KDE Plasma abandons long-term support versions
At the latest KDE Plasma Sprint event in Graz, the developers decided to discontinue the long-term support version.
The KDE Plasma 6.3 desktop has slightly translucent desktop widgets.
(Image: KDE)
Recently, the KDE Plasma developers met in Austria, more precisely in Graz, to hold a "Sprint" event. There they discussed important topics and did a lot of programming. One important result from Graz: Long-term support is now coming to an abrupt end.
KDE developer Nate Graham has now reported on the KDE Plasma LTS discontinuation in his blog. "It's no secret that our Plasma LTS ('Long-Term Support') product isn't great. It just means that we backport bug fixes longer than usual – usually even without testing them, since no Plasma developer likes to use or test old development branches," Graham writes.
"LTS" means many different things
In addition, there are no associated LTS counterparts for the frameworks or Gear apps, which leaves "a lot of holes in the LTS umbrella". In addition, "LTS" has a different meaning for different people. Many use a broad definition of the term, which creates an expectation of stability that is impossible to meet.
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"Our conclusion was that the rather limited nature of the product did not meet anyone's expectations, so we decided not to continue it. Instead, we're extending the support period of normal Plasma releases a little by adding an additional bug fix release, increasing the number from five to six," explains Graham. "As part of this, we've also touched on the subject of going from three Plasma releases a year down to two, with a much longer bugfix period. Effectively, this would make each Plasma release a sort of #mini-LTS release, and we would align them with the two releases a year of Kubuntu and Fedora," he continues.
The topic was postponed at the last Akademy event until all KDE issues have been resolved on the "Wayland known significant issues" wiki page. During the programming sprint, the developers took a closer look and realized that the list was significantly shorter than last year – and that most entries indicated progress or nearing completion. The programmers therefore want to review the topic again in about four months at the next Academy.
(dmk)
