14 DAY TRIAL // Ex-Kubuntu maintainer Jonathan Riddell had the great pleasure of announcing yesterday, January 30, during the FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting) 2016 event, the KDE Neon project.
We were intrigued by the announcement, so we took a look at KDE Neon's homepage so see what's going on. To our surprise, being what at first would appear to be a set of software repositories that would bring you the latest and greatest KDE technologies on your Ubuntu Linux operating system, KDE Neon also looks like it might just turn into a full-featured distribution.
In other words, KDE Neon promises to always bring Ubuntu or Kubuntu users the latest KDE packages as they are released. So when a new KDE Plasma 5 version is out, you will immediately have it on Ubuntu via the KDE Neon repositories. That's pretty cool if you ask us because the current Kubuntu release kind of lags behind with the new KDE releases.
"KDE Neon is the intersection of these needs using a stable Ubuntu long-term release as its core, packaging the hottest software fresh from the KDE Community ovens. Compute knowing you have a solid foundation and enjoy the features you experience in the world's most customizable desktop," reads the project's page.
KDE Neon as a GNU/Linux distro
We forgot to mention that fact that KDE Neon is an official KDE project, as well as a community effort, so you don't need to worry about its quality. Best of all, the KDE Neon project aims to provide users with Live and installable mediums that people will use to install an Ubuntu-based operating system powered by all the latest KDE technologies on their personal computers.
There's nothing available for download at the moment of writing this article, but the initial release of KDE Neon will be based on Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) while the team prepares for the upcoming Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system. Future releases of KDE Neon will be based only on long-term supported releases of Ubuntu Linux. If you're running Ubuntu 15.10, you can get KDE Neon right now, so here's how to do it.
