What a real LTS looks like: Kubuntu 26.04

Last year, Plasma developers canceled the long-term support (LTS) version of Plasma. Why?

We had a few reasons:

Almost nobody was using it; really only Kubuntu. Other discrete-release operating systems like Debian and openSUSE Leap generally ignored it.
It wasn’t a real LTS; we only backported some fixes for Plasma, and nothing for the Frameworks it was built upon, nor the Gear-aligned KDE apps it shipped with.
Our backporting of fixes was fairly blind since there weren’t CI resources to validate them, and nobody ever felt like testing them manually.

As a consolation prize for canceling the Plasma LTS product, we decided at the time to add an additional bug-fix release to the normal Plasma schedule, effectively lengthening the support period for each non-LTS Plasma version by 2 months — from 4 months to 6.

And as a result, there have been no Plasma 6 LTS versions.

…Until now!

Plasma 6.6 is now an LTS version. And not just Plasma 6.6 itself, but also a specific version of KDE Frameworks: 6.24, which will also receive backported bug-fixes. And Gear 25.12, too!

What changed?

It wasn’t a change to my or anyone else in KDE’s opinion of what a proper LTS product looks like. Rather, it was the Kubuntu Focus company stepping up to fund the creation of one, as announced today!

That’s right, Kubuntu focus is sponsoring a Plasma 6.6 LTS product for the next three years!

This consists of a couple of pieces:

First of all, Kubuntu Focus is sponsoring Techpaladin Software to fix bugs identified by Kubuntu 26.04 users. (full disclosure: I’m the CEO of Techpaladin Software). We’re not just backporting bug-fixes that happen to get made, but rather actively working with the Kubuntu folks to identify and fix pain points experienced by them and their users.

Plasma 6.6 will thus remain eligible for bug reports for the next three years, and we’ll do our best to get them fixed and backported.

Speaking of which, we’ll be backporting fixes for more than just Plasma 6.6 — relevant ones will also to Frameworks 6.24 and Gear 25.12, the versions that Kubuntu 26.04 ships with. The whole KDE part of the software stack!

Finally, Kubuntu Focus is sponsoring additional continuous integration resources owned by KDE e.V. to handle the load of validating changes made to these older versions. And they’ve been generous enough to sponsor more than was strictly speaking needed for the initiative, so KDE in general benefits from faster CI times even for non-LTS work!

We’re calling the whole thing the “Bullet-Proof KDE Initiative”.

This is what a real LTS initiative looks like, folks: people involved with an OS putting the resources into making a non-LTS upstream release into an LTS one, properly. With bug fixes — not just security fixes — backported to all levels of the software stack, not just the top one.

So I predict Kubuntu 26.04 promises to offer the best KDE experience of any Kubuntu release ever!

I know a lot of folks really enjoyed Kubuntu’s 24.04 release because of how it lined up with Plasma 5.27, which we made an LTS release for an extended period of time during the Plasma 6 transition. Well, this is the same thing, only with a great version of Plasma 6 included, and supported for even longer!

Aha, so you’re a sell-out who changed his opinions about LTS due to money!

My opinion remains the same: I don’t dislike LTS products — only fake ones that promise support but don’t actually deliver it. With this initiative, users of Kubuntu 26.04 get a real LTS product, with real support backed by a pair of commercial companies.

So this is all a commercial thing? KDE gone korporate?

It’s largely a commercial initiative between Kubuntu Focus and Techpaladin Software, yes — though KDE e.V. has signed off on the initiative and agreed to accept funding for the new CI resources.

Both companies are good citizens in the KDE ecosystem: KDE e.V. patrons, employers of engineers you’ve heard of, and providers of hardware and services to users of KDE software.

And the benefits accrue far beyond just the companies. Obviously Kubuntu 26.04 users benefit, even those who didn’t buy a computer from Kubuntu Focus. And as I mentioned earlier, all of KDE now has more general-purpose CI resources. Also, many of the LTS bugs that Techpaladin people have already fixed were affecting people on later Plasma versions, too! Everyone wins here.

So the commercial part is not a limitation on what anyone else gets for free or is allowed to do; it’s just an acknowledgement that creating a real LTS product costs money.

Wow, really cool! How can I help?

Anyone in the wider KDE community who’s interested in this kind of thing should feel comfortable backporting important and safe bug-fixes to the stable branches for Plasma 6.6, Frameworks 6.24, and Gear 25.12. There will be a Kubuntu CI runner that makes sure nothing breaks (at least, nothing that’s tested in the CI! So keep that test coverage high).

And if you happen to run discrete-release OS and would like to get in on the action, feel free to ship Plasma 6.6 and invest some of your own resources into it! It will be very welcome to see more people fixing bugs reported by LTS users that are still present on master, or backporting more recent bug-fixes to the LTS version. Again, everybody wins here!

Keep your community afloat with the right defense tokens

My favorite tabletop game of all time is Star Wars: Armada, a Star Wars themed ship combat wargame.

Armada has many deep and tactically interesting features, but one of my favorites is the unique suite of defense tokens available to each spaceship to protect itself against attacks, from among the following six options:

Scatter – the attack is completely canceled. “I wasn’t where you were shooting”
Evade – cancel an attack die at long range, or re-roll one at short and medium range. “I dodged your attack, so it missed or became a glancing blow”
Brace – halve the damage. “Ouch, you hit me! But it wasn’t as bad as it could have been”
Redirect – move some damage to an adjacent hull zone. “You hit me, but not where I was weakest”
Contain – downgrade a critical hit to normal damage – “My damage control efforts turned the potential catastrophe into just a normal crisis”
Salvo – return fire. “You hit me, but I hit back”

There’s way more information here for people whose military nerd curiosity has been piqued.

Anyway, this is well and good for games about spaceships, but what’s the relevance? Let’s imagine that we humans have these defense tokens, too. And today I’d like to talk about how they relate not to physical attacks, but interpersonal ones.

You negligent fool! You nit-picking jerk!

Someone has blindsided you with unexpected criticism! The monkey brain sees this as an attack:

Imperial Star Destroyer by topcat at Wallpapers.com — https://wallpapers.com/wallpapers/imperial-star-destroyer-hus8fir1xr6vldsn.html

Red alert! Shields up! All hands to battle stations! Your blood pressure rises. You see red and gear up for a fight:

Bull Image from FreePNGimg.com

And what’s the most satisfying defense token to use? Salvo, for sure. Hit back:

Oh yeah, that’s pretty rich coming from you given how you messed up that other thing last week!

The angry email. The “call-out” social media post. The sharp reply on chat. The hyper-critical blog post. They feel good, right?

But Salvo doesn’t actually avoid any damage. in Armada, if you Salvo every attack, your ship explodes, with the only other effect being that the attacking ship gets hurt too — usually a lot less.

From the perspective of minimizing interpersonal friction in a group setting, Salvo is the worst defense token. It didn’t end the conflict created by this unexpected criticism; in fact, now the conflict is bigger and louder, because the criticizer has also gotten hurt. Other people may leap to their defense, or yours, and pretty soon the battle lines are established. What started as a community soon feels like a war zone.

Redirect isn’t great, either; in a community context it’s basically blame-shifting, which similarly doesn’t prevent any damage; it just moves it around, and the community still suffers.

Neither is is not what we want for our community if the goal is to remain friendly and welcoming!

Prevent and reduce damage

If we want to keep our ~~ship flying~~ community alive, we need to prefer the defense tokens that prevent or reduce damage:

Scatter: prevent conflicts in the first place by meeting expectations, being mindful of other people’s feelings, and maintaining your relationships.
Evade: notice impending conflicts and help make them fizzle out early. Be humble.
Brace: mend fences and fix problems so the conflicts that do erupt shrink over time.
Contain: keep conflicts localized to the participants, and prevent them from spiraling out of control. Don’t let drama spill out into the larger team or the whole organization — or heaven forbid into the media! Accept valid criticism and let others have the last word.

These social defense tokens are harder and less satisfying to use than Salvo and Redirect. But over the long term, they do a much better job.

Which brings us to KDE

Today I think KDE is known as a pretty friendly place. And when I look around, I see a lot of examples of people — consciously or unconsciously — using defense tokens in their interpersonal relationships that reduce harm rather than moving it around or sending it back.

It’s not perfect, of course. We all mess up sometimes. And a culture like this takes years to develop. But I think the strong social bonds between contributors inside KDE are self-evident, and represent a significant part of the organization’s success today.

So I want to congratulate KDE and encourage us all to keep it up! I know times are tough and a lot of things in the world feel like they’re exploding, or getting ready to. Things suck more than they should, and there’s always more we can do to improve it. But as long as we maintain our relationships with one another, it becomes a lubricant that makes all those things so much more possible to survive or achieve.