Surprises never end. The KDE project is about to take a bold step by introducing its own Linux distribution. Here’s what it’s all about.
Introduced at Akademy 2024, KDE Linux (codenamed “Project Banana”) is a brand-new, still-in-development initiative by the KDE devs to bring a seamless, user-friendly experience that merges KDE software’s reliability and rich interface with cutting-edge Linux technologies.
Immediately, we want to clarify that this isn’t a rebranded version of the well-known KDE Neon developed by the KDE community. KDE Linux is an entirely new project with a completely different technical approach under the hood and ambitious goals for both developers and end users.
KDE Linux: A Vision for the Best KDE Experience
The distro is designed to be a bulletproof, highly user-friendly operating system that showcases the best of KDE technology—a system that KDE can confidently recommend to casual users and hardware manufacturers.
With an eye on simplicity, the OS will use Btrfs for its file system and introduce an image-based (immutable) approach, allowing users to easily switch between different OS versions, ensuring a secure, flexible experience without the stress of traditional system management.
KDE Linux will feature rolling OS updates based on snapshot releases and employs systemd-boot with custom theming. All mutable data, such as user home directories and cache locations, is encrypted for enhanced security.
Moreover, the architecture also includes an image-based A/B update mechanism with rollback capabilities and a recovery partition for added resilience. Users can benefit from an automatic backup system using Btrfs snapshots, which includes a user-friendly GUI similar to Apple’s Time Machine.
Using Arch as a base, KDE Linux aims to attract a broad audience, including KDE developers, enthusiasts, and hardware vendors. It will include applications from Flatpak (and possibly Snap), helping to keep the core system and applications separate for greater stability.
Among KDE Linux’s top priorities are a high-quality user experience and a system that “doesn’t break”—or, at the very least, is easy to recover if things do go awry. To keep development accessible, KDE Linux requires no packaging knowledge, simplifying the process for anyone wanting to contribute to its growth.
In keeping with modern expectations, KDE Linux will feature technologies like Wayland by default and a read-only base system, similar to other immutable Plasma-focused Linux distros like openSUSE Kalpa and Fedora Kinoite. This approach ensures that the core operating system remains tamper-proof and reliable while user-specific data remains flexible.
There are several editions planned for KDE Linux, each built to suit a different group of users:
- Testing Edition: Updated daily and aimed at quality assurance testers and KDE developers.
- Enthusiast Edition: Targets KDE enthusiasts and power users with beta and stable releases.
- Stable Edition: Built for everyday users, with a delayed release schedule that prioritizes stability.
These will allow users to choose between the latest features or a more conservative, stable environment. Moreover, should their needs change over time, switching between editions will be simple and risk-free.
What Makes KDE Linux Unique?
Now, on to the other main question—why do we need another heavily KDE-focused distribution when we already have KDE Neon and KaOS? The main difference lies in the fact that, unlike some other Linux distributions, KDE Linux will be distributed by KDE itself, which brings many advantages.
First, it ensures a clear chain of responsibility that isn’t reliant on third parties, enabling KDE to build direct relationships with hardware partners and recommend KDE Linux without favoritism.
Furthermore, KDE Linux will use systemd tooling, such as systemd-sysupdate, for seamless updates, making it more efficient compared to other distros relying on different update methods.
For those unfamiliar, systemd-sysupdate is a system service that allows unprivileged clients to update the system, which brings the benefits of an image-based design, including immutability, automatic updates, adaptability, factory resets, and uniformity.
On top of that, the distro will also distinguish itself by its forward-thinking approach to software distribution.
Instead of relying on legacy packaging systems, KDE Linux will focus on modern deployment systems, such as Flatpak and systemd-sysext, a set of useful functionalities for managing system extension images, thus keeping the applications and the immutable base system separate for easier maintenance and development.
This means developers don’t need traditional packaging skills—they simply target Flatpak and other containerized formats.
Lastly, another unique aspect is KDE Linux’s approach to long-term maintenance. In case the distribution reaches its end of life, the KDE team plans to push a final update that transforms KDE Linux into a different supported distribution, ensuring users always have a path forward.
Refer to the announcement, or look here for a more detailed overview of the new KDE Linux initiative.
Personal Reflections
With that in mind, here’s my take on the subject. I believe KDE Linux will primarily appeal to a smaller, specific group of users—mainly enthusiasts eager to explore the latest KDE advancements and developers—rather than the average Linux user. The main reason for this is the buzzword in recent years, “immutability.”
Don’t get me wrong; I genuinely appreciate immutable Linux systems and use them daily, especially in contexts where they shine, like containerized workloads. However, immutability on a desktop is still a tough sell for the everyday Linux user who has relied on traditional package managers for decades.
While immutability does simplify things for developers by sidestepping the “dependency hell” of package management and provides a secure and very reliable OS foundation, it often complicates things for non-developers outside of the DevOps community. But again, this is just my personal view on the matter.
Anyway. We’re excited to see how things progress and look forward to the first stable release. Meanwhile, the distribution is currently available as an 11 GB RAW file for those eager to try it out. You can write it to a USB stick or import it into virtualization software like KVM’s virt-manager.
