The KDE developers have announced that the next version of the Plasma desktop, Plasma 6, will be released in February.

KDE Plasma is one of the most popular desktop environments (DE) on Linux, and certainly the most powerful DE on any platform, which is no doubt a contributing factor in Microsoft continually copying it.

The developers have been migrating Plasma to Qt6, the latest version of the underlying toolkit. According to developer Nate Graham, work has been progressing rapidly and the team feels confident in a February release:

A month has passed since the last Plasma 6 status update, so it’s time for another one!

First, what you’ve all been waiting for: a release date! We’ve decided that Plasma 6 will be released in early February of 2024. We don’t have a specific day targeted yet, but it’ll be in that timeframe. I’m feeling quite confident that the release will be in excellent shape by then! It’s already in good shape right now. 5 months should provide enough of a runway for a solid final release.

Users concerned about the stability and reliability of a major new version will be pleased to know that the team has been knocking out bugs left and right:

In terms of bugs, it’s been an all-hands-on-deck affair, with everyone helping out. As a result our list of open Plasma 6 issues is down to 75 today, after having risen three weeks ago to an all-time high of 87. The number has been falling since then, which is a great sign–bugginess has peaked and we’re starting to converge! And not all of these are major, high profile issues, either; as of this writing, there are only 15 of those. These are the true showstoppers that must be fixed before we can release Plasma 6. As for the rest, we’ll be trying our best to get as many of those done too to ensure that quality on release day is as high as possible!

KDE Plasma 6 is shaping up to be the best release yet of the venerable DE.