Next Plasma LTS and openSUSE

[Aleix Pol]

On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 1:55 PM, Luca Beltrame <lbeltrame at kde.org> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> this is basically the same discussion as already took place for 5.8.
>
> According to distrowatch, it looks very much like we're currently the _only_
> remaining Top 10 distro with KDE (Plasma+Apps) installed and used by default.
> Not only has Ubuntu switched to GNOME, for openSUSE there's currently also a
> major fork in the road happening next:
>
> - openSUSE Tumbleweed will likely switch to having no default at all
>   (user has to choose one)
> - openSUSE Leap _may_ switch to GNOME as it is the desktop in SUSE Linux
>   Enterprise. The argument here is that SUSE has a desktop team that is paid
>   to fix bugs, while this is not the case for the community-maintained KDE
>   packages.
>
> It's obvious that this switch must not happen for various political reasons:
> - GNOME becomes the de-facto standard desktop (Fedora, Ubuntu, openSUSE)
> - This headline: "openSUSE switches default desktop after 10+ years, KDE not
> viable?"
> - openSUSE KDE users might think that the focus shifted away
>
> The only chance I can see avoiding the switch is by delivering a flawless
> experience for the next major release, which will be released roughly this
> time next year. So it would be perfect to have a 5.12 (?) LTS by then. The way
> the schedule aligned for Leap 42.2 with Plasma 5.8.2 was perfect, thanks for
> that again!
>
> Additionally, it would be great to have an Applications LTS as well, which
> would make a faster feature-release cycle alongside a slower LTS cycle
> possible.
>
> I'm aware that this is an awful situation to be in, but I hope that we can
> figure something out...

Hi Luca,
Thanks for reaching out!

Clearly having an LTS release doesn't cut it for openSUSE, as we
already did that last time and for the next release we're receiving
yet another e-mail like the house is on fire. I think it would be
healthy to release a new LTS by next year anyway, and it seems to
align with what we have over here:
https://community.kde.org/Schedules/Plasma_5

Now the interesting conversation would be how can we work better.
- Which parts from 5.8 have worked well?
- Which parts from 5.8 haven't worked well?
- Do you have the feeling that your feedback is acted on?
- Where are the problems we should be concerned with?

Personally, with my Discover hat on, I have seen very little feedback
from opensuse and that worries me:
https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?product=Discover&query_format=advanced&rep_platform=openSUSE%20RPMs

Aleix