What's new in Plasma 5.12 LTS?

[Nate Graham]

Since Leap is upgrading from Plasma 5.8 LTS, you should be able to also 
include all the new features from Plasma 5.9, 5.10, and 5.11 as well, right?

There are quite a lot of those listed under "What’s New Since Plasma 5.8 
LTS" at https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.12.0.php

Nate


On 02/22/2018 03:58 AM, Ludwig Nussel wrote:
> 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
>