KDE e.V., in partnership with Kubuntu Focus and Techpaladin Software, has launched the Bullet-Proof KDE Software Initiative to extend LTS support for the KDE Plasma 6.6 branch. This initiative aims to provide fixes and support for a minimum of three years, ensuring the stability and reliability of the KDE Plasma desktop environment.
Earlier, the KDE project had decided to discontinue maintenance of LTS branches and shift the responsibility to distribution developers who wished to support older versions of KDE Plasma. This decision was influenced by the significant effort required to analyze issues arising from specific software stacks in distributions, as well as the challenges in ensuring synchronization with the latest KDE code base. While Kubuntu was the only distribution that continued to use the LTS branch, other major distributions like Debian and openSUSE had moved away from it. Moreover, the previous LTS support was limited to backporting individual fixes for KDE Plasma without proper testing in the continuous integration system, leaving out the KDE Frameworks libraries and KDE Gear applications.
To address this gap in LTS support, Kubuntu Focus has allocated $100 thousand to fund the fixing of bugs in the KDE branches Plasma 6.6, KDE Frameworks 6.24, and KDE Gear 25.12, all integrated into the Kubuntu 26.04 distribution. Techpaladin Software, led by Nate Graham, a QA developer for the KDE project, will be responsible for carrying out the maintenance work on these KDE components.
Furthermore, additional resources have been allocated to introduce three new nodes to the continuous integration system to facilitate rigorous testing of KDE in Kubuntu 26.04, ensuring the overall quality and stability of the KDE software stack.