KDE Plasma 5.1 Now In Beta

[Sho_]

Note there's much more new stuff coming in 5.1 -- the promo effort will only really gear up for the final, so the beta announcement is a little bare. Since you folks are used to the nitty-gritty you might want to check out this mailing list thread for developers sending in various bits:

http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2014-September/035902.html

It's been an amazingly productive 2.5 months overall, lots of stuff getting done and getting better.

[TheBlackCat]

Gee do I hate endless renaming and repackaging of the same old concepts for PR purposes.

I would agree with you if this was just for PR purposes (as it was with KDE SC). But in this case it isn't, KDE has fundamentally changed how it is structured, how it is packaged, how it is released. The old terms won't work when everything has its own separate release schedule, and is intentionally organized to not release at the same time.

[Sho_]

The renaming was done for PR purposes, but PR purposes aren't irrelevant. Our community has grown more diverse over time, and the old naming didn't serve all of their activities any longer. That was a real problem for people contributing hard work to our community, and it's important that they're happy - they get the work done. It's also about making it easier get new people involved.

App devs caring about their users on Gnome or Windows (which is completely fine; every time we deliver value to users, we win) ran into trouble with "KDE apps" being tied to the desktop environment in the public perception, efforts to make alternate UI shells for other form factors ran into trouble with even explaining their existence, we wanted more developers to use our library stack but had trouble communicating the breadth of platforms they support, and so on ...

The new model is pretty simple:

* There's KDE Frameworks, which is a set of libraries building on Qt that are very useful in making apps and workspace shells for a variety of platforms.

* There's KDE Plasma, which is a wing of the KDE community building workspace shells on top of KDE Frameworks, such as Plasma Desktop.

* There's KDE Applications, which is a set of applications built on KDE Frameworks that work nicely on Plasma workspaces and increasingly other platforms.

[darkbasic]

Apparently they are so dumb to require unrelease kde frameworks 5.3 for plasma 5.1 beta

[darkbasic]

Apparently they are so dumb to require unrelease kde frameworks 5.3 for plasma 5.1 beta

Please note that I didn't meant to be offensive, I was simply frustrated for losing so much time compiling the wrong framework

[pumrel]

The renaming was done for PR purposes, but PR purposes aren't irrelevant. Our community has grown more diverse over time, and the old naming didn't serve all of their activities any longer. That was a real problem for people contributing hard work to our community, and it's important that they're happy - they get the work done. It's also about making it easier get new people involved.

App devs caring about their users on Gnome or Windows (which is completely fine; every time we deliver value to users, we win) ran into trouble with "KDE apps" being tied to the desktop environment in the public perception, efforts to make alternate UI shells for other form factors ran into trouble with even explaining their existence, we wanted more developers to use our library stack but had trouble communicating the breadth of platforms they support, and so on ...

The new model is pretty simple:

* There's KDE Frameworks, which is a set of libraries building on Qt that are very useful in making apps and workspace shells for a variety of platforms.

* There's KDE Plasma, which is a wing of the KDE community building workspace shells on top of KDE Frameworks, such as Plasma Desktop.

* There's KDE Applications, which is a set of applications built on KDE Frameworks that work nicely on Plasma workspaces and increasingly other platforms.

So if I understand it correctly, in the future, distros that have been including KDE with a certain version number, like 4.13, will have to state the version number of KDE frameworks, KDE plasma and KDE apps? Like now we have Kubuntu with, say, KDE 4.13, but then we'll have Kubuntu with KDE Frameworks 5.2, KDE Plasma 5.1 and KDE Apps 5.0? That's a bit confusing for the users. How can they know what to expect?

[valeriodean]

Apparently they are so dumb to require unrelease kde frameworks 5.3 for plasma 5.1 beta

And the problem is?
KDE Framework 5.3 will be released on October 9th, where the Plasma 5.1 will be released on Oct 14th.

[grndzro]

KDE has been stupid. They should have been developing wayland ever since 4.6 came out.
4.6 works well and is stable. They should have ended with 4.6 and not gone on to 4.7.
Gnome3, Cinnamon, E19 will be widely adopted with Wayland and likely several versions updated by the time a 1/2 baked buggy as hell KDE Wayland is released.
KDE will never catch up.

[TheBlackCat]

Apparently they are so dumb to require unrelease kde frameworks 5.3 for plasma 5.1 beta

So...unreleased software depends on unreleased software?

[darkbasic]

And the problem is?
KDE Framework 5.3 will be released on October 9th, where the Plasma 5.1 will be released on Oct 14th.

So...unreleased software depends on unreleased software?

The problem is released software (plasma 5.0.95 aka 5.1 beta) depends on unreleased software (kde frameworks 5.3, live only).