Plasma 5.17 has been released.
Of particular note is the change from bash startup scripts to C++ compiled launching tools.
I am holding off on upgrading until the weekend so i can fix crap if it causes disruption.
Have any of you upgraded yet?
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Interesting, I would have thought that Bash was better. But it appears that C++ is superior:
First of all, Plasma now starts even faster! Among many other optimizations, start-up scripts have been converted from Bash (a slow, interpreted language) to C++ (a fast, compiled language) and now run asynchronously. This means they can run several tasks simultaneously, instead of having to run them one after another. As a result, the time it takes to get from the login screen to the fully loaded desktop has been reduced significantly.
Although, I thought Bash allowed for multiple things to be done at once… Maybe I’m confusing that for something else. lol.
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I thought Bash allowed for multiple things to be done at once
Not natively. Job control allows you to fire off a job and background it, and other GNU utils like parallel let you run concurrent ones, but bash alone doesn’t. (Bash also lacks native floating point math.)
They could probably do the same things using bash, but it would add a dependency of additional GNU utils. And on that note, a fair number of KDE-shipping OSes don’t like GNU dependencies because of the license and all of the GNU-isms in the code. Mostly the *BSDs, where KDE is very popular.
So… probably a sane choice for KDE. 
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just adding to this thread. . .
I updated last night to 5.17 on the laptop. it seems to feel a bit snappier. I haven’t had any issues with links not working etc.
Pretty smooth update so far!
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