The gorgeous KDE Plasma 5.26 has been released and is now available to download and upgrade. This guide explains the steps required to upgrade to KDE Plasma 5.26 from the prior version, 5.25.
KDE Plasma 5.26 is the 28th edition of Plasma desktop that brings significant changes that include animated wallpaper, dark themes and dark wallpapers switchers, resizable widgets, intelligent KRunner and many more.
If you missed the feature article, you could read my exclusive feature highlights of KDE Plasma 5.26.
If you are running an earlier version of KDE Plasma via KDE Neon Linux Distribution, this is how you can upgrade to the latest version.
Table of Contents
How to Upgrade to KDE Plasma 5.26
Firstly, the upgrade size is around 25% higher than Plasma 5.25. The KDE Plasma 5.26 upgrade size in KDE Neon is close to 900 MB on my test machine.
Second, make sure to close all the running applications before you start the upgrade process.
The KDE Neon upgrade process is generally stable and never failed me. But if you want to be extra cautious and have valuable data, you may want to take a backup of those. But again, I believe it’s unnecessary, in my opinion.
1. Steps for the upgrade process
Via GUI – Discover App
In KDE Neon, open Discover and click on Fetch Updates. Wait until the updates are downloaded.
You can verify whether Plasma 5.26 is available via the Discover upgrade package list.
Once you have verified, click on the ‘Update All’ button in the Discover window at the top-right.
Via command line
Alternatively, you can run the below commands from the terminal and start the upgrade process in KDE Neon.
sudo apt update
sudo pkcon update
The pkcon might freeze for a minute or two during the upgrade installation. Don’t close it; instead, wait for it to complete the installation.
Restart the system after the upgrade process is complete.
And after reboot, you should see the brand new KDE Plasma 5.26 welcomes you.
Upgrading KDE Plasma in Kubuntu and Fedora
For Kubuntu 22.04 users, you will not get 5.26 for its lifetime because it is a Long Term Support (LTS) release. Hence, KDE Plasma 5.24 LTS would remain for its entire LTS life cycle.
Kubuntu 22.10 users get the prior version which is 5.25, since it’s in freeze. So, you may get this version later via regular package updates.
Also, I would recommend you keep an eye on the backports PPA. Once available, you can easily upgrade to this latest version using the command below.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
sudo apt-get full-upgrade
Fedora 37 users should receive KDE Plasma 5.26 during the first point release by November (my optimistic guess).
Finally, Arch Linux users can update via the above methods once the packages are ready.
Post Upgrade Feedback
I ran the upgrade process on a Virtual Box VM with a fresh KDE Neon with KDE Plasma 5.25 installed. The upgrade process is smooth, with no surprises or errors. Well, it never failed for me to date. ]
The upgrade time entirely depends on your internet connection and KDE servers. In general, it should be completed within 30 minutes. For me, it took around 15 to 20 minutes.
The first restart after the upgrade went fine and did not take much time.
So, overall, you can safely upgrade if you are in KDE Neon. And wait for the packages for Ubuntu and Fedora stable releases.
Enjoy the brand-new KDE Plasma!
