14 DAY TRIAL // Neofytos Kolokotronis was more than happy to announce that his Arch Linux-based Chakra GNU/Linux distribution will finally make the switch from the old-school KDE4 desktop environment to KDE Plasma 5.
According to Mr. Kolokotronis, the latest version of the KDE Plasma 5 next-generation desktop environment will be used as the default user interface for all users of the Chakra GNU/Linux rolling release distribution.
The switch to KDE Plasma 5.4.2 will be made in a few days from the moment of writing this article, most probably this coming weekend, so all Chakra GNU/Linux users are urged to make a backup of their important files before applying the major update.
"We are excited to announce that in a couple of days Chakra will be switching to Plasma 5 developed by KDE for the default desktop environment," said Neofytos Kolokotronis. "With this move, Plasma 5 related packages will replace the current kde-workspace group of packages in our repositories."
New Chakra GNU/Linux Live ISO image coming soon
We have to admit that upgrading the KDE4 desktop environment to KDE Plasma 5 is not an easy task, as some issues might occur after the upgrade operation, including incompatibilities with certain applications and GNU/Linux technologies.
However, the Chakra GNU/Linux developers are very confident that the entire switch to KDE Plasma 5 will go as smoothly as possible for all users, especially considering the fact that most of KDE's apps and other third-party ones have now been ported to the Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5 technologies.
In the coming days, we will write another article to inform all Chakra GNU/Linux users about the steps they need to take to perform the switch to the KDE Plasma 5 desktop environment. Anyway, in case things go wrong, there will be a new Chakra GNU/Linux Live ISO image available for download as well.