14 DAY TRIAL // The KDE Project developers have just announced that KDE Applications 14.12 has been released and is now ready for download and it comes with a number of important changes and structural modifications.
The KDE project is now looking a little bit different after having been restructured. The former KDE Workspaces, Platform and Applications have been transformed into KDE Frameworks 5, KDE Plasma, and KDE Applications. This would ensure a much bigger independence for the KDE developers who will start to release different versions of each sub-project.
Just until last month, the developers had a single massive release, under one umbrella. That meant that everything had the same version number and that some teams will be ready with their updates faster than others.
It would also mean that they had to wait until everyone was up to date. Now, with the new system, the version numbers will be different and we should see updates for various components arriving much faster.
KDE Applications 14.12 is a big step forward
This is not the first release in this branch and three Betas have been made available already. As you would expect, there are quite a few improvements, although it will take a while until they are made available in various distros.
"The release includes the first KDE Frameworks 5-based versions of Kate and KWrite, Konsole, Gwenview, KAlgebra, Kanagram, KHangman, Kig, Parley, KApptemplate and Okteta. Some libraries are also ready for KDE Frameworks 5 use: analitza and libkeduvocdocument."
"Libkface is new in this release; it is a library to enable face detection and face recognition in photographs. The Kontact Suite is now in Long Term Support in the 4.14 version while developers are focusing on a port to KDE Frameworks 5 with renewed energy. The April release of KDE Applications 15.04 will include more new features, as well as more applications ported to the modular KDE Frameworks 5," say the devs.
The team also says that KAlgebra now has an Android version, KGeography has just received a new map for Bihar, and Okular features some dvi and epub improvements.
If you don't find the packages available in the repositories, you can always download the source from the official website and compile it yourself, although that’s not really recommended unless you know what you're doing. The best course of action is to wait until it is made available in the repositories of your distribution.
