KDE neon

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). 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. 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. Seven laptops have been released with KDE neon pre-installed: KDE Slimbook (released on Thursday, 26 January 2017), KDE Slimbook II (Thursday, 8 February 2018), KDE Slimbook III (2020), KDE Slimbook IV (Wednesday, 6 July 2022) KDE Slimbook V (2024), KDE Slimbook VI (2024), and KDE Slimbook VII (2025) 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. Daily installation images began being built in January 2016.