Here’s something that’s both surprising and, in a way, not surprising at all, especially after yesterday’s announcement from KaOS, a distribution long known for its deep commitment to the KDE Plasma desktop, that it plans to move away from it. The main reason cited was KDE’s reliance on systemd in a specific component.
As expected, the news quickly gained traction, prompting KDE to clarify its dependence on systemd and which parts of the desktop environment rely on it. In a post on KDE’s Reddit community titled “A quick anti-FUD FAQ to debunk ‘the KDE is forcing systemd!’ hoax“, the contributor described the claims as misinformation and provided a short FAQ clarifying the project’s position.
Here’s a brief summary of the facts. As I informed you a month ago, Plasma 6.6 (scheduled for release tomorrow, February 17) will introduce the new Plasma Login Manager (PLM), which is intended to replace the long-used SDDM. However, to many people’s surprise, PLM has functional dependencies on systemd. This means that Linux distributions that don’t use systemd, as well as BSD variants, won’t be able to use it.
But immediately, it’s important to clarify that this applies only to the login manager itself. Nothing prevents you from continuing to use SDDM, or any other login manager, to start Plasma. You can even launch the desktop environment directly from the terminal if you prefer. The systemd dependency applies strictly to the new PLM, and nothing beyond that.
The good news is that in the post, the contributor further stated that KDE has no plans to make Plasma’s core components dependent on systemd. So, the desktop environment will continue to function on systemd-free and non-Linux systems, such as FreeBSD, as before. That’s it. End of the story. There is no need to worry.
Now, let me add a brief perspective of my own. For reasons beyond the scope of this article, systemd has long been a divisive topic in the Linux community. Some strongly support it, while others reject it outright, to the point that an entire category of distributions has emerged around the idea of being systemd-free.
If we look at how things stand with the other leading desktop environment, GNOME, it is obvious that systemd dependencies are more deeply integrated. However, there’s an important nuance here. GNOME, like systemd, has been developed with significant backing from Red Hat, so that this dependency feels somewhat natural and expected. In other words, the open-source community is more or less faced with a fait accompli.
KDE, on the other hand, has traditionally maintained a greater distance from corporate influence, giving it the freedom to chart its own path. This independence is one of the factors (aside from the desktop environment’s undeniable strengths) that has earned it widespread sympathy and a good reputation in open source circles.
For that reason, the introduction of a systemd dependency in the Plasma Login Manager caught some users off guard. Of course, if systemd were ever to become a hard requirement for the desktop environment itself, that would meaningfully change the conversation. But as things stand, this is not expected to happen.
So, at the end of the day, Plasma remains fully usable and accessible across Linux and BSD systems. Yes, some users won’t be able to use the new PLM, but ultimately, it’s just a login manager. The desktop environment itself remains unaffected, which is a wise move by the KDE developers.
you are wasting your time trying to find connections between kde, systemd and redhat when the kernel itself has redhat among its major sponsors. Instead freeBSD (the largest independent systemd distro) is already thinking about a desktop version with kde plasma…. https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/freebsd_15_installer_offers_kde/
wake up people!!
Despite using KDE for over 25 years (since KDE1 time), 10 of them being even a lowly contributor, I got banned from that subreddit. The reason was this comment (deleted on the subreddit, reposted on my profile):
https://www.reddit.com/user/SaxoGrammaticus1970/comments/1r6akmo/banned_from_rkde/
The moderators banned me from the subreddit and in a note they added: “It goes withtou saying that we don’t allow people spreading lies. 🤷”
Upon deleting my comment, the mods commented: “the post tries to rage bait and lacks quality”.
People may disagree with my comment, but, Is really a ragebait or is a legitimate objection? Does it lack quality? Does it spread lies?
KDE is one of the nicest communities out there. Too sad that one of the mods decided to behave like a jerk on a power trip.
You be the judge.
Join the resistance. https://bigbrie.com/mailman3/postorius/lists/lug-nuts.bigbrie.com/
You probably got banned because, whether you were intentionally trying to spread misinformation, your comment was spreading misinformation:
“Did Plasma Login Manager remove all non-systemd functionality from SDDM, with the devs going out of their way in order to force systemd use with this login manager?
Yes.”
This is flat out false. KDE’s default login manager is based on a fork of SDDM that does not use systemd, but regulat SDDM and any number of other non-systemd login managers can still be used with Plasma. This has been clarified over and over and for some reason, people refuse to accept this. Furthermore, KDE even added other compatibility updates for non-systemd OSes like BSD in this update.
This also isn’t even the first time that KDE included software that relies on systemd but like always, it’s always an optional packages that the core system does not rely on.
The problem has a name: IBM Red Hat.
A large fraction of the Linux community does not trust this company.
There is no surprise in there, as IBM is deeply involved with NSA.
Couldn’t agree more. They are trying harder and harder to cannibalize the Linux stack, to control it and to lock everyone into NIH software they can control the development of.
They are very much against the philosophy of open source and choice. Because choice doesn’t serve their financial interests.
And that fraction is growing. And the ecosystem beyond Red Hat is growing too, whether outside of systemd or flatpak, or wayland, or Gnome, and recently a lot of historically Gtk-based DEs dropped Gtk as a whole, or bypassed the purpose of libadwaita.
Some will say it’s all protest software, and it might even have started as such, but it’s now gaining enough traction to be a lot more than that. systemd-free distros are gaining popularity by the day at the moment. Devuan and Void or Artix. And KaOS is the new kid on the block.
“systemd-free distros are gaining popularity by the day at the moment. Devuan and Void or Artix. And KaOS is the new kid on the block.”
Those are all forks of other systemd distros. You forgot to mention a genuinely non systemd distro, gentoo
Breaking: Public companies want to make money, news at 11.
BTW, RedHat has been one the most pro open source companies that ever existed (they even bought several closed source companies and released their software as free software), so the rest of your comment is absolutely baseless.
*one of the most against open source companies that ever existed (and it shows, which is why most of their software is losing market share of late).
Also, the problem is not that they want to make money, I’m very much a capitalist and I have no problem with it.
But it’s how they play dirty, against the philosophy of open source, acting like sharks with attempts at crushing and extinguishing every competing project.
They are literally ready to do anything to remove the competition, most often of low morality, like using botfarms and fake communities (Red Hat e-mails de facto) to achieve it.
A lot of people now agree that they’re Microsoft-level anti-FOSS toxic.
I have better values than that, personally. Most companies generating billions of revenues do better.
Where the heck is my tin-foil hat, dagnabit!?
Long live Devuan, long live sysvinit, long live KDE. systemd will soon make coffee too, but we don’t have to drink it.
Great article, with all the viewpoints offered, which is extremely rare in tech journalism as most pseudo-journalists are biased and processing the information rather than relaying it.
I suppose the systemd-free distros will have no problem ship another greeter to log you in Plasma, it’s not like choice is missing, between sddm, lightdm, ly, greetd, etc…
I personally think this is still a step in the wrong direction, relying more heavily on Red Hat is just plain wrong, and KDE devs are buying into the attempt of Red Hat to spread their tentacles everywhere so as to control every bit of the Linux stack deep enough that users will get locked into their software. It’s a properly dumb move.
But as said above, it’s nothing you can’t bypass. At least for now as we all know Red Hat does these things incrementally.
That’s a misconception: systemd != RedHat.
systemd was initially developed by Lennart Poettering while working for RH yes, but also Kay Sievers who at the time worked for SUSE/Novell.
Poettering doesn’t work for RH anymore, he was untill recently a Microsoft employee.
Personally, I think the hatred for systemd stems more from Poettering who is a very controversial figure in the FOSSphere, than from actual technical qualities of the software.
And as you hint at the end: this is FOSS, there’s always a choice 🙂
It is 90% a Red Hat sponsored pet project, disguised as a fake community project for gullible people. Red Hat 101. This is what they do. Most contributions come from Red Hat e-mails.
Then they bash other companies for doing the exact same thing, and idiots buy the lies.
The hate for systemd stems from how deep it tries to spread its tentacles, making it a parasite trying to control everything and hard to get rid of (because of the manhours required), not from Lennart Poettering being controversial back then. Case in point with the PLM debacle.
There is choice to some extent, yes. Fortunately. And there’s a growing counter-culture trying to do without Red Hat, for good reasons, and they’ve been gaining a lot of traction in the last year or two.