End of Linux Mint with the KDE Desktop environment

Linux Mint founder, Clement Lefebvre, announced in a blog post that the upcoming Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia operating system will be the last release to feature a KDE edition.

In the post, Lefebvre said, “Users of the KDE edition represent a portion of our user base. I know from their feedback that they really enjoy it. They will be able to install KDE on top of Linux Mint 19 of course, and I’m sure the Kubuntu PPA will continue to be available. They will also be able to port Mint software to Kubuntu itself, or they might want to trade a bit of stability away and move to a bleeding edge distribution such as Arch to follow upstream KDE more closely.” He added: “KDE is a fantastic environment but it’s also a different world, one which evolves away from us and away from everything we focus on.

Their apps, their ecosystem and the QT toolkit, which is central there, have very little in common with what we’re working on.”

The bottom line is that Linux Mint 19 will be available only in Cinnamon, Xfce and MATE editions.