XP Transformation Pack 1.0 — Public Beta

XP Transformation Pack 1.0 — Public Beta (1.0.0) — 2026-10-18

The first public release of XP Transformation Pack: a Windows XP look for KDE Plasma 6, based on hotsocket's XPlasma. Desktop is installed by default; the IE6-style Firefox theme is optional.

What's in it:

• XP visual styles (Luna Blue, Olive Green and Silver, Royale, Royale Noir, Zune, Embedded) and Windows Classic, with custom colours, for window borders, applications, the taskbar, Start menu and tray.
• XP fonts with crisp XP text, icons, pointers, sounds, wallpapers, desktop shortcuts, window behaviour and caption animations.
• XP Welcome, lock, login and boot screens, logoff and shutdown dialogs.
• XPlasma Properties for themes, colours and settings after installation.
• In-place upgrades, a Remove that restores your previous desktop and leaves nothing behind, and a Rebuild for Plasma updates.

Changes since the last alpha:

• Setup asks you to close other programs before installing, and to log out and back in afterwards.
• Plasma no longer crashes during installation: the desktop is left to finish loading before Setup restarts it again.
• KDE's password prompt no longer shows garbled text when reinstalling without logging out.
• Window caption animations follow the colours of the current theme.

Extract the complete archive and open Start-Installer.desktop (or run ./install.sh) as your desktop user, and close other programs first. Linux dependencies require internet access. Supplied XP resources are included; no XP ISO is required. Log out and back in after installing.

Upgrading from an alpha or Release Candidate 1: run this installer and choose Upgrade installation. An installation that includes features this edition doesn't offer (such as the XP apps) needs Remove installed features first.

Matching Kubuntu 26.04 AMD64 native components are included. Other distributions and architectures, Fedora on ARM64 among them, build compatible components from the bundled source during installation (Plasma 6.6 and 6.7 widget sources are included). Tested on Fedora 44 Asahi Remix (ARM64), and on Kubuntu 26.04 (AMD64) through the alpha releases.

This is a public beta. Please report problems at https://github.com/andymenard/XP-Transformation-Pack/issues

Windows XP assets remain Microsoft's copyright and are not covered by the project licence; Setup marks the features that use them as non-free. See the README's licence section.

Source: a87a23e
Kubuntu build: https://github.com/andymenard/XP-Transformation-Pack/actions/runs/39168397747
Installer regression tests: 143 run, 9 skipped, no failures (repository, clean home). Native suites pass apart from one apply test that needs the XP media. Native source/prebuilt identities and exclusion of the OTA payload and update-check autostart were verified.

Credits and licenses remain in CREDITS.md, THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES and LICENSES/. SHA256SUMS.sig authenticates SHA256SUMS with release-key.pem. No OTA feed or update payload is published by this release.