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Not if you want to remain on new Plasma, you can expect Debian to lag several minor versions behind.

I've found it pretty easy though to use some KDE components built from source on top of the standard Debian packages. Build with kdesrc-build, then have those binaries linked to from your ~/bin and you're set. It might get difficult if you want to rebuild some key components like plasmashell itself but I've been using locally built versions of Kate and Konsole without issue.



> you can expect Debian to lag several minor versions behind.

Not necessarily forever, though. Bookworm got minor Plasma updates, so I wouldn't be surprised if Trixie does as well.


Bookworm stayed on Plasma 5.27.5 when Plasma shipped bugfix releases up to 5.27.12. Debian may have cherry-picked a handful of patches from there, but that's a lot of bugfixes missed on a release that was already super old.

Even at this point, Plasma 6.4 has been out for almost two months and 6.3 will not get any more updates ever. While everyone else is upgrading, Debian is going to be stuck on an already unsupported version for another two years or however much.

Debian is great for what it is, but you better hope you don't run into issues with your desktop environment because they will not be addressed.


There are options if you're willing to put in the work and run the risk of breaking things.

You can always not install QT or KDE packages and compile your desktop from source. It's a major pain in the ass but I did it for years. A side benefit is you can participate in testing and interact with KDE developers directly.

Another option is to go all FrankenUNIX and add neon sources to your apt cache. I've done similar but I don't recommend it.

Or you can just run unstable. Lots of people do. I did for a long time, and as long as you're willing to fix the package system occasionally it's not a bad experience. Certainly better than the two previous options.


I am more than happy to say on Plasma 6.3 instead of hopping between versions where dragging files into a browser works and next update it doesn't.




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