KDE Connect has officially reached the first stable 1.0 release after a year of development. And now it’s made into Kubuntu Backports Landing PPA.

KDE Connect is a project that aims to communicate all your devices. For example, with KDE Connect you can receive your phone notifications on your computer, or just use your phone as a remote control for your desktop.

New features in KDEConnect 1.0:

• Trigger custom commands from your phone
• Reply to SMS messages from your desktop
• Receive desktop notifications on your phone
• TLS encryption

For more details, read the official announcement.

How to install KDE Connect 1.0 in Ubuntu 16.04:

Kubuntu Backports Landing PPA is a test repository for packages that will land in KUbuntu Backports PPA.

1. Open terminal and add the PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports-landing

2. This build uses the old packaging, you need to remove the old kdeconnect-plasma package before installing the new release:

sudo apt remove kdeconnect-plasma

3. Update and install KDEConnect 1.0:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install kdeconnect

And also install the latest KDE Connect in Android device from Google Play.

Undo / Restore the changes:

To downgrade installed packages and libraries from that repository, run command the purge the PPA:

sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports-landing

In addition, the maintainer offers a separate PPA with KDEConnect 1.0 packages for Ubuntu 16.10, and Ubuntu 16.04. However, the 16.04 build requires Qt5 core libraries >= 5.6.0.