KDE Plasma is the desktop environment made by the KDE community.
This has been the correct terminology since 2009, much longer than “the past year or so”, but a lot of people do still call KDE Plasma just “KDE” colloquially, so maybe you have just been noticing people using the correct terminology more recently.
KDE is a community of developers.
KDE Plasma is the desktop environment made by the KDE community.
This has been the correct terminology since 2009, much longer than “the past year or so”, but a lot of people do still call KDE Plasma just “KDE” colloquially, so maybe you have just been noticing people using the correct terminology more recently.