At the moment, we have three versions of Kubuntu available: a normal cycle Eoan Ermine (9 months of support) along with two LTS versions, the Bionic Beaver and Xenial Xerus. This also happens in its graphical environment: although the most updated version is Plasma 5.16.5, there is also another LTS version, that of the 5.12 series. Today, KDE Community announced the launch of plasma 5.12.9, which coincides with the latest maintenance update for the graphical environment version that was released more than a year and a half ago.
The previous version of this series was v5.12.8 and it was released six months ago. In all that time, the KDE Community has found and fixed a total of 24 failures collected in this post published on the official KDE website. Mentioned as notable new features are that the Trash applet uses the same shadow settings as the desktop icon, that the level of sharpness of the labels has been improved, or that the multimedia controls on the lock screen are now correctly translated .
Plasma 5.12.9 LTS is the latest version of this series, released a year and a half ago
With Plasma 5.12.9 already as EOL (End Of Life) delivery, KDE says that no more maintenance versions will be released for this series. They will release security patches, as long as they are critical vulnerabilities. To get new features, you will need to upgrade to a more advanced version.
For those who are concerned that there will be no more updates for the 5.12 series, we have to remember that the next LTS version is already scheduled for release. It will be about Plasma 5.18LTS y reach in February 2020. Its developers say that the deadlines fit perfectly so that this version can be used in Kubuntu 20.04 that will be released in mid-April.