gentoo-overlay/metadata/news/2016-04-07-kde-plasma5-stable/2016-04-07-kde-plasma5-stable.en.txt

Title: KDE Plasma 5 Upgrade
Author: Michael Palimaka <kensington@gentoo.org>
Content-Type: text/plain
Posted: 2016-04-02
Revision: 1
News-Item-Format: 1.0
Display-If-Installed: kde-base/plasma-workspace

KDE Workspaces 4.11 has reached end of life and is no longer supported
by upstream. It is therefore recommended for all users to upgrade to
KDE Plasma 5.

A detailed upgrade guide is available[1], but in most cases it is enough to
switch to the new desktop/plasma profile, update @world, and
emerge kde-plasma/plasma-meta:

# eselect profile list
# eselect profile set <target>
# emerge --ask --changed-use --newrepo --deep world
# emerge --ask --verbose kde-plasma/plasma-meta

If you normally use KDM to launch Plasma, note that it is no longer supported.
Upstream recommends x11-misc/sddm instead which is pulled in by plasma-meta by
default. OpenRC users should edit /etc/conf.d/xdm and update DISPLAYMANAGER.
Systemd users should run: systemctl reenable sddm.service

Due to an an evolution of KDE upstream's release process[2], the traditional
monolithic KDE 4 release is now split into three distinct components. This
means that KDE Applications are now separate from the Plasma desktop and
older KDE 4-based applications will continue to function as normal inside
Plasma 5.

KDE Workspaces 4.11 will remain in the tree for a reasonable time, but
be warned that it is unmaintained and may cause conflicts with
newer versions of KDE Applications.

[1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/KDE/Plasma_5_upgrade
[2] https://dot.kde.org/2013/09/04/kde-release-structure-evolves