Install KDE Plasma 5.9 in Ubuntu 16.10/Linux Mint 18, Fedora 23/25 and OpenSUSE

KDE is a well-known desktop environment for the Unix-Like systems designed for users who wants to have a nice desktop environment for their machines, It is one of the most used desktop interfaces out there.

In the past few years, a lot of work has been geared towards improving KDE desktop, with the latest stable release KDE Plasma 5 desktop series coming with some amazing features and bringing many improvements to the original task manager, KRunner, including Wayland support which came around in Plasma 5 and activities as well, plus a more refined look and feel.

KDE Plasma 5 Features

There is a lot of new features in KDE Plasma 5, here’s a list of the most important new features.

1. KDE 5 applications were rewritten using Qt 5; the next generation of the famous Qt library to design graphical interfaces, that means that KDE 5 apps will be faster than KDE 4 beside a better usage of GPU from KDE 5 applications.
2. Completely new look for KDE 5 Plasma, with the new slicker plasma theme, KDE 5 Plasma is much more beautiful than KDE 4.x with the new flat design, beside the nice look, the “slicker” theme is lighter than the default theme for KDE.
3. The Start menu for KDE 5 Plasma has been redesigned and notifications area has also been redesigned, less popup windows providing a better user experience to access the notifications.
4. The lockscreen window is also redesigned with a better login interface.
5. Smoother performance, KDE 5 Plasma applications are rendered up on the top of the OpenGL scenegraph which means that KDE 5 programs has the priority when being rendered beside other process.
6. Hardware-acceleration migration is now complete, this means that Plasma 5 rendering will be faster now because of the fully-usage for the GPU.
7. A nice set of new wallpapers, will look perfectly on the default theme.
8. Many other features which you will explore by your own.

On January 31 2017, the makers of KDE released yet another Plasma feature update, Plasma 5.9. It ships in with several exciting new features and improvements, bringing a classic feel to your desktop. However, the developers will continue to do more work towards improving Plasma 5.8 LTS by offering regular bugfixes.

What’s New in KDE Plasma 5.9

Below are the new features in KDE Plasma 5.9:

1. Interactive previews have been added to notifications. You can notice this when you take a screenshot using Spectacle’s global keyboard shortcuts (Shift+Print Scr), do not waste time closing the app, simply drag the resulting file from the notification popup directly into a chat window, an email composer or a web browser form and more.
2. Supports changing of the icon, label text, working directory, and other properties of a icon widget on your desktop.
3. Supports switching between windows in Task Manager using Meta + number shortcuts for heavy multi-tasking purposes.
4. The Quick Launch applet now supports jump list actions, bringing it to feature parity with the other launchers.
5. Improved look and feel to Plasma apps such as scroll bars and more.
6. Global Menus, an old feature in KDE has also returned, which separates the menu bar from the application window.
7. Task Manager tooltips have been redesigned to provide more information while being significantly more compact.
8. Now supports a new network configuration module in system settings, using QML.
9. Additionally, it brings more improvements to Wayland such as functionality to take screenshots or use a color picker, borderless maximized windows. Pointers can now be confined by apps, supports gestures and more.

Here are some official video which shows the most important changes in KDE Plasma 5.9.

Watch Plasma 5.9 in Action

Installation of KDE Plasma 5.9 in Linux

First of all, you have to know that this is the ninth update to Plasma 5, versioned 5.9, which was released on January 31 2017 with many new feature enhancements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

Important: KDE Plasma 5.9 is not yet packaged in repositories of the main stream Linux distributions, therefore, we will show you how to install or upgrade to KDE Plasma 5.8.5.

Anyway, if you want to install Plasma 5.8.5 on Ubuntu/Kubuntu 16.10/16.04 and Linux Mint 18, you have to use Kubuntu Backports PPA repository on the top of existing installations.

Install KDE Plasma On Ubuntu/Kubuntu 16.10/16.04 and Linux Mint 18

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports

After running above command, it will ask you to enter your password and hit Enter key to continue to add Kubuntu Backports PPA repository on your system.

After adding PPA, run the following commands to update your existing package database.

Note: If you already have Plasma installed, these commands will also upgrade it to a latest available version.

# sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Now install KDE Plasma 5.8.5 using following one single command in your system.

$ sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Please note during installation, it will ask you to configure sddm login manager, click OK and select the ‘lightdm’ login manager as default.

Once the installation process is completed, make sure to restart your system and select Plasma Desktop and enter password to login into KDE Plasma 5.8.5 desktop environment.

Install KDE Plasma on Debian

$ sudo tasksel install kde-desktop

Install KDE Plasma On OpenSUSE

For OpenSUSE, latest version of KDE Plasma available from repository for your system using these commands as a root.

$ sudo zypper in -t pattern kde kde_plasma

Install KDE Plasma On Fedora 23-25

For Fedora systems, new KDE plasma updates are available from the default repositories, make sure to keep your Fedora installation up-to-date, in order to install most recent version of KDE Plasma as shown.

$ sudo dnf update
$ sudo dnf install @kde-desktop

Install KDE Plasma On RHEL/CentOS 7

# yum groupinstall "KDE Plasma Workspaces"

For Arch Linux, packages are available to download from the official extra repository, activate it and enjoy.

KDE Plasma 5.8.5 Screenshot Tour

I hope that everything has worked fine, you can now enjoy KDE Plasma 5.8.5 on your desktop.

That’s all, once Plasma 5.9 is packaged in the official repositories and ready for installation, we will bring you the necessary instructions for the different distributions, until then, stay connected to Tecmint.

In case of any queries or additional information you want to provide to us, you can use the comment section below to give us a feedback.

Reference Links

KDE Plasma 5 Homepage

Have you tested KDE Plasma 5 on your Linux system? How did you find it?. Please post your thoughts about KDE desktop using our comment section below.