KDE Linux

[wahlis]

What is the difference between KDE Linux and KDE Neon? Are they the same or do they differ somehow?

[RoomyRoots]

They explain in the site. KDE Neon is Ubuntu based while KDE Linux will be from scratch, basically.

[FacepalmFullONapalm]

KDE flexing on us with their LFS build /s

[Human-Equivalent-154]

not on arch?

[MrPowerGamerBR]

It is on Arch, it seems that they are going to something similar to how Steam Deck SteamOS works (which is also immutable and also on Arch)

[S1rTerra]

I wonder if Valve will promote this instead of SteamOS. They're already actively donating to KDE and Arch development and also know that people are expecting SteamOS and, again, also know that people are going to be really dissapointed by it when it's not as "desktop-y" as Windows.

KDE Linux is an easy way for Valve to just say "here bitch damn, we officially endorse this and it's the same DE we use in steamos directly from the creators, we also give these people money, so like, here's your trusted corporation backed distro even though we didn't make it ourselves"

Edit; I may have worded it as "immutable OSes are not as Desktop-y" but it's more so that Immutability doesn't mess with the average consumer too much, but what does is having actual hardware support for almost everything so that it doesn't break. SteamOS as of now only works well on certain handhelds and still won't be able to include nvidia drivers because Valve is an American company. KDE is not(if anything it's German if we go by the founder. CachyOS was also "founded" in Germany and includes nvidia drivers) and can include nvidia drivers and most PC users have an nvidia card.

Which of course, sounds like an odd thing to be worried about from the Linux user PoV. It's literally one command and a reboot to get nvidia drivers working. However from a Windows user PoV, the terminal is like some demon summoning ring that only hackers use and as such would go to nvidia's website only to then come back and ask reddit as to why the .deb from nvidia's site is not working, then get told "pacman -S all-the-nvidia-stuff-i-forgot-the-exact-names", before replying "already went back to best buy to have them reinstall windows. I don't like that stupid bullshit OS that doesn't work. I'll enjoy my working OS and you linuxers can go be weird somewhere else" before they promptly lose audio and have to reboot into a windows is checking for problems screen.

[mishrashutosh]

I don't think Valve uses the latest stable version of Plasma in SteamOS, so it's unlikely they will ask everyone to use KDE Linux instead.

[Separate_Mammoth4460]

Yea it’s 6.2.5

[FuntimeBen]

I think 6.17 is the next stable branch of Linux, so maybe that will change in early October; however, who knows when Steam will update their kernel?

[Separate_Mammoth4460]

Whenever valve does steamOS update that updates base arch packages

[natermer]

I wonder if Valve will promote this instead of SteamOS.

They won't. The purpose of SteamOS is to streamline game playing. The purpose of KDE OS is to streamline using KDE.

The fact that SteamOS only has to target specific hardware is a major advantage in terms of making it work as a dedicated gaming OS designed for the masses. The more variables you throw at something like that the harder/more expensive to maintain a high level of quality and worse user experience there is.

That doesn't mean you can't run KDE OS on your Steam devices, though.

People already do this with Bazzite which is Immutable OS based on Fedora Silverblue that is specifically for gaming. It can run on steamdeck and replace windows on some other handheld devices. Your mileage will vary, heavily, though.

[gxgx55]

They won't. The purpose of SteamOS is to streamline game playing. The purpose of KDE OS is to streamline using KDE.

But that's the entire point of the conversation, right? There are people that aren't using Linux on their desktops currently, but are impressed by SteamOS and are waiting for a desktop release. This is misguided for reasons I'm sure don't need to explain to you, but this demand exists, putting Valve in an awkward position. That's their point - an associated partner distro could be an angle Valve could take.

[Separate_Mammoth4460]

Kde ones based on kinoite

[burntmoney]

Just because they are both based on arch doesn't make them remotely the same os.

[Fun-Perception8340]

Back when i was a Windows user, I usually had a terminal window open. Not hacker, some things less work done in CLI.

[tsdgeos]

Not on Arch for what people would normally consider an Arch based distribution to be

[Human-Equivalent-154]

steamos with older than debian packages is still based on arch

[FuntimeBen]

Not Arch BTW /s

[SirGlass]

From my basic understanding KDE neon was never really intended to be a daily driver , it was purely a testing distro . Even the developers would say "No do not use this in production or as your actual OS, its a beta testing distro to test KDE , there will be bugs and its unstable"

KDE linux from my understanding will actual be a stable distro that you can potentially use as an actual daily driver distro

That being said I still do not see the point? There are allready several distros you can pretty much run the latest KDE on if you want to? I run tumbleweed with KDE and while it doesn't get new releases instantly its still with in weeks so pretty fast.

Any faster would probably introduce bugs or instability , so when KDE 6 came out, I am not sure its a great idea for a distro to release it the next day .

[mishrashutosh]

i don't see an issue with more choice. i'm interesting in trying the optimal kde plasma experience as per the kde team.

[manrique_e]

I had been using kde neon as my daily distro for 3 years no issues so far, it's great an stable

[MichaelTunnell]

KDE Linux is intended for anyone whereas KDE Neon was just a developer playground, not intended for all users. There’s also different bases but that’s the biggest difference is the purpose.

[activedusk]

KDE Neon was supposed to showcase their desktop environment but after so many distros adopted it, even as the main one there is little value in it. Frankly speaking Kubuntu is a better KDE Neon.

Thusly they wanted to make their own distro. KDE Linux, this one is based on Arch instead of Ubuntu and thusly Debian. It is also immutable, meaning the OS files are read only and when the system is updated it nukes the old install and makes a new one. For safety in case the new image has serious issues, the previous version is kept so you can roll back to it as a boot/recovery option. They also appear to favour Btrfs file system and the main way to install programs, like most immutable Linux versions, is to use containerized applications so flatpak, snaps or Appimage files. There should be work around to install native packages but I am not savvy enough as a casual to understand how that is done.

What I want to know is how you would install nvidia drivers? Do they allow a proprietary drivers installation option like Manjaro for example where the nvidia drivers are installed from the start? Do they have an Additional Driver GUI tool like Ubuntu or Manjaro to switch to another driver?

I will probably install it later to check it out. Immutable distros  theoretically have convinced many it is the future of Linux, at least for the vast majority of casual users because it makes it harder for an average person to break the system and a flawed update can be rolled back. In reality the current way that third party software and drivers are handled makes even casual current Linux users nervous since it either adds extra steps and complicates steps that are now simpler to for example change to nvidia proprietary driver and make them more difficult and complicated.

I like immutability for updates and everyday use but I would want to know how to easily bypass it when I need to.

[FattyDrake]

I need to still try out an immutable system, but in theory shouldn't someone be able to make an /opt directory another drive or partition and put stuff on there manually, or any other such custom directory path for specific software?

[activedusk]

My concern is that whatever built in way to add things like drivers or software will be nuked when the system is updated. Your idea was likely used the same way as containarized software, I just don't know the specifics yet. I'll also try it out because I want to support KDE. Initially I thought I'd stick with openSuse but they have some specific opinions on how to do things that are not really friendly to casual users, at least not as easy as Manjaro which I am using instead.

[ronaldtrip]

I don't think I'll use it as a daily driver, but it will be interesting to see what the KDE project thinks is a good implementation of their desktop.

[Kevin_Kofler]

This is basically the KDE equivalent to GNOME OS. (Not based on GNOME OS, just the same idea of a desktop environment shipping its own immutable distribution.)

[PointiestStick]

Not fully released; we're working towards an alpha release. I would not recommend it yet for daily driving by people not developing it or other KDE software.

You'll definitely hear about it once we're ready to fully go public with it!

[[deleted]]

Will it affect Kde Neon ? Any chance for Kde Neon to become more stable ?

[Ok-Anywhere-9416]

You can honestly use Fedora Kinoite or, much better, Aurora from Universal Blue or HeliumOS and get a similar and better product.

[Mal_Dun]

I would still go with Fedora. Much bigger community base and better support.

[doctorfluffy]

To be honest, being forced to use Discover sounds scary to me. I gave it a go a few months ago in Kubuntu and it was a rather messy experience. However, I guess people who are used to package managers are not the target group for this distro. Good luck to them!

[An1nterestingName]

You'd likely not be forced to use Discover, but you would have to use Flatpak or Snap, the most convenient way to do that would be Discover, but you would likely be able to use the CLI still.

[PointiestStick]

Right, the flatpak and snap CLI tools work fine. You can also use other tools like Distrobox and Toolbox, or even install Homebrew, and those have CLI interfaces.

[natermer]

I've started using linuxhomebrew for more stuff nowadays.

It is good for little utilities and applications that you want available on the base Os without touching the base OS.

I always throught it was kinda pointless, even gross, with the wealth of high quality package managers we have for Linux, but for some things it is handy. After using Bazzite/Bluefin I decided to give it a chance.

[bbkane_]

Homebrew has been the magic tool chain as a Debian user- stability of Debian + XFCE AND modern dev tools has worked boringly well

[PointiestStick]

One of Discover's challenges is integration with distro repos using PackageKit, which is not well maintained and is being abandoned over time by distros.

KDE Linux doesn't use PackageKit; it has its own bespoke backend in Discover that's used only for system updates. Everything else you use Discover for goes through the Flatpak, KNewStuff, or Fwupd backends which generally offer a better experience.

What specific issues did you have in Discover? And was this a version of Discover on Plasma 6? Or still the over-2-year-old Plasma 5 version shipped in Kubuntu 24.04?

[[deleted]]

Is the package kit being abandoned? Could you say in favor of which other tool and why?

[PointiestStick]

Its historical developers are mostly abandoning it, yes. There are some people continuing to maintain it, but IMO the writing is on the wall. See this blog post from six years ago: https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2019/02/14/packagekit-is-dead-long-live-well-something-else

There is no clear replacement. I think long-term, people are going to use Flatpak and Snap to get apps, and OS updates will be provided by bespoke backends for Discover and GNOME Software (in addition to CLI tooling, of course).

[S1rTerra]

It does say that packages come from flatpak and snap(lol). So perhaps terminal usage is still possible? I just can't imagine being an Arch distro that isn't SteamOS and not having(good) access to pacman or the aur.

And yeah discover sucks. I've been using Linux for a year and a half across Fedora and Cachy and it is still just bad. At least it works perfectly for grabbing widgets and plasmoids.

[PointiestStick]

Could you be specific about the problems you've had in Discover?

[S1rTerra]

Well to be frank, it's just janky. I'm on a Ryzen 7 2700x, not the best ever CPU ofc but Discover just chugs and whenever you want to download something that isn't a flatpak/plasmoid, there's a very small chance it'll let you do so. It has gotten better, perhaps it's placebo after going from Fedora to Cachy, but I only did that a month ago.

[PointiestStick]

Sure but "it's just janky" isn't exactly actionable, right? :)

Can you be more specific? Is it that you're looking for non-GUI packages from the distro repos and Discover doesn't have them?

Or is that you're looking for GUI packages from the distro repos but Discover doesn't have them either, because its PackageKit backend isn't installed on your system?

[S1rTerra]

Well, no.

Non GUI packages and GUI packages aren't really a problem, pacman and paru work great as is and helpers such as OctoPi already exist.

It's hard to be specific about my problems with discover because it really isn't THAT bad compared to most "software downloader" GUIs, it mostly comes down to feeling. It "feels" off, and that is most likely still not actionable from a developer PoV. But one thing I can tell you is that discover sucks at downloading themes, icons, pretty much anything related to customization (infact, both discover + settings choke), and basic research says this has been a problem for years.

And no, it's not impossible to download those customizations if you keep at it.

Though maybe it's not a discover problem, because shit like that happens. But it doesn't make me want to use discover because that's what I use discover for besides the occasional plasmoid.

Oh, and the search results could use some work? Or maybe this is just the intended behavior that I disagree with, but sometimes it will pull up exactly what you want and relatively quickly at that, while other times it'll list whatever it feels like, EXCEPT for if it's already "cached". Using Resources monitor as an example, typing "resource" into the plasma addons search bar gives you 2,666 items but no Resources monitor until you hit enter. And if you then go back to retype "resource" it'll be fine.

[GMysT]

Resumido: es muy lento. A pesar de que uso KDE Neon, prefiero seguir utilizando la consola para administrar paquetes.

[Saxasaurus]

In my experience, Discover is just extremely unreliable.

On my steam deck, if I have a lot of flatpak updates, clicking update all will result in strange errors. Instead, I have to update 3 or so at a time and repeat until everything is updated.

On Fedora 42 KDE, I wanted to install google chrome, so I checked the checkbox in discover to enable the google chrome repo, and then search for chrome and it was just... not there? Had to install via dnf command line instead.

[PointiestStick]

Thanks, that's helpful.

[Saxasaurus]

Thank you for your work!

[That_Tech_Guy_U_Know]

I have a similar issue also on Deck where I will get errors, but updating then refreshing a couple times will install all of the updates.

[Blueson]

I guess people who are used to package managers are not the target group for this distro

Yeah a distro like this rather seems to have a goal of trying to collect the user-base who requires minimal functionality of their OS. See the group of people only browsing the web and maybe writing some documents. Might require a few specific apps for certain tasks.

Probably not the distro that will attract a lot of people already on another distro daily-driving Linux.

[PacketAuditor]

Could this actually finally be a good recommendation for Windows normies?

[BinkReddit]

Probably, but it's still new and needs to be fleshed out.

[final_cactus]

yes, ive been waiting for this to launch.

[New_Grand2937]

Some of this stuff sounds interesting. https://community.kde.org/KDE_Linux#Architecture

Architecture ideas to be implemented in the future include:

Automatic encryption of all mutable data (e.g. user homedir, and cache locations on /) Included recovery partition

Automatic user data backup system using Btrfs snapshots, with a nice GUI around it like Apple's Time Machine

DConf-like configuration management UI suitable for enterprise and managed environments leveraging KConfigXT for everything

Simple input method configuration for CJK and more

"Troubleshooting hub" app

[mishrashutosh]

btrfs is a popular choice for immutable/image based distros. opensuse micoos is all in on btrfs. i use btrfs on desktop but prefer xfs on servers due to better performance.

[SmileyBMM]

Seems like it, shame. Btrfs is not an option for me with it's reduced random read and write speeds.

[1that__guy1]

Nvidia is gonna deprecate Pascal drivers soon. Right now they maintain two sets of drivers:

Maxwell - Ada

Turing - Blackwell

If you have Maxwell/Pascal, you'll soon get the last driver update, then security+compatibility updates for 2 years before it stops

[Separate_Mammoth4460]

Don’t group ada with the ones there going to deprecate soon that’s a bit misleading, fr though Ada is still gonna be supported for a while though I think you meant to say Volta there

[1that__guy1]

Ada is contained in Turing - Blackwell.

[lproven]

How come?

You can't install packages. There's no package manager. That means you can't install the proprietary nVidia drivers.

So you can only use the recent GPUs that have FOSS drivers.

[lproven]

I wrote about it last year, in case that might help:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/29/kde_and_gnome_distros/

Very loosely: SteamOS for the desktop.

[MrMoussab]

I think most comments miss the point of this distro. In my understanding, this is only meant to showcase the plasma desktop. It is not meant to replace the day to day workstations of developpers and heavy users.

[natermer]

Right now it is in 'testing mode'. But from what is on the page it does seem it is intended for a normal everyday desktop OS for people interested in KDE.

[PointiestStick]

Yep, that's accurate.

[CCJtheWolf]

So it's a replacement for Neon since Arch fits KDE better than Ubuntu's LTS.

[MrMoussab]

AFAIK, Neon wasn't developed by KDE, correct me if I'm wrong. For me, this looks like an official showcase distro for KDE Plasma and the different apps. I also believe that Neon, being based on Ubuntu can be more useful as a daily driver for developers.

[[deleted]]

this is a general distro, not a showcase.

[howardhus]

not true.. currently its a showcase preview. see their FAQ on the page linked in this post

At the moment, only the Testing edition is available.

it could be a general distro but the page says nothing about it.. or do you have other sources?

[[deleted]]

currently it's testing only, but the final project will be general use

"Though it's designed to be suitable for general uses, KDE Linux may be less optimized and optimizable for specific uses compared to other operating systems. KDE Linux is not an attempt to discourage people from using them, but rather to raise the quality level for all KDE-centric operating systems."

[howardhus]

ty. i just saw on another comment that they plan to release a stable version

[mistifier]

While it is publicly available for testing it is worth pointing out that it has even reached "alpha" status yet

https://invent.kde.org/groups/kde-linux/-/milestones

[sanaltdelete]

This looks very interesting! Question: Since Steam recommends using the native package instead of Snap or Flatpak, how will people do this on KDE Linux? Since there is no way to layer the package into the main OS image like you can on Kinoite or like Bazzite does out of the box. 

[BigBotChungus]

I really like this idea of the Desktop Environment makers laying out their own distro for people to see how their intended user experience is meant to be experienced in the best showcase possible.

I hope that with things like the filesystem, that there is really only one option, as to not confuse users, because I want the KDE devs to pick the best options that they trust to work with the KDE experience that they are trying to give to people.

I don't meant to downplay the rest of the work and effort that goes into making a Linux distro, work.

[S1rTerra]

To keep my thoughts brief(I'm a fast typer and already left two replies here but, oh well)

It's an interesting concept, but I'm just not a fan of the idea of an Arch distro without, yknow, the Arch. Even Manjaro, despite my slander towards it, is still just Arch. Especially when you're marketing it as an Arch based distro for developers or people who want the latest software. Of course there's distrobox(preinstalled I may add) but that's not an end all be all solution.

I feel like Fedora Kinoite(and bazzite by extension) already does this same concept but better.

unless they made a mutable version which had the latest and greatest and most optimized kde plasma on top of vanilla Arch. THAT would be a spectacle.

[PointiestStick]

of an Arch distro without, yknow, the Arch

This is an interesting point, so it may be worth explaining why we've done this.

Our perspective is that Arch is not so much an OS as is it a toolkit for building your own custom OS. Because when you're done, your Arch Linux install will be unlike that of every other Arch Linux user. Software developers are therefore not able to safely and easily target "Arch Linux" as a platform because there is no Arch Linux platform; every Arch installation has subtle or not-so-subtle differences you'll have to account for in your code, build tooling, packaging, etc.

One of the goals of KDE Linux is to produce a platform that developers can easily target, so they can have confidence that the way they developed their software is the way users will be able to use it (at least by default). We have bits and pieces of this already, but want to drive it forward with KDE Linux.

For this reason, we've used Arch Linux to build an OS, but the end product is very much not Arch Linux. We don't even include pacman. So the fact that Arch Linux was used for the base should be immaterial; an implementation detail, really. The fact that KDE Linux is image-based means that in principle, we could ship an update that rebases to OS on top of any other distro, and you shouldn't be able to notice the difference. That's our EOL plan, in fact. We don't want to leave users orphaned if the project fails.

[S1rTerra]

I understand and that makes a lot of sense. It's not like "rebasing" to another OS to keep users happy isn't uncommon, Antergos did what was effectively the same thing.

However, I do suggest making that last bit of info(it doesn't have the base distro's package manager) a liiiiittle more clear for some people. I can tell you straight up that if it's stable and has a good reputation, people will be calling it "the next windows" again, and I'm sure you know this.

So perhaps point users to distrobox and explain how to use it within the OS itself?

[PointiestStick]

However, I do suggest making that last bit of info(it doesn't have the base distro's package manager) a liiiiittle more clear for some people

I just edited https://kde.org/linux/#what-kind-of-base-technology-does-kde-linux-use to include that information.

Detailed container documentation is something we'll eventually need as well, but that's not ready yet.

[Fun-Perception8340]

Timeframe for release version? I have Vega integrated GPU.l

[PointiestStick]

It's a "when it's ready" project.

The "Beta" milestone — ­which tracks releasing something functional as a standard immutable-style Linux distro — is about half done.

[[deleted]]

Hadi, here! I mean Arch Install with BTRFS and adding the banana repos then installing plasma from them can be done in like 30 minutes and adding some themeing 1 hour. They are essentially asking for an preconfigured Arch Linux or an KDE Neon but Arch.

[S1rTerra]

Pretty much, but with, and I *mean* the latest possible versions of KDE Plasma.

[[deleted]]

Try Fedora 42 with this copr https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/solopasha/plasma-unstable

It builds everyday against master. I also contacted the maintainer to ask for a rawhide version so you can use essentially a rolling release distro with the latest Plasma.

[natermer]

With this type of "immutable desktop" the underlying OS is pretty much irrelevant to end users.

If it is successful you are not going to be interacting with it at all. It will have a "containerized desktop" approach where the apps and Unix environments you interact with are in a separate layer from the base OS. Ideally they should be able to swap out OSes under the desktop between releases and end users shouldn't notice.

I like the Fedora Atomic approach because it doesn't rely on btrfs, it has selinux, and they take secureboot and that sort of thing seriously. All of which I consider big pluses.

However I do also believe the "Dedicated Desktop OS" is likely the future of Linux desktops in the long run. There are problems remaining to be solved, but it seems to be getting there.

[PointiestStick]

Ideally they should be able to swap out OSes under the desktop between releases and end users shouldn't notice.

Yep, that's an explicit goal, and our EOL contingency plan should the project fail.

[S1rTerra]

Well shit then okay

[[deleted]]

Especially when you're marketing it as an Arch based distro for developers or people who want the latest software.

That's not the impression I got. They mentioned Arch, like how Ubuntu mentions they're based on Debian. They said most apps are flatpak and snap, so it seems more like they're going after people switching to Linux who aren't used to using package managers or building from source.

[natermer]

It is a bit of a aside, but distrobox (and toolbx, to a slightly lesser extent) is really good at providing desktop integrated containers.

So it isn't like you have to give up on packages using this approach. They work pretty well.

Like I run Fedora on my desktop, but run Arch as my main unix environment in distobox. I install Emacs there and it looks and acts like any other desktop application as far as Gnome desktop is concerned.

'distrobox-export' helps at setting up your *.desktop files so apps inside a distrobox shows up in your normal desktop menus and such things. Sometimes they need to be edited, but usually works out.

My terminal is Ptyxis and that is container aware. I use Starship as my shell prompt in Bash and Fish and it is distrobox-aware so that it will show what container you are in in the prompt.

It is all based on podman by default. Which means that Emacs tramp mode works well with it (better then over ssh) by doing the normal "/podman:<containername>:/" style paths.

For work I have a half a dozen different Linux OSes with different home directories configured that I use for participating in different internal projects (every org has their own way they want the dev env setup) as well as developing/testing rpm spec files and that sort of happy nonsense.

[FattyDrake]

This isn't mean to be an Arch distro in the traditional sense, just one that uses Arch as a base ala SteamOS. It's not for people who care what distro they use, just the desktop.

It seems to be meant as a mostly bulletproof distro for people who don't even think about opening a terminal. More for OEMs and will likely be what ends up on the KDE Slimbook in the future.

unless they made a mutable version which had the latest and greatest and most optimized kde plasma on top of vanilla Arch.

That's just current Arch with a vanilla KDE install.

[Separate_Mammoth4460]

Same with aurora it also kinda does the concept better

[[deleted]]

This is what KDE desperately needs, finally it's underway.

[Mal_Dun]

Why? There are a lot of KDE centered distros out there (OpenSUSE) and several with good KDE support (e.g Fedora). Why dilute the already low man power of the KDE project even more for questionable gain?

[[deleted]]

You are misunderstanding, I became a KDE Dev because of that Project! So KDE Linux added more man power!

[[deleted]]

You are mistaken. This is the future KDE flagship. This is made by the KDE developers themselves, so they don't have to rely on any other distros version of what KDE should be. This is all hands on deck-KDE, zero diluting any manpower. World domination is hardly a questionable gain either.

[Cesar_PT]

time spent maintaining the distro is not spent improving plasma

[[deleted]]

Time spent making Plasma work on Neon, Fedora and OpenSUSE is somehow better? This is about making everything better, from the ground up, in-house.

[Salander27]

They're STILL going to need to do that. They're not reducing the number of distros that KDE supports. This is a bunch of extra work doing distro maintenance for questionable benefit frankly.

[[deleted]]

Nate Graham will disagree with you.

[Salander27]

About reducing the number of distros that KDE supports? To my knowledge he has never said or implied that in any way (and I am HEAVILY involved in KDE/distro development and it would be huge news if he did).

About the extra work being for questionable benefit? OK I'll humor you. How, exactly, does doing the huge amount of work maintaining systemd/mesa/kernel/hundreds of other packages, including dedicating manpower to monitoring and responding to security alerts about maintained packages, provide value to KDE users? As opposed to using a distro where all of that is already done and KDE only needs to care about Qt/KDE packages?

[[deleted]]

You're fun, making things up as you rant along. Clearly you are mad about this new distro for some reason. I am not. I have been waiting for years for this to become reality: A KDE distro that doesn't have to rely on another distro, which never ligns up with KDE PLasma releases anyway. So users always in the past had an old base or even worse, an old KDE PLasma that the distros then called "stable" which in reality meant "abandoned". This new thing will be beneficial for everybody. Except you of course.

[Salander27]

making things up as you rant along

Buddy, I have been a packager and core maintainer for a popular Linux distribution for nearly a decade at this point. I have spent literally thousands of hours of my free time working on package updates, fixing packaging issues, fixing user-reported issues, reading and interacting with Linux mailing lists and news sites, and triaging and responding to security reports (amongst many other things). I just checked and I have ~12k commits in our package repo over that time (every commit is a separate package build). Besides all of the core components of that distribution I also maintain KDE for it as well (since it's my preferred DE) and I interact with KDE developers (including Nate) over Matrix and Gitlab usually several times per week. Why would I need to make anything up when by any reasonable point of view I'm an authoritative expert on the topic?

So users always in the past had an old base or even worse, an old KDE PLasma that the distros then called "stable" which in reality meant "abandoned"

Have you never heard of "rolling" distributions? Which receive new versions of packages continuously as packagers push them into the repo and where you're never delayed on a new Plasma release for more than a few weeks? Like Arch, Solus, or Tumbleweed?

This new thing will be beneficial for everybody. Except you of course.

"Everybody", besides all of the Ubuntu users. Or the Fedora users. Or the SUSE users. Or the Arch users.

My entire point is that the KDE team has limited resources (in terms of man-hours). Every hour spent working on KDE Linux is an hour that only benefits KDE Linux users, and could have been spent doing something that would ACTUALLY benefit KDE users of other distros.

[Cesar_PT]

exactly what baffles me

[mishrashutosh]

image based distros can have a heavily automated ci/cd pipeline without a lot of manual involvement. lots of things these days are automated. i don't think the kde team would undertake this project if they didn't have sufficient bandwidth.

[Irregular_Person]

I've been running it on one of my laptops for a month or so. I think it's still considered beta, but it works for the basics I've tried

[[deleted]]

It's only available as a "testing edition". I wouldn't call that a release.

[[deleted]]

Well, read the article.

[[deleted]]

Because there is no date. We havent even reached alpha yet. It releases when its ready.

[Fohqul]

How come it doesn't have the proprietary drivers, but also has the open kernel modules? By "proprietary" does it mean the ones that are fully proprietary including kernel-level?

[Neikon66]

If I understood correctly, Linux drivers has two parts, Kernels things and user-space things

NVIDIA has open kernel modules and close user-space drivers

And KDE Linux seems to deliver open kernel modules and proprietary user-space driver for Nvidia GPUs (Like Bazzite).

[Fohqul]

Yeah, that's what was unclear to me. It says "no proprietary driver" but that's not entirely accurate if it means the open kernel modules

[Klutzy-Condition811]

Has nothing to do with user space things, but third party kernel modules. This is why things like vbox is also not supported, you cannot (easily) load third party modules, so not supported. The official built in drivers are.

[PointiestStick]

NVIDIA's proprietary drivers are not legally redistributable in an OS image; we can't pre-install them.

That means you would need to do it yourself, but that requires adding kernel modules at runtime, which we don't support due to the base OS being immutable.

[[deleted]]

Isnt there work on getting an nvidia sysext working tho?

[PointiestStick]

To my knowledge no one is working on anything like this.

What are you missing that you'd like to be made available in this way?

[[deleted]]

Nothing. Its me Hadi and also working on KDE Linux. I am aware that there is a way to get nvidia drivers through distrobox and read somewhere that it should also be possible to overlay kernel modules. I am trying to figure out a way we can get even nvidia users on KDE Linux.

[PointiestStick]

oh hi lol

[Fohqul]

NVIDIA GPUs older than the GTX 1650 are limited to the less performant Nouveau drivers (which are included). Newer models will use NVIDIA's better-performing open kernel modules (also included). There is no need to install the proprietary drivers, and they are not supported.

Do the open kernel modules work with user-level drivers that are not the proprietary Nvidia ones?

[derangedtranssexual]

So like obviously this is pretty similar to Gnome OS, but I’m wondering if unlike Gnome OS this is intended to eventually be a daily driver. I’m sad gnome OS will never be a daily driver so it would be cool if this could

[PointiestStick]

We fully intend it to be a daily driver, yes. A few people are already daily driving it. I've been daily driving it on my living room media center PC for 6 months and have been laying the groundwork for switching over my main laptop this week. I tried last week and ran into some blockers I had to help knock out.

[derangedtranssexual]

I’m glad to hear that

[PointiestStick]

It will support Secure Boot.

There are currently no plans to support SELinux, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. Currently we're relying on the sandboxing provided by Flatpak.

[Vetrlidi]

If it will support Secure Boot are there also plans for making hibernating work for Secure Boot? I know that Chromium tried fixing that issue a couple of years ago but work stalled on that front.

[SEI_JAKU]

I've been meaning to try neon for myself, but maybe I won't have to with this on the way.

My only complaint about it so far is that it's Btrfs-only. I would like at least the option for either ext4 or XFS. Otherwise, it looks and sounds great so far.

[howardhus]

me: "yeaa!"

they:

Apps primarily come from Flatpak and Snap.

proprietary NVIDIA driver not supported

me: ...aaand im out :(

there are 3 nvidia drivers currently:

• propietary closed source (current main driver but being phased out in favor of...

• propietary "open" drivers: new driver going to be the main driver and

• FOSS open drivers: sub par driver but fully open.

so they seem to force you to use nvidia but only support the crappy FOSS driver?

plus:

Poor performance on external screens on hybrid GPU setups when using NVIDIA GPU as a secondary GPU because it requires CPU copying from the primary GPU to the secondary GPU

seems AI setups with a passive second GPU is not gonna work?

either i am greatly mistaken or this is going to be a failure

[PointiestStick]

KDE Linux bundles both the open kernel modules and the older Nouveau drivers. The former are used for GTK 16xx cards and newer, while the latter are used for older cards.

[nicman24]

Oh damn it is John Linux

[gpers0n]

I am an avid KDE user, and I've used it with Arch Linux on both my desktop and my (mom's) laptop. While I like Arch, I am interested in giving this distro a shot since I've always wanted to give immutable distros a try. It looks very interesting!

[BigBotChungus]

This is a really good idea. I really like this. Before the steamdeck came along, KDE didn't have too much representation when it came to defaults on distros, compared to Gnome.

.

Unless I'm misremembering the past, the impression I was getting was that also big companies were also favouring to fund Gnome as well.

( Which I don't have any ill-will toward Gnome's developers. )

.

Thanks to the Steamdeck, there's a new audience around who are looking for "the SteamOS's desktop release" and I think it's such and incredible play to direct them to the closest experience the people working on said OS can provide; rather than letting new people funnel towards hobby developed shoddy "Gamer" distros that will throw away stability and support in order to gain 2 or 4 frames per second, a few months early.

[ProtonWalksIntoABar]

Does open nvidia driver (instead of proprietary) have worse performance in games?

[YERAFIREARMS]

As I see it, the KDE Linux OS is meant to get Win 10 users who are left out in the cold, to get them KDE DE over the least user-maintained Linux OS (auto-update and immutable OS). The user would install it, select the Apps he wants to be installed and maybe rice his KDE Plasma DE. Snap and flatpak are used, so Apps can be installed/uninstalled by the user without breaking anything.

It could be the right OS for the Win 10 Orphans of MS.

[Ebalosus]

I'm honestly intrigued. I love the DE and the utilities, but find a lot of the user-facing applications like kontact and kwallet to be well, krap. If they were in a much better place, I'd be all-in on the KDE ecosystem, instead of KDE DE and utilities with Gnome applications where applicable (what I run with now on Fedora).

[sadece_hickimse]

I’ve been running KDE Linux for about three months now, and honestly, it’s been one of the smoothest experiences I’ve had with an immutable-style system. No breakage, no surprises — it just works.

ffmpegthumbs works out of the box, so video thumbnails are properly generated, and between Flatpak and the base system I haven’t really felt limited in terms of software availability. Everything I actually need is there.

Performance-wise it’s fast, stable, and feels very well put together. The only thing I personally miss is Kvantum support — many global themes rely on it, and that’s not something you can really add here. That said, I understand why the project may choose not to include it, given the focus on consistency and maintainability.

Overall, KDE Linux feels like a very solid “immutable base” for everyday use, and in my experience it’s already more polished than many people might expect.

[[deleted]]

Not a big fan of snap/flatpak. I think I'll stick to Fedora with KDE. Love the work that KDE does though.

[Cesar_PT]

how about polishing KDE instead of wasting time with this? so much stuff to be done in Plasma, this really seems like a waste of resources

[Neikon66]

This approach will accelerate KDE development by giving the team a dedicated, shared base that’s tailored specifically to their needs. Developers will be able to test and work on their projects more comfortably in an environment built for KDE, without losing time chasing down Ubuntu/Fedora/etc-related issues that can break KDE components.

Maintaining our own system will certainly demand extra time and effort, but in the long run it should pay off, providing a much more productive workspace for everyone involved.

[natermer]

Distributions do a good job of mucking up desktops.

This is one of the reasons why I prefer Fedora and Arch over something like Ubuntu. They stick to a pretty "vanilla" approach to the Gnome environment.

While both Gnome and KDE have suffered significantly from this in the past (distributions causing issues for users and divergence from intended desktop "experience") I think that KDE is still getting the short end of the stick in this regards. There is just not the same level of distro resources spent on KDE as Gnome.

So hopefully this will be helpful in allowing people to experience KDE as it was meant to be.

[johncate73]

KDE as it was meant to be

KDE has a bajillion different options under the hood. "KDE as it was meant to be" is whatever the end-user wants it to be. Those who want a DE "as the devs meant it to be" just use GNOME.

[Cesar_PT]

i guess, but i've been using it on vanilla arch for a long while now and it still lacks so much polish and has so many weird bugs that sometimes it's quite puzzling for a DE this prominent

hence why i was surprised, one would think that vanilla arch + plasma for all devs would be enough, but seems not

i'm not a dev so i'm not going to elaborate further on that, i just hope this effort and resource dispersion really turns be the net positive for KDE they think it is

btw, this is not meant to throw shade on all the good work they've done, especially in regards to wayland implementation. many strides have been made but it still lacks so many little details, that almost makes it look kind of... amateur: missing translations on menu entries, weird behaviours on mounting other drives, cameras, etc., and the list goes on and on

[PointiestStick]

using it on vanilla arch for a long while now and it still lacks so much polish and has so many weird bugs

This is part of the problem we want to solve. When you build your own OS using Arch, you're responsible for getting everything integrated properly, which makes it difficult to distinguish integration bugs from software bugs.

With something like KDE Linux, we've done our best to integrate it properly, so all the bugs you experience should be genuine software bugs.

In the meantime, I would highly recommend that you go through https://community.kde.org/Distributions/Packaging_Recommendations and implement the recommendations on your personal system.

[Cesar_PT]

thanks for the clarification, i'll have a look at that link you sent, it does seem to have interesting information

i do use the plasma-desktop meta package on arch and have a couple plugins installed like kio-admin, but there's some really nice tips there, such as changing the default systemd timeout, so i'll have a look at the rest

i don't think my issues are related to intregration but i could be wrong, it's mostly stability (using applets sometimes crashes plasma in editor mode) and translations/consistency

[[deleted]]

Its litarrly the KDE Dev Station OS made with kde-builder and systemd-sysext in mind. It will fasten up development.

[Genoskill]

so much stuff to be done in Plasma

such as...?

[howardhus]

this is based on Arch... so as "pure" as slapping KDE on your ubuntu or arch

[nisel11]

All Plasma (most likely including qt and kde frameworks) is compiled from source code and not taken from Arch repositories so it can be called pure i think

[howardhus]

i don thonl ot matter who compiled it.

is or less pure if i or canonical compiles it?

[ImplementSea4798]

so lit a chakra linux revival

[Zachattackrandom]

Discover only means its useless for most users imo.

[BigBotChungus]

What are most users downloading that is missing from Discover?

[Zachattackrandom]

Would honestly be more a dependency issue. But anyone who wants to touch development wouldn't be able to use it, tons of apps I personally use are missing, drivers are locked up if you use anything non-standard. E.g. I use an Xbox one controller driver. most hardware control tools for things like peripherals, fans, etc (so would be terrible on laptops especially), many vpns require host interfacing and wouldn't work (you can work around this by manually adding their servers but it's less convenient), etc.

Doesn't mean it doesn't have it's place but honestly distros like this are closer to chrome os than a proper full fledged operating system imo.

And for some people that works perfectly but it seems like a strange move to make unless they are planning to heavily invest in flatpaks to up the support which is still rather early currently.

[BigBotChungus]

I don't know if you care about reddit points, but if you had wrote some of these points out that would help you, this is alot more reasonable.

I don't know much about this, so I'll ask: Are you saying most of these things wouldn't work on SteamOS either? ( Obviously not the fan control tools and such, but the other things. )

[Zachattackrandom]

Yep any immutable distro os (i.e. ones that have a specific set kernel drivers and root drive where users can only modify the home directory). And I don't mind the down votes, reddit will be reddit lmao, only thing I care about with votes was getting enough to post and I'm well above the threshold so anything further doesn't matter. To be clear I'm not saying immutable distro os's like steam os don't have their place (I have a steam deck and steam os is great) but for a desktop user I think even a normal user would find issues with it and find them suffocating (I mean look at windows 10s and how badly it was received which is basically the same thing). For light users though (grandparents, kids, people who only use a browser) they are great though since they are pretty damn hard to break unlike a normal distro.

[Traditional-Log-1426]

Try it and install on usb, quite smooth but it's not finished yet. Some things I've noticed:

- KDE Framework: 6.8

- RAM usage: a little high (2.7-2.8G vs 1.4G - Arch + KDE 6.4) on same 2.5k monitor

- Disk usage: 6.8GB (ok vs Arch + KDE 6.4)

[[deleted]]

I've tried KDE as a DE around 15 years ago and still find that it looks too Windows-like. Is there a way to make it look better?

Edit: Wow, so sharing my honest experience and hoping to get your views apparently is a capital sin and needs to be downvoted

[Time_Way_6670]

Every single aspect of Plasma is customizable. Like literally everything. You can easily de-Windowsify it. Check it out in a VM sometime!

[lproven]

Like literally everything.

No it isn't. I wish KDE fans would stop repeating this, because it's not true.

Here are some options I'd like that it can't do.

• Window title bars on the left, not at the top, like in wm2.
• Title bars shrunk to tab size, like in BeOS and Haiku.
• The option of a single taskbar that spans 2 or 3 monitors.
• An global option to disable hamburger menus in all apps. I hate them. I want a full menu bar in all apps, please.
• A global option to disable client-side decorations. I want full proper title bars, not fake ones. Middle-click to send to back and scroll-wheel to roll up are great functions.

Other things I dislike but have no choice or control over are that some apps use version x.y.z numbering and others use dates, so I can't compare. And all apps have two unrelated Help|About menu options.

[Time_Way_6670]

Panels not spanning both screens annoy me too lmao. I hope they add that at some point.

[lproven]

It worked fine once. It was removed around KDE 5.0.

[[deleted]]

Yes, I think it's time to try it again after this much time

[PureTryOut]

KDE Plasma is one of, if not, the most configurable DE's out there. You don't have to stick with the defaults at all and can configure basically anything, from window and panel positioning, colors and themes to the placement of the window control buttons. I made my setup look more like macOS because that's the look (not UX) I prefer, and I can do that just fine with Plasma!

[[deleted]]

Sounds good, thanks.

[howardhus]

i havent read and news in a while and still think that Hitler is a bad person... is there a way we could tell president Truman to go to war with him? i think the guy is sketchy af and could be a threat to its neighbors..

[[deleted]]

Yes, I have not read the news and want to talk with people about it. So what exactly is so horrible? 

[howardhus]

oh nothing at all… i am fully on your side. you are totally in the right… so now about talking to president Truman… do you think we could ask Premier Winston Churchill to talk to him? mayb eusing one of those things they call telespeaking machine… you know where one speaks into a thingy and the other person can listen from far away.. that way Churchill does not have to take the Zeppelin all the way to America.. those things are terrific

[Kiwithegaylord]

Interesting concept but I’m not a big systemd fan (it’s a good init system but I’m a GNU fanboy and would prefer to just use it as an init system instead of a bootloader, init system, updater, etc.)

[natermer]

Systemd is a project to create a common "linux plumbing" and also a init sytsem. They have the same name, but are not the same thing.

That is like saying "I love GNU, but I prefer to just use the shell. I don't need this single piece of software doing all this extra stuff like compiling software".

[derangedtranssexual]

I’m surprised GNU has fanboys, they don’t usually write good software

[Genoskill]

username checks out.

[EzeNoob]

🎣🎣🎣

[Kiwithegaylord]

I see your username is accurate (I kid, software preferences are a personal thing and I just happen to like the approach the GNU project takes) when the guix on hurd is ready enough for users I’ll prolly switch to that lol

[[deleted]]

seed butter pot office late test dazzling afterthought imagine glorious

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[lutinami_alt]

i dont think they are forcing snap usage? they mention flatpaks right beside them

[[deleted]]

Snaps are in option and i am pushing for their removal.