KDE neon

KDE neonFlat stylistic representation of a single Neon atom (atomic number 10) in white upon a teal background with shadows

Base logo (many thematic variations also in use)[1]

Screenshot of KDE neon 6 with the KDE Plasma 6 desktop environment. Also containing on this picture is the open menu and setting page targeted to the "About This System" tab.

KDE neon 6.0

Developer| KDE
Written in| C/C++/Qt 6
OS family| Linux (Unix-like)
Working state| Current
Source model| Open source
Initial release| June 8, 2016; 10 years ago (2016-06-08)[2]
|Final release|Latest release}}| User Edition:
20250605, based on Ubuntu 24.04 and Plasma 6, kernel Linux 6.5 / 5 June 2025; 13 months ago (2025-06-05)
Repository| community.kde.org/Neon/Git
Marketing target| People who want the newest versions of KDE Plasma
Available in| 80 languages[3]

List of languages

Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Aragonese, Arabic, Assamese, Asturian, Basque, Belarusian, Bengali, Bokmål, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Chinese, Crimean, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Dzongkha, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Galician, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Khmer, Korean, Kurdish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalam, Mandarin, Marathi, Nepali, Norwegian, Occitan, Oriya, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tajik, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vietnamese, Welsh

Update method| APT
Package manager| PackageKit[4]/Discover (GUI)
Platforms| x86-64[5]/AArch64[6]
Kernel type| Monolithic
Userland| GNU, Ubuntu long-term support base
Default user interface| KDE Plasma 6
License| Various open-source licenses, mainly the LGPL-2.1 and GPL-2
Official website| neon.kde.org

KDE neon is a Linux distribution developed by KDE based on Ubuntu long-term support (LTS) releases, bundled with a set of additional software repositories containing the latest versions of the Plasma 6 desktop environment/framework, Qt 6 toolkit and other compatible KDE software.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13] First announced in June 2016 by Kubuntu founder Jonathan Riddell following his departure from Canonical Ltd.,[14] it has been adopted by a steadily growing number of Linux users, regularly appearing in the Top 20 on DistroWatch.com's popularity tables.[15]

It is offered in stable and development variants; the User Edition is a stable release featuring the latest KDE packages that have passed their quality assurance, while the Testing, Unstable, and Developer Edition branches use the latest beta and unstable nightly releases of KDE packages (the last of which bundled with KDE development libraries and headers).[16]

## Contents

* 1 Differences from Kubuntu
* 2 Hardware
* 3 History and versions
* 3.1 Version history
* 4 See also
* 5 References
* 6 External links

## Differences from Kubuntu

Because Kubuntu has the KDE Plasma suite on an Ubuntu base OS, KDE neon often is mistaken for Kubuntu and vice versa. However, the primary difference between the two operating systems is that Kubuntu maintains stable releases and an LTS version of Ubuntu while KDE neon focuses on updating developer editions of KDE applications without maintaining stable releases of Ubuntu unless the root user actively chooses to upgrade their systems.[17] KDE neon forces the user to update the distro with PackageKit package instead of Advanced Packaging Tool. This approach prevents possible issues during the KDE packages update.[18]

## Hardware

Seven laptops have been released with KDE neon pre-installed: KDE Slimbook (released on Thursday, January 26, 2017),[19] KDE Slimbook II (Thursday, February 8, 2018),[20] KDE Slimbook III (2020),[21] KDE Slimbook IV (Wednesday, July 6, 2022)[22] KDE Slimbook V (2024),[23] KDE Slimbook VI (2024),[24] and KDE Slimbook VII (2025)[25]

## History and versions

KDE neon first started taking shape in late 2015 as a way to provide a rolling release of KDE software on top of Ubuntu's stable OS base.[26][27] Daily installation images began being built in January 2016.[28] These images were based on Ubuntu 15.10, but in April 2016, upgrades to Ubuntu 16.04, which would eventually become the base for the first general release, which happened on 8 June 2016.[29][2]

KDE neon announced in January 2017 that the distribution will be switching its installer from Ubiquity to Calamares due to Ubiquity "not having some features".[30][31] In February 2018, KDE neon developers removed the LTS Editions from the downloads page, but kept these editions in the download mirrors because of "lots of people asking which edition to use and what the difference is."[32] In May 2018, KDE started changing KDE neon from being based on Ubuntu 16.04 to Ubuntu 18.04.[33] KDE neon preview images, based on Ubuntu 18.04, became available in August 2018.[34][35][36][37] On 10 August 2020, KDE released a rebased version of KDE Neon, based on Ubuntu 20.04.[38]

As KDE neon is primarily a packaging of KDE software (and occasionally updated dependencies) on top of Ubuntu LTS, its versions are simply numbered off the Plasma release version. However, some notable versions of KDE neon User Edition are listed below to show technical progression.

In August 2025 the development of KDE Linux was announced which is meant to be the "reference implementation OS with Plasma and KDE apps".[39] This is contrary to KDE neon for which is was clearly negated that it is "the KDE distro". Instead KDE neon was "primarily intended for technical Linux/KDE users who want immediate access to the latest KDE offerings".[40] The future of KDE neon was not mentioned in the announcement and is uncertain at the moment.

### Version history

Version  | Release date  | Description

|
|

5.6  | 8 June 2016  | Based on Ubuntu 16.04 base, using Plasma 5.6. This was the first version of KDE neon considered a general release.[41]
5.13  | 26 September 2018  | neon 5.13 was the first version built both on Ubuntu 16.04 and on 18.04. It was released in June 2018 based only on Ubuntu 16.04, but early tests based on 18.04 were made available in August. The user edition was made upgradeable to 18.04 in September, and in early 2019 the Ubuntu 16.04 based build was discontinued.[42][43][44][45][46][47]
5.15  | 12 February 2019  | Alongside the 5.15.0 release of KDE Plasma, KDE neon upgraded to version 5.15. At this point, KDE neon started making KDE applications available in Snap format as well as the usual deb packages. This also helps make it easier to install the latest KDE applications on other Linux distributions without needing to upgrade other components such as KDE frameworks. KDE Neon still uses apt based packages by default, but the snap packages are built and maintained using the neon build system and their packaging is part of the neon project.[48]
5.19  | 9 June 2020  | After upgrading to KDE Plasma 5.19, neon began the work of porting to Ubuntu 20.04. After testing, the public release of KDE neon officially switched over to Ubuntu 20.04 on 10 August 2020.[49][50][51]
5.20  | 13 October 2020  | The KDE neon 5.20 was released alongside KDE Plasma in October 2020. Although this was a major release for KDE Plasma, KDE neon didn't have any major technical changes other than the version upgrade itself.[52]
5.21  | 16 February 2021  | The latest edition of KDE neon was released alongside KDE Plasma in February 2021. Improvements included a focus on Wayland support, a new application launcher and Plasma System Monitor, aiming to succeed KSysGuard.[53]
5.22  | 9 June 2021  |
5.23  | 14 October 2021[54] |
5.24  | 8 February 2022[55] |
5.25  | 14 June 2022[56] |
5.26  | 11 October 2022[57] | Base update to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Desktop Environment update to Plasma 5.26.
5.27  | 14 February 2023[58] | Desktop Environment update to Plasma 5.27.
6.0  | 28 February 2024[59] | Desktop Environment upgrade to KDE Plasma 6.
6.1  | 18 June 2024[60] | Desktop Environment update to KDE Plasma 6.1.
6.2  | 8 October 2024[61] | Base upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Desktop Environment update to KDE Plasma 6.2.
6.3  | 1 February 2025[62] | Desktop Environment update to KDE Plasma 6.3.
6.4  | 17 June 2025[63] | Desktop Environment update to KDE Plasma 6.4.
6.5  | 21 October 2025[64] | Desktop Environment update to KDE Plasma 6.5.
6.6  | 16 February 2026[65] | Desktop Environment update to KDE Plasma 6.6.
{{{2}}}

Fresh installation images are built regularly, grabbing the latest packages from Ubuntu and the latest packages from the KDE neon repositories.

## See also

* Graphical user interface

## References

1. ↑ "KDE neon logo concept" (in en). https://share.kde.org/s/rj0ovspUYyiRCgZ.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "KDE neon User Edition 5.6 Available now" (in en). 2016-06-08. https://dot.kde.org/2016/06/08/kde-neon-user-edition-56-available-now.
3. ↑ "Packages in "PPA for Ubuntu language pack builders" : PPA for Ubuntu language pack builders : "Ubuntu language pack builders" team". https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-langpack/+archive/ubuntu/ppa/+packages?field.name_filter=&field.status_filter=published&field.series_filter=bionic.
4. ↑ "KDE neon FAQ: How do I Update to the Latest Software?". https://neon.kde.org/faq#command-to-update.
5. ↑ "KDE neon FAQ: Is KDE neon 64-bit only?". https://neon.kde.org/faq#64bit.
6. ↑ "KDE neon on the $100 Pinebook" (in en-US). 22 August 2018. https://blog.neon.kde.org/index.php/2018/08/22/kde-neon-on-the-100-pinebook/.
7. ↑ KDE neon - Weak lighting, Dedoimedo
8. ↑ KDE neon 5.12 review - Living on the edge, Dedoimedo
9. ↑ DistroWatch. "DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.". https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20161010#kdeneon.
10. ↑ Lunduke, Bryan (10 February 2016). "KDE's new Linux distro KDE Neon: Terrible idea, or simply a mistake?". https://www.networkworld.com/article/948000/kdes-new-linux-distro-terrible-idea-or-simply-a-huge-mistake.html.
11. ↑ Verma, Adarsh (13 October 2017). "KDE Neon 5.11 Linux Distro Released With Latest Plasma Release". https://fossbytes.com/kde-neon-5-11-released-download/.
12. ↑ KDE Neon 5.11 Is the First Linux Distro to Ship with KDE Plasma 5.11 Desktop, Softpedia News
13. ↑ A look at KDE Neon – a minimal mini-distribution - gHacks Tech News
14. ↑ "Kubuntu's founder resigns, accuses Canonical of defrauding donors and violating copyright" (in en). PCWorld. https://www.pcworld.com/article/2998647/kubuntus-founder-resigns-accuses-canonical-of-defrauding-donors-and-violating-copyright.html.
15. ↑ "KDE neon". 2019-07-05. https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kdeneon.
16. ↑ "KDE neon New Edition Names – KDE neon Developers' Blog" (in en-US). 29 March 2019. https://blog.neon.kde.org/index.php/2019/03/29/kde-neon-new-edition-names/.
17. ↑ ""KDE Neon vs Kubuntu" - KDE Community Forums". https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?t=130867.
18. ↑ "KDE neon". https://neon.kde.org/faq.
19. ↑ Pfeiffer, Thomas (26 January 2017). "KDE and Slimbook Release a Laptop for KDE Fans". KDE.news. https://dot.kde.org/2017/01/26/kde-and-slimbook-release-laptop-kde-fans/.
20. ↑ Brown, Paul (8 February 2018). "The New KDE Slimbook II: A sleek and powerful Plasma-based Ultrabook". KDE.news. https://dot.kde.org/2018/02/08/new-kde-slimbook-ii-sleek-and-powerful-plasma-based-ultrabook/.
21. ↑ Evangelho, Jason (22 July 2020). "KDE And Slimbook Join Forces To Launch Linux Laptop With AMD Ryzen 4000". Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/07/22/first-amd-ryzen-4000-linux-laptop-kde-slimbook/.
22. ↑ Brown, Paul (6 July 2022). "New KDE Slimbook 4 Now Available". KDE.News. https://dot.kde.org/2022/07/06/new-kde-slimbook-4-now-available/.
23. ↑ Hornos, Maria (22 February 2024). "Slimbook V - Slimbook & KDE official press release". KDE.news. https://slimbook.com/en/blog/news-1/post/kde-slimbook-v-387.
24. ↑ Hornos, Maria (11 September 2024). "New KDE Slimbook VI". KDE.news. https://slimbook.com/en/blog/news-1/post/new-kde-slimbook-vi-421.
25. ↑ KDE Slimbook VII: 8 years after on slimbook.com
26. ↑ Riddell, Jonathan (2015-10-05). "[neon Founding Plan"]. https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/neon/2015-October/000003.html.
27. ↑ "Neon/FoundingPlan - KDE Community Wiki". https://community.kde.org/Neon/FoundingPlan.
28. ↑ Riddell, Jonathan (2016-01-11). "[neon Neon Images Appearing"]. https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/neon/2016-January/000021.html.
29. ↑ Riddell, Jonathan (2016-04-12). "[neon 15.10 -> 16.04 upgrade testing"]. https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/neon/2016-April/000119.html.
30. ↑ KDE neon Inaugurated with Calamares Installer – Jonathan Riddell's Diary
31. ↑ KDE Neon Has Stylish New Install Wizard - OMG! Ubuntu!
32. ↑ Hiding Neon LTS Edition - KDE neon Developers Blog
33. ↑ Moving to Bionic - KDE neon Developers Blog
34. ↑ KDE neon Bionic Preview Images Available for Testing - KDE neon Developers Blog
35. ↑ Neon/BionicRebase - KDE Community Wiki
36. ↑ KDE Neon Operating System Is Moving to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver), Softpedia News
37. ↑ KDE Neon Powered By Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Now Available For Testing - Phoronix
38. ↑ KDE Neon Rebased On Ubuntu 20.04
39. ↑ Is this “The KDE OS”? on kde.org
40. ↑ Is this "the KDE distro"? on neon.kde.org
41. ↑ "KDE neon User Edition 5.6 Available now" (in en). 2016-06-08. https://dot.kde.org/2016/06/08/kde-neon-user-edition-56-available-now.
42. ↑ "Plasma 5.13 Out – KDE neon Developers' Blog" (in en-US). 2018-06-13. https://blog.neon.kde.org/index.php/2018/06/13/plasma-5-13/.
43. ↑ "KDE neon Bionic Preview Images Available for Testing – KDE neon Developers' Blog" (in en-US). 2018-08-08. https://blog.neon.kde.org/index.php/2018/08/08/kde-neon-bionic-preview-images-available-for-testing/.
44. ↑ "KDE neon on Ubuntu 18.04 "bionic" Upgrade Open for Testing – KDE neon Developers' Blog" (in en-US). 2019-09-05. https://blog.neon.kde.org/index.php/2018/09/05/kde-neon-ubuntu-18-04-bionic-upgrade-open-for-testing/.
45. ↑ "KDE neon Rebased on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver"" (in en). 2018-09-26. https://dot.kde.org/2018/09/26/kde-neon-rebased-ubuntu-1804-lts-bionic-beaver.
46. ↑ "KDE Neon Now Based on Ubuntu 18.04 'Bionic Beaver'" (in en-GB). 2018-09-26. https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/09/kde-neon-ubuntu-18-04.
47. ↑ Nestor, Marius (2019-02-14). "KDE neon Systems Based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Have Reached End of Life, Upgrade Now" (in en). https://news.softpedia.com/news/kde-neon-systems-based-on-ubuntu-16-04-lts-have-reached-end-of-life-upgrade-now-524959.shtml.
48. ↑ "KDE Applications 19.04 Available for all Distros Through the Snap Store – KDE neon Developers' Blog" (in en-US). 2019-04-18. https://blog.neon.kde.org/index.php/2019/04/18/kde-applications-19-04-available-for-all-distros-through-the-snap-store/.
49. ↑ "KDE neon Rebased on 20.04 – KDE neon Developers' Blog" (in en-US). 2020-08-10. https://blog.neon.kde.org/index.php/2020/08/10/kde-neon-rebased-on-20-04/.
50. ↑ Nestor, Marius (2020-08-10). "KDE neon Is Now Based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)" (in en-US). https://9to5linux.com/kde-neon-is-now-based-on-ubuntu-20-04-lts-focal-fossa.
51. ↑ "KDE Neon 20.04 is Out, Available to Download Now" (in en-GB). 2020-08-10. https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/08/kde-neon-ubuntu-20-04-download.
52. ↑ "KDE Plasma 5.20 Looks Like an Awesome Update" (in en-GB). 2020-09-17. https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/09/kde-plasma-5-20-release-features.
53. ↑ "We made something pretty" (in en-GB). 2021-02-16. https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/.
54. ↑ Plasma - 25th Anniversary Edition on kde.org
55. ↑ Plasma 5.24 - Perfect Harmony on kde.org
56. ↑ Plasma 5.25 - New Looks on kde.org
57. ↑ Plasma 5.26 - All About the Widgets on kde.org
58. ↑ Plasma 5.27 - The 'KDE 💖 Free Software' Edition on kde.org
59. ↑ "KDE neon 6 Available Now – KDE neon Developers' Blog" (in en-US). 2024-02-28. https://blog.neon.kde.org/2024/02/28/kde-neon-6-available-now/.
60. ↑ Plasma 6.1 - Your Future Desktop is Ready on kde.org
61. ↑ Plasma 6.2 - Let’s Get Creative on kde.org
62. ↑ Plasma 6.3 - It’s Pixel Perfect! on kde.org
63. ↑ Plasma 6.4 - Welcome /home on kde.org
64. ↑ Plasma 6.5 - Reaching the Inflection Point on kde.org
65. ↑ Plasma 6.6 - A visual guide to the best desktop in the known universe (according to us) on kde.org

## External links

| Wikimedia Commons has media related to KDE neon.

|

* Official website
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