 lately people have started wondering when is Plasma 6 getting released and well how do we even know there's a Plasma 6 coming and then to that relies in Qt. Now Qt is the framework that Qt uses to actually draw anything on the screen and much more and usually when Qt announces a new version well it's the right moment for Qt Plasma and Qt in general to step up and maybe do a new version of the frameworks a new major version so not the small ones so instead of keeping Qt Plasma 5 for the eternity or I don't know even frameworks frameworks are currently 5.92 93 and counting and instead of continuing to do that when Qt says we're going to do Qt 6 all Qt says okay then we're going to do Qt framework 6 and Qt Plasma 6 and in there we can do a bit more things so the biggest one of course is to actually start using Qt 6 so Qt will start using Qt 6 in Qt Plasma 6 Qt framework 6 and so on the 6 release and of course you can actually already use Qt 6 in stuff and nothing stops you absolutely and some developers are actually like trying out apps with Qt 6 but there's also other stuff going on let's take the Qt frameworks what are those so the frameworks are a code that's well let's say behind the scenes makes Qt work it's a 83 add-on libraries of various like I don't know some manages time like days events stuff like that could be anything and right now they're in version 5.22 23 as I've said and is people are working on KD framework 6 since 2019 when Lars presented the plans for Qt 6 so Qt 6 was announced in 2019 October 2019 and that's when the Qt frameworks work actually began so there's planning the transition and the idea that is that this is completely behind the scenes for users you shouldn't notice this but all of the application that are currently using Qt from frameworks well 6 is a good time to actually break the promises of the API so if you had a certain behavior in Qt framework 6 that we actually wanted to change well we couldn't because apps were relying on it even third party ones Qt framework 6 is a major release and that means that we can actually break promises in the API and clean stuff up which is also what's happening in Qt Plasma 6 let me make you an example so you know plasmoids in your panel when they use a plasmoid API now the plasmoid API over time has got some properties that after a bit of time we realized that they weren't as good as we thought my bad on a particular one I introduced at least one of those so Qt Plasma 6 is the perfect opportunity to actually get rid of those because apps are not relying on it anymore because a new major version means that you actually have to do work to port your application and of course uh application or plasmoid of course that means that there is a bit of porting needed for those who work on Qt frameworks or I don't know plasmoids API or any API that's being ported to 6 and the idea is to make sure that it's as little work as possible so that everything that worked before works even in Qt 6 without too much hassle so there's also joined the Qt frameworks 6 print and I want to show you that this was March 27 28 2021 which is almost a year ago so when people ask when is Plasma 6 coming up coming out sorry well it's been in the works in Qt frameworks at least for more than a year a year and some months at this point so yeah this is the Plasma 6 work board with this very nice not official 6 so this is the backlog the things that well it's the default so all the stuff really goes here it's just one task here one task here 85 years so yeah and I'll make you an example I think this is rather representative all these tasks are like this port Plasma desktop applets window list from Plasma components 2 so Plasma components 2 was a older way of actually displaying Plasma things now there's Plasma components 3 and KD Plasma 6 should use Plasma components 3 and so there are lots and lots of tasks saying we need to port away from Plasma components 2 then what else do we have Plasma plugin loader cleanup so this is the best time as well to do cleanups of behind the scenes code what else we get kill run associate applications this is again a feature that KD Plasma had it's like behind the scene feature but in order to get rid of it since people are relying on it well we need Plasma 6 and you got the idea nothing of this list is actually exciting for any user and the reason for that which is my reply to what we expect from KD Plasma 6 is that KD Plasma 6 is not meant to be a revolution with lots of new features and awesome stuff and okay people are working on KD Plasma 6 already for months years even at least one and the idea is that it's a lot of behind the scenes work and you the user maybe there will be new features but the main idea that is that everything should keep working so Plasma like 4 to 5 if I remember correctly I was in KD back then but there were some issues in that it was buggy maybe the first the Plasma 5 release and that's something that KD doesn't really want to happen again so Plasma 6 should be a bug free release as bug free as KD Plasma can get obviously there are bugs there will be bugs but hopefully no new bugs or not too many so all the people all the things that people are saying indeed in this discussion of 186 comments well they're not like bad things or things that will never happen but these are not things that should happen on a major release or necessarily happen on a major release like full Wayland support is something KD was working on for years and one day it will be ready and maybe that day will be for coincidence the same day of Plasma 6 but it is not maybe it will be Plasma 5 dot I don't know what is it 26 maybe and if it's ready for Plasma 5 dot 26 why wait for 6 some kind of tablet mode again this is something that could happen at any time Plasma 6 means nothing for this thing a corner bug fix come on seriously and at this point I'm so annoyed still seeing this better programming thinking options well ironically this could be in Plasma 6 because there's discussions of making the theming system better for 6 Plasma 6 and why is that well the idea is as I said Plasma 6 is the best time to break promises and in order to improve a theming system significantly you need to break them a bit so there are ideas of improving redoing from scratch the theming system so maybe but the stuff here doesn't actually need a major version to happen more padding and consistent UI these things have been happening for years now this consistent consistency goal has fixed so many inconsistent UI layouts and paddings but it's not because there's Plasma 6 it's because we need to improve Plasma regardless of the release well paper will paper sorry saving bug fixes again this shouldn't happen on a Plasma 6.0 release there's no reason why it should be what is actually happening is that in this third people are saying what they would want KD12 but you don't need for Plasma 6.0 to actually implement those things and another thing about that is since we're using Qt6 do we get cool stuff and I mean Qt6 does have some cool stuff that's for sure however I gotta say that the coolest feature that I think could be in Qt6 is not in Qt6 yet it was promised for Qt6 and it wasn't really delivered yet but Qt6.26.3 is slowly coming and that is the QML compiling for real ish so you can actually take a subset of QML a subset of QML plus JavaScript and compile it to C++ code for better performance and I think that's super cool and given that most of KD's UI if not basically everything is QML that could be an improvement I don't want to say that it will be a revolution because it won't be and there will be work needed to actually make sure that well first of all if this will interest us right now there's no such product so who knows but if it's something interesting there will be work to adapt QML to that subset of QML that actually compiles but that could mean less RAM usage more performance we'll have to see let me just see another couple of examples yeah this is the point 4 to 5 will not smooth and the point is that 6 should be super smooth from 5 so what do I expect from Plasma 5 for the love of all that is holy that it isn't forced to be a replacement for Plasma 5 until it actually bloody works you get a point drunken coli t that's the whole point Plasma 6 doesn't wish to be the revolution which is to be a clean transition where things that are old and should be replaced are actually replaced