Many distributions are announcing big changes and removals of packages from their repositories, something natural and normal within a live project. And Ubuntu is no exception.
It has recently been reported that Qt4 libraries will be removed from the official Ubuntu repositories. A decision that will affect a large part of Ubuntu users, at least those who still use old programs from the KDE Project or an old version of Plasma. The Qt4 libraries have become obsolete, currently being some libraries that devour the resources of the operating system. Its replacement, the Qt5 libraries have taken over most of the programs and software that exist and that use Qt libraries so many distributions are removing them from their repositories. Ubuntu will eliminate them during this 2018 although it will not be with the LTS version but it will be with Ubuntu 18.10 when we no longer see these libraries.
Ubuntu joins other distributions that also remove Qt4 libraries from their repositories
Currently, some of them are being eliminated to lighten not only the operation of certain desktops but also the indexing of the repositories. The number of packages that use Qt4 libraries and that have been removed so far it amounts to 330 packages, a figure that will increase over the next few weeks.
If we are affected by this situation, the only solution is to update the operating system and programs little by little so that in October, the transition is not problematic. However, if we have the latest version of Kubuntu or Plasma, deleting these libraries will not affect us in the least.
In any case, despite this, if for some strange reason we must use a program that needs it, always we can use Ubuntu 18.04 LTS as a version of Ubuntu or Kubuntu and this will give us more time to continue using the Qt4 libraries.