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Notes from the Graz Plasma sprint
Quoting: Notes from the Graz Plasma sprint —
A few days ago I returned home from a wonderful Plasma sprint in Graz, Austria. Between COVID-19 and there being no Plasma sprint last year in favor of the Goals mega-sprint, this was actually only my my third in-person Plasma sprint! So I was very excited to attend. There’s much to talk about!
Linuxiac:
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KDE Drops Plasma LTS Label, Eyes Extended Support for All Releases
Today’s a big day for tech news! Hot on the heels of Redis announcing its return to open source, KDE—the beloved desktop environment used by millions—has just shared some equally exciting updates.
After a week of intense discussion and hacking at Graz, Austria, the KDE Plasma team has drawn a clear roadmap that rewrites some long-standing assumptions about its flagship desktop. According to developer Nate Graham, the group resolved to phase out dedicated Plasma LTS releases, tighten the release cadence, and introduce new safeguards for third-party content.
For years, Plasma offered a “Long-Term Support” branch that received bug-fix backports but little active testing. Participants at the sprint concluded that the limited scope of this arrangement raised expectations they could no longer meet. So, instead of a separate LTS line, every normal Plasma release will now enjoy one extra maintenance update—six bug-fix releases rather than five—extending support without fragmenting developer attention.
In GoL:
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KDE Plasma drops LTS releases but will do extra bug fix releases, along with a new Steam-like hardware survey
KDE developer Nate Graham has written up a blog post detailing some planned changes coming to the KDE Plasma desktop, including doing away with the LTS (Long-Term Support) releases and instead extend the supported time for each release.
Two More:
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Flathub, Plasma and sprinting – TheBlindCow
All in all, it gave me a nice feeling of realisation that we are on the right track at large. Plasma is getting lots of love by our devs, ensuring a continued stream of improvements to our UX. From a Plasma standpoint, we are slowly exploring the possibility of having add-ons with Flatpak. I find this an exciting development that can bring Plasma extensions to a next level, that wouldn’t be feasible without the work from many of the folks at LAS.
And all that to say that we are all fine, and healthy. Either Plasma or LAS, both are nice communities full of nice people pushing our ecosystem together towards new horizons that I’m sure we’ll all be happy to explore.
A Plasma (Mobile) Sprint in Graz | espidev
I attended the Plasma sprint this year in Graz, Austria!
It has been a couple of years since I have last met KDE contributors in-person (Akademy 2022), so I really looked forward to finally being able to meet again. This sprint was the first time I met Bhushan, who is a long time contributor to Plasma Mobile, and was the one that initially guided me through contributions! He recently got funding to overhaul and improve the power management stack we have in Plasma Mobile, which you can read about here. I also met Luis for the first time, who has been contributing to the project for quite a while, notably having contributed the system navigation gestures we have now!
I brought my brother along as well, who is starting to also make contributions to KDE. After the sprint, we travelled around a bit (I will eventually have another post about it, link coming when that happens). This post will focus on just the sprint itself.
Linux Magazine:
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Plasma Ends LTS Releases » Linux Magazine
For some time, the KDE Plasma developers have offered Long Term Support releases for the venerable desktop environment.
However, Nate Graham recently posted about the status of Plasma LTS, stating that, "It’s no secret that our Plasma LTS (“Long-Term Support”) product isn’t great. It really only means we backport bug-fixes for longer than usual – usually without even testing them, since no Plasma developers enjoy living on or testing old branches." Graham adds, "And there’s no corresponding LTS product for Frameworks or Gear apps, leaving a lot of holes in the LTS umbrella."
Graham also goes on to mention that LTS means different things to different people. In the end, it's problematic for the development team to continue with the LTS releases. And given how quickly Plasma development has ramped up, the need for LTS is no longer nearly as important.
Fudzilla:
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KDE Plasma kills off its half-baked LTS
KDE Plasma is ditching its long-term support releases in favour of an extended patch schedule for regular updates, after conceding its current LTS system is a bit of a sham.
KDE developer Nate Graham wrote in his bog:“It’s no secret that our Plasma LTS (‘Long-Term Support’) product isn’t great. It really only means we backport bug-fixes for longer than usual — usually without even testing them."
The LTS version was meant to give Plasma users a stable and supported option, but no one on the team wanted to maintain it. Graham added that there was no LTS equivalent for KDE’s Frameworks or Gear apps, so even the so-called support umbrella had holes big enough to drive a distro through.
Graham said: “Many have an expansive definition of the term that gives them expectations of stability that are impossible to meet,” and the result was a mess of mismatched support, half-hearted bug fixes, and rising frustration on all sides.
Rather than limp along pretending LTS means anything, the KDE project will now ship an extra bug-fix release for each version, taking support from five to six patches. It also plans to potentially drop from three feature releases a year to two, spacing things out in a way that should keep things more stable overall.
Bhushan Shah:
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Plasma Sprint in Graz 2025 - Bhushan Shah
It has been quite a long time since I attended any KDE sprint, last sprint for me was Plasma Sprint in Valencia, Spain before pandemic and personal life got in a way. Last month I had chance to attend Plasma Sprint 2025 in Graz, Austria. This was good opportunity for me to meet some of long time contributors to Plasma Mobile like Devin Lin and Luis, as well as other Plasma contributors to discuss some of technical details about my upcoming power management work.