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KDE Plasma 5 is out..!!

by Praneeth Peiris

Okay, now you know what I’m gonna talk about. I won’t give much of details about the features. I will just tell you how to install and some links to read more.

KDE Plasma 5 Desktop
KDE Plasma 5 Desktop

Impressed??? Let’s install…

Install

Installation is so simple. Just install kf5 and kf5-aids via official repositories.
sudo pacman -S kf5 kf5-aids

And then install the plasma desktop via AUR.
sudo packer -S plasma-desktop

It may a while to build the package.

Alternative installation method is to install from KDE unstable releases.
sudo pacman -S plasma-next

Now logout and select the environment as Plasma and you’re ready to go.

Note

But you may notice there are a very small amount of widgets there. Just be patient for a while, since this is just released.

But network applet is a compulsory one which you can live without. You have to install the new version of plasma-nm via AUR.
sudo packer -S plasma-nm

Features

The most special feature I saw is the smooth rendering of graphics and effects. KDE people surely had put a great effort to optimize that.

If you want to test the effects, there is a new widget called Shader Test. Install it and put it on the desktop to see how smooth those rendering is. 😉

And another noticable change is, Konqueror is the default file browser now, not Dolphin.

I’m not going to talk anymore about this and you better try it out to feel it. If you really need to know more, just follow the below links.

https://dot.kde.org/2014/07/15/plasma-5.0

http://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma5.0-beta2/

https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Packages

EDIT:

Conflict with KDE 4

As for the Arch Wiki “Plasma 5 is not co-installable with KDE 4 Workspace. If you install it you will be prompted to remove kdebase-workspace“. However now I’m using both KDE 4 and KDE 5, since I have ignored to install kwin.

Anyhow, if someone is struggling with this matter, you can install KDE 5 by removing kdebase-workspace. Then you won’t be having kdm anymore, and will need to install another display manager. Arch wiki suggests sddm from AUR instead of kdm.

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20 comments on “KDE Plasma 5 is out..!!”

  • ein4rth , Direct link to comment

    I’m a former Gnome user and I’d like to install KDE Plasma 5. However building KDE parts from AUR sounds a bit too “experimental” for everyday use, so I think I’ll wait for all components to become stabler and available in the official repos…

    I was looking at the release schedule at https://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/Plasma_5 and was wondering which one it supposed to be the final (feature complete) release date?

    Thanks

    • Praneeth Nilanga Peiris , Direct link to comment

      Thanks for the concern..
      I did build it from AUR and didn’t find any significant errors or lags. Of course there is a lack of features such as widgets. Even I couldn’t find an actual release date. As it seems, v5 is the release and others are beta versions. I’m not quite sure about that.

      But I will keep everyone updated if I found any news. 🙂

  • agrogeek , Direct link to comment

    Running packer with sudo is bad idea because security issues. Run packer as a normal user and after building process it will install the package with sudo pacman -U and will ask you the root password.

    • Praneeth Nilanga Peiris , Direct link to comment

      Yes, there is an issue of using sudo with packer, but I haven’t faced any such problem when installing with packer. Anyhow, it’s more secure to build the package using a normal user and then use sudo pacman -U , but you may have to find the built package in temp folders.

      Anyway, thank you for your idea.

  • Matthew du Toit , Direct link to comment

    After following these instructions, I am no longer able to boot into KDE, because it seems that KDM has been uninstalled. The only way to reinstall KDM would be to install KDM base, but that then causes a dependency conflict. Any advice?

    • Praneeth Nilanga Peiris , Direct link to comment

      Hi,
      Thanks for sharing your experience.

      I myself also installed KD5 while having KDE 4, and now I have both.

      But my assumption is you installed kwin and it removed other dependencies. You need kde-base to run kdm for sure. You can try uninstalling kwin and try again. But I do not guarantee that it would work.

      I will look further and let you know if I find anything. 🙂

    • Praneeth Nilanga Peiris , Direct link to comment

      Hi,

      I hope that I’ve found the remedy. There is a dependency conflict and it’s really hard to avoid. The reason is “Plasma 5 is not coinstallable with KDE 4 Workspace. If you install it you will be prompted to remove kdebase-workspace” as for the Arch Wiki. That’s why kdm is not available anymore. So the solution is to use another Display Manager such as ssdm. ssdm is available in AUR and said to be more compatible with KDE 5, if you like you can try another one like lxdm, gdm etc. See the full list at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/display_manager

      Hope this helps.

  • Krishnan Dasan , Direct link to comment

    I have installed sddm, kf5 and kf5-aids. Now I am trying to install plasma-desktop, plasma-nm, but it says “Dependency `kwayland’ of `plasma-desktop’ does not exist.” Can you tell me why is it so?

    • Praneeth Nilanga Peiris , Direct link to comment

      Hi,
      The reason is that kwayland has a dependency for kwin, and it had a dependency for plasma-desktop. That’s why you’re getting this error. There is an option that you can use another window manager apart from kwin, but I won’t suggest that. if you still want to, you can try installing i3 as mentioned here.

  • Uttaran Dutta , Direct link to comment

    Hey I installed the plasma-next as you suggested, but when I login in sddm there is no plasma/plasma-desktop entry in list …. any pointers thanks

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