by users present in v5.8.3 or earlier with Breeze, Plasma Discover, Plasma Addons, KWayland-integration, Oxygen, Plasma Desktop, Plasma SDK, Plasma Workspace, and KWin components.
Yet there will be another Plasma update this year, as the KDE Plasma 5.8.5 LTS release is scheduled for two days after Christmas, that is, December 27, 2016. Afterwards, the KDE developers will get down to business to prepare for the release of the v5.9, a version that should arrive around January 31st.
For users who prefer to jump from LTS version to LTS version, the February 21, 2017 v5.8.6 will arrive, on May 23 the v5.8.7 and on October 17 the 5.8.8. If I had to give some advice, I think this would be the best option, since Plasma can cause some problems on many computers, and that is the reason why I do not usually use this graphical environment on my laptop although I love it.