Plasma has changed a lot in recent years. What best reflects it, or at least someone who has lived it in their flesh, is a server: in 2015-2016, I tried Kubuntu again on my now secondary laptop and I loved its interface and customization possibilities, but it failed me a lot and that made me go back to Ubuntu. This year I tried again, on the same computer ... and I no longer move. In addition, major improvements and a new LTS version are coming: plasma 5.18.
With the release of Plasma 5.16 came interesting news, such as the new notification system (which I would improve by allowing you to go to the app that notifies you by clicking on its notice). The next version will be v5.17, and it will introduce so many new features that it will be impossible to add them all to the same article. On the other hand, we have v5.12, which is the longest supported LTS version, but without the latest features. Plasma 5.18 it will be an LTS release which has already been scheduled for February 2020.
Plasma 5.18 is coming to Kubuntu 20.04
As explained in the mail recently shipped, there are two "big" distributions that have taken an interest in this release. They haven't mentioned which ones, but Kubuntu has already said that the timelines are perfect for it to be included in the Kubuntu 20.04 that will be released in April 2020:
Plasma 5.18 to be released in February 2020 is now scheduled to be an LTS release. https://t.co/psKhaxmflD
This should fit perfectly with Kubuntu 20.04 LTS in April.
- Kubuntu (@kubuntu) September 11, 2019
Plasma 5.18 will be released in February 2020, it is now scheduled to be an LTS release. This should fit perfectly with Kubuntu 20.04 LTS in April.
Other details that they mention in their email:
- It will depend on Qt 5.12.
- Plasma 5.12 will only receive important parts anymore.
- Plasma 6.0 will be developed at the same time as the new LTS version.
Logically, at this time absolutely nothing is known about the news that the version scheduled for February will bring. We will discover them in the coming months and we can install the new version if we use the KDE Backports repository or a system like KDE neon.