KDE Project team has proudly announced its flagship Desktop Environment KDE Plasma 5.7 with greatly improved Wayland windowing system, along with numerous feature improvements including improved workflows, better Kiosk support, New system tray and task manager, and more. The Jump List Actions feature, which is introduced in the previous release, has been now extended to be accessible from KRunner. For those who don't know, Jump List Actions will allow the users to access for a specific tasks within an application. KDE Volume control applet will now allow you to control volume on a per-application basis, and also you can raise the volume levels above 100%.
Also, when there is no hardware keyboard attached, a virtual keyboard will be automatically shown to provide a smooth converged experience to tablets and convertibles. And, when the keyboard is connected back, the virtual keyboard will be disabled automatically. Also, the touchpad can be enabled or disabled through a global shortcut. Another notable change in this release is the agenda view in the Calendar which provides a quick and easily accessible overview of upcoming events, appointments and holidays etc. For more details, refer the KDE Plasma 5.7 release notes.
In this tutorial, we will walk you thorough how to install KDE Plasma 5.7 in Ubuntu 16.04, Fedora 24, and openSUSE 13.2, and Arch Linux.
Install KDE Plasma On Ubuntu / Linux Mint
KDE Plasma 5.7 installation has been tested on Ubuntu 16.04. However, the same steps should work on Ubuntu derivatives such as Linux Mint 18.
First of all, update the Ubuntu system:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Then, add Ubuntu backports repository using command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
Update the repository lists using command:
sudo apt-get update
Finally, run the following command to install the latest KDE plasma DE.
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
During installation, you will be asked to configure the display manager for Plasma DE. Click OK to continue.
In the next wizard, select the default display manager. In my case, I selected "lightdm".
Wait for few moments to complete Plasma DE installation. Oops! I got the following error at the end.
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/kde-config-telepathy-accounts_4%3a15.12.3-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
/var/cache/apt/archives/kaccounts-providers_4%3a15.12.3-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
To fix this, find the conflicted package that causes the problem:
sudo find /var/cache -name "kde-config-telepathy-accounts*"
Sample output:
/var/cache/apt/archives/kde-config-telepathy-accounts_4%3a15.12.3-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
Install it with flag --force-overwrite as shown below:
sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/kde-config-telepathy-accounts_4%3a15.12.3-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
Finally, run the following command to complete KDE plasma installation.
sudo apt-get -f install
Now, reboot the Ubuntu system.From the Log in menu select Plasma DE:
Install KDE Plasma On Fedora
KDE Plasma packages are available in the default repositories starting from Fedora 23. To install Plasma 5.7 DE in Fedora 23 and 24, run the following command as root user:
dnf install @kde-desktop
Install KDE Plasma On CentOS / RHEL / Scientific Linux
To install Plasma 5.7 in RHEL, and its clones like CentOS and Scientific Linux, run the following command as root user:
yum groupinstall "KDE Plasma Workspaces"
Install KDE Plasma On openSUSE
KDE plasma is available in the default repositories in openSUSE 13.1 and 13.2. To install install Plasma 5.7, just run:
sudo zypper in -t pattern kde kde_plasma
Install KDE Plasma On Arch Linux
On rolling releases like Arch Linux and its derivatives, Plasma packages are available in the [extra] repository. Just enable the [extra] repository, and install it using command:
sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S plasma-meta
or
sudo pacman -S plasma
Also, Beta releases are available in the [kde-unstable] repository.
KDE Plasma screenshot tour:
KDE Plasma DE in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
KDE Plasma details
Web browser in KDE
Dolphin file manager
Konsole
As of writing this guide, KDE plasma 5.7 version is not yet updated in the official repositories. Since it is just released we have to few more days to get the latest version. That's all for now. Start using the latest KDE Plasma version on your Linux desktop. If you like this tutorial, share it on your social networks and support Linoxide. Also, subscribe to our newsletter to get daily updates to your inbox.
The post How to Install KDE Plasma 5.7 in Linux Distros appeared first on LinOxide.