How To Install And Test KDE Plasma 5 On Ubuntu 14.04

Question

KDE Plasma 5 is hitting release candidate now: Schedules/Plasma 5 - KDE TechBase.

How can I install plasma 5 in Ubuntu 14.04.

Answer 1

Trusty

Since Dec, 05 2014, project neon is no more available as a PPA, unfortunately.

Utopic

Utopic is shipped with Plasma 4. If you want Plasma 5 there is a KDE Next PPA (which will provide updated KDE too), but it'll replace the current installed KDE

Install

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/next
sudo apt update
sudo apt install kubuntu-plasma5-desktop
sudo apt full-upgrade

And finally, after save all your work:

sudo reboot

Sources

Kubuntu CI: the replacement for Project Neon - blogs.kde.org
Frameworks/Binary Packages - KDE Community Wiki

Answer 2

I am writing answer because may some one be looking for answer in 2015 and all the answers above are outdated and won't work on ubuntu 14.04.2 trusty tahr(I have tried all). Friends. I was wondering to install kde on my ubuntu 14.04 and followed almost all online tutorials but in vain. To be frank, I run all desktop environments on my ubuntu( which are GNOME, Cinnamon, Unity, LXDE, XFCE, Compiz etc.) but I only failed in installing kde plasma desktop. So I came upon a solution and now have installed that succesfully(Hurrah!!). Just open the terminal and type below commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

And then Logout and Re login and select kde desktop. You are set. This one is updated ppa and works on ubntu 14.04 trusty. I have tried myself and it worked. You can also have a look at the ppa page at Launchpad ppa link.

Answer 3

Here is the way I've installed KDE Plasma 5 (I'm using Kubuntu, so below are installation instructions for the KDE GUI)

• Make sure Muon Package Manager is installed (Muon Discover doesn't show what Software Center calls "Technical packages", so I use Muon Pacakge Manager which is basically Synaptic for KDE).
• From the KDE menu start "Software & Updates", go to "Additional Software", click "Add" and in the window that opens type "ppa:neon/kf5". Click OK and close "Software & Updates". You'll be prompted to update the software sources, so agree to that and wait until it is done.
• Start Muon Package Manager and search for "project-neon5-live-session" (*). Mark it for installation and click "Apply Changes". Wait until that is done.
• Disable AppArmor - I couldn't get the Plasma 5 session to work with AppArmor working. This is probably an issue of missing profiles which will be fixed. In the mean time you'd need to open a console, and run sudo /etc/init.d/apparmor stop; sudo /etc/init.d/apparmor teardown.
• Click the KDE menu -> Leave -> Switch User and in the Krunner menu that open choose "new session".
• In the new session login, choose "Guest" and in the session selector choose "Project Neon 5" then "Login".

Current status [July 11th]:

• desktop is very slow to start - be patient
• dolphin crashes on all kinds of basic stuff
• if you mess too much with the kwin configuration, it will start crashing non-stop
• other than that, the desktop is pretty stable, but still not stable enough to be my daily driver.

*) This currently does work, though it may break in the middle of installation due to a file conflict with lightdm. If you are using KDM, then you can go ahead and remove lightdm (it will require removing kubuntu-desktop but that is just a meta-package, you should have no problem removing it as well as any other dependency of lightdm), after which try to complete the install. If the GUI application annoys you too much, open a konsole and run sudo apt-get install -f to complete the setup. Alternatively, if you prefer lightdm as you session manager, then after the installation fails, just remove project-neon5-sddm and its dependencies (which would just be the project-neon5-live-session meta package).

Answer 4

I haven't tested it, but the Neon Project offers a Ubuntu PPA with the betas and RC packages.

Answer 5

Here's the unstable packages, You will find tomorrow Kde unstable mirror .