What's new in Plasma 5.12 LTS?

[Ludwig Nussel]

Hi,

As you might know, openSUSE Leap uses KDE as default desktop and I
intend to keep it that way. The LTS releases are crucial for that so
I really appreciate having them. Leap 42, starting from .2 contained
Plasma 5.8 LTS. Now the successor Leap 15 which is the new major
version currently in beta phase will include Plasma 5.12 LTS.

I wanted to ask the openSUSE marketing team to write some featured
article about 5.12 and Leap 15 to promote both, especially since we
now also have Leap 15 Live images¹ to make testing easy (to be
announced soon).

Leap, having SUSE Linux Enterprise as base is slow moving and has a
primarily conservative user base. Means more professional users that
may make a living out of it. They only update when they need to, or
see value that outweigh the costs.
So we need some convincing arguments as to why Leap 15 is worth the
hassle of upgrading. Plasma 5.12 as the default has a flagship role
there as it's one of the most visible aspects.
We also have hardware vendors that preload Leap on their Laptops.
I'd love to have some arguments as to why Leap 15 is worth investing
in adjusting the preload images rather than continuing with the 42
ones. And in KDE's interest we need some arguments why they should
preload with KDE rather than GNOME.

Looking at the Plasma 5.12 upstream announcement² I see speed
improvements mentioned. That is of course always a good argument but
then everyone plays that card as the opposite would be hardly
positive :-) Also, wayland support. Ok, maybe interesting for Geeks.
But then the feature list has e.g

* The weather applet can now show the temperature next to the weather status icon on the panel
* Clock widget's text is now sized more appropriately
* Windows shadows are horizontally centered and larger by default

I hope we all agree that this is nothing to write home about.

So seriously, what's really in Plasma 5.12 that makes everyone want
to go through the hassle of upgrading or try out KDE in the first
place?
Maybe some cool things are not even new but still worth mentioning
as they (still) stand out from the competition?

cu
Ludwig

[1] http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/15.0/live/
[2] https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.12.0.php

-- 
  (o_   Ludwig Nussel
  //\
  V_/_  http://www.suse.com/
SUSE Linux GmbH, GF: Felix Imendörffer, Jane Smithard,
Graham Norton, HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg)