How to Install KDE Plasma 5.3 on (K)Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet

How to Install KDE Plasma 5.3 on (K)Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet via PPA

KDE Plasma (formerly K Desktop Environment and KDE Software Compilation and KDE Plasma Workspace and Applications) is an open source project comprised of numerous packages, libraries and applications designed to provide a modern graphical desktop environment for Linux and UNIX-like workstations.

A beautiful, modern and traditional desktop environment

It combines ease-of-use, superior graphical design and powerful functionality with the unique features and architecture of the Linux operating system. It’s comprised of the KDE Plasma Workspaces and KDE Applications components.

Additionally, it contains extra add-on for the panel and desktop, a download manager, an instant messenger, an addressbook, a document viewer, a multimedia layer called Phonon (similar to GStreamer on GNOME), and accessibility functionality, such as a powerful text-to-speech system.

What's new in KDE Plasma 5.3:

• Battery applet now informs what is blocking power saving
• Energy Usage monitor
• New energy usage monitor
• Enhanced Power Management
• Power management settings can be configured
• differently for certain activities
• Laptop will not suspend when closing the lid while an external monitor is
• connected ('cinema mode', by default, can be turned off)
• Power management inhibitions block lock screen too
• Screen brightness changes are now animated on most hardware
• No longer suspends when closing the lid while shutting down
• Support for keyboard button brightness controls on lock screen
• KInfoCenter provides statistics about energy consumption
• Battery monitor now shows which applications are currently holding a power management
• inhibition for example ('Chrome is currently suppressing PM: Playing video')
• The new Bluedevil Applet
• Better Bluetooth Capabilities
• New Bluetooth applet
• Bluedevil was ported to a new library from KDE, BluezQt
• Added support for blocking and unblocking Bluetooth
• Connected devices with Browse Files (ObexFTP) support are now displayed in the file dialog's Places panel
• A touchpad configuration module has been added
• Application Menu can access contacts
• Application Menu can show recent documents
• Improved Plasma Widgets
• Clipboard applet gains support for showing barcodes
• The Desktop and Folder View containment codebases were
• unified, and have seen performance improvements
• The Recent Documents and Recent Applications sections in
• Application Menu (Kicker) are now powered by KDE activities
• Comics widget returns
• System monitor plasmoids return, such as CPU Load Monitor and Hard Disk usage
• Plasma Media Center is added as a tech preview in this release. It is fully stable but misses a few features compared to version 1. You can log directly into a Plasma Media Center session if you want to use it on a media device such as a television or projector or you can run it from Plasma Desktop. It will scan for videos, music and pictures on your computer to let you browse and play them.
• Plasma is now able to start a nested XWayland server

 

How to Install KDE Plasma 5.3 on (K)Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet

Adding the Kubuntu Backports PPA repository and Install KDE Plasma 5.3

To add the Kubuntu Backports PPA repository, open the Unity Dash and search for Terminal. Open the Terminal app, and then copy and paste the following command in the console window:

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

Uninstalling KDE Plasma 5.3 from (K)Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet

If for some reason you don't want to have the KDE Plasma 5.3 desktop environment installed on your Ubuntu 15.04 machine, you can uninstall it by running the following commands in a Terminal window, one by one, hitting Enter after each one.

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
sudo apt-get purge kubuntu-desktop sddm
sudo apt-get autoremove

Enjoy! I hope this article adding you more clarity.