KiCad 5 is an exciting release. Most notably over kicad 4 it allows arbitrary placement of vias not attached to a PCB trace. It sounds like a small change, but

KiCad 5 is an exciting release. Most notably over kicad 4 it allows arbitrary placement of vias not attached to a PCB trace. It sounds like a small change, but it was really one of the last big features that other EDA programs like Eagle or Altium had and KiCad did not. When I first got into electronics Eagle (closed source) was the defacto standard EDA software for those learning how to make PCBs and many online projects. Now there is no little/no reason to use it over KiCad. CS toolchains have a long history of being FOSS, but for EE / embedded electronics a lot of important tools are closed source (and often very expensive). Its really exciting that a FOSS PCB layout tool is competitive.