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KDE Plasma 5

The KDE Plasma 5 desktop
Developer(s)	KDE
Initial release	15 July 2014; 4 years ago (2014-07-15)[1]
Stable release	5.13.4 (31 July 2018; 26 days ago (2018-07-31)) [±][2]
Preview release	5.12 Beta (15 January 2018; 7 months ago (2018-01-15)) [±][3]
Repository	git://anongit.kde.org/kdesrc-build
Written in	C++, QML
Operating system	Linux, Unix-like
Platform	KDE
Type	Graphical shell Widget engine Linux on the desktop
License	GNU Lesser General Public License
Website	www.kde.org/plasma-desktop

KDE Plasma 5 is the fifth and current generation of the desktop environment created by KDE primarily for Linux systems. KDE Plasma 5 is the successor of KDE Plasma 4 and was initially released on 15 July 2014.^[1][4][5] It includes a new default theme, known as "Breeze", as well as increased convergence across different devices. The graphical interface was fully migrated to QML, which uses OpenGL for hardware acceleration, which resulted in better performance and reduced power consumption.^[1][6]

Overview

KDE's mascot Konqi and Plasma desktop.

Software architecture

KDE Plasma 5 is built using Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5,^[7] predominantly plasma-framework.^[8]

It improves support for HiDPI displays and ships a converged graphical shell, able to modify the graphical shell according to the device in use. 5.0 also includes a new default theme, dubbed Breeze. Changes under the hood include the migration to a new, fully hardware-accelerated graphics stack centered on an OpenGL(ES)-based scene graph (canvas).
Plasma 5 completes the migration of KDE Plasma 4 to QtQuick. Qt 5's QtQuick 2 uses a hardware-accelerated OpenGL(ES) scenegraph to compose and render graphics on the screen, which allows for the offloading of computationally expensive graphics rendering tasks onto the GPU, which frees up resources on the system's main CPU, and is faster and more power efficient.^[1]

Windowing systems

KDE Plasma 5 uses the X Window System, but support for Wayland is under development.^[1] Initial support for Wayland was made available in the 5.4 release.^[9] Stable support for a basic Wayland session was provided in the 5.5 release (December 2015).^[10]

Development

Since the split of the KDE Software Compilation into KDE Plasma, KDE Frameworks and KDE Applications, each subproject can develop at its own pace.^[11] KDE Plasma 5 is on its own release schedule, with feature releases every three months, and bugfix releases in the intervening months.

Features

• Krunner - Search feature with several available plugins. In addition to quick launching apps, it searches files and folders, and performs numerous other tasks such as foreign currency conversion and measurement conversion. It also functions as a calculator.^[12]


• Activities - "virtual desktops", which have their own layouts and wallpapers. They can be named and navigated through the Activities menu.


• Customize desktops, layouts and panels on multiple monitors


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  Widgets, called "Plasmoids", can be added to the panel or desktop


• 
  Dolphin file manager - bulk rename files, can be customized through "service menus" that add new functions to the context menu^[13]


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  Session Management


• Spectacle - for making screenshots
  

Plasma Mobile

Plasma Mobile

Play media
Developer(s)	KDE, Blue Systems
Preview release	2016-10-25 / 25 October 2016; 21 months ago (2016-10-25)[14]
Repository	git://anongit.kde.org/kdesrc-build
Written in	C++, QML
Operating system	Linux
License	GPLv2
Website	plasma-mobile.org

Plasma Mobile is a Plasma variant for smartphones.^[15]

After Plasma Active sponsor Coherent Theory (under the Make·Play·Live brand)^[16][17] had to give up their ambitions to release a tablet computer,^[18]Blue Systems emerged as new sponsor and shifted the focus of Plasma's handheld work towards smartphones.^[19][20]

The official announcement of the new formfactor interface was on 25 July 2015 at Akademy, accompanied by a working prototype running on a Nexus 5.^[15] Plasma Mobile runs on Wayland and it is compatible with Ubuntu Touch applications^[19] and eventually Android applications^[21][22] via KDE's Shashlik project – also sponsored by Blue Systems^[23][24], or Anbox.

It is also available for the Nexus 5 and Nexus 5X,^[25] as well as supported devices on postmarketOS.

History

The first Technology Preview of Plasma 5 (at that time called Plasma 2) was released on 13 December 2013.^[26] On 15 July 2014 the first release version – Plasma 5.0 – saw the light of day.^[1]
In spring 2015, Plasma 5 replaced Plasma 4 in many popular distributions, such as Fedora 22,^[27]Kubuntu 15.04,^[28] and openSUSE Tumbleweed.^[29]

Releases

Feature releases are released every four months (up to 5.8 every three months) and bugfix releases in the intervening months.^[11]

Gallery

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  The default lock screen of Plasma 5.
  

  
  

  
  


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  Plasma 5.0 showing KRunner and display management.
  

  
  

  
  


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  Power management and keyboard brightness OSD.
  

  
  

  
  


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  Shutdown screen of Plasma 5.
  

  
  

  
  


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  First Technology Preview of Plasma 5.
  

  
  

  
  

References

External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Using KDE

Wikimedia Commons has media related to KDE 5.

• Official website


• Plasma user wiki


• Plasma developer wiki