KDE Linux is official. The first alpha version of the new distribution has been released for testing.
For those unaware, KDE Plasma is a popular desktop environment and comes as part of flavored distros like Kubuntu, Fedora KDE, etc. My experience with KDE is mostly limited to their apps, specifically KDE Connect, Okular, Arc, and Kate. I recently used Fedora KDE briefly on a secondary “distro hopping” drive, Plasma was great. There is also KDE Neon, which is maintained by the KDE community. But this time KDE Linux is created by KDE.
(Image courtesy: KDE)
Why another distro? KDE wants Linux Be “KDE Operating System” which provides user-friendly experience with high-quality UX. It is an immutable OS, which means it will have some restrictions, such as limited access to system components.
KDE’s in-house distro, which, you guessed it, comes with Plasma and KDE apps. KDE Linux is built using Arch Linux packages, but obviously should not be considered Arch-based. There’s no package manager (no Pacman for you), so you’ll need to install apps using Flatpak, Snap, or AppImages. It includes Distrobox and Toolbox pre-installed. oh god ubuntu KDE Linux is reported to include the following apps by default: Mozilla Firefox, Haruna, Elisa, Kate, Kerite, Gwenview, etc. This is a pretty nice starter set up.
The system requirements for KDE Linux are quite low.
- UEFI firmware (includes the best selling firmware of the last 15 years)
- an AMD or Intel CPU
- 1 GB memory (more will make the system faster)
- 6 GB storage space (will allow up to 12 system rollbacks)
I mean it’s Linux, the required specifications are budget friendly, but look at that. This is less than Linux Mint’s requirements (2GB RAM/20GB storage).
Do you want to try KDE Linux? go there https://kde.org/linux/ And download it.
There are a few caveats, KDE Linux in its current state does not support NVIDIA GPUs older than the GTX 1630 out of the box, you will need to tinker with it a bit. Secure Boot is not currently supported, but it will be in the future. System updates are being distributed as a complete OS image, yes these are atomic upgrades. See the official wiki for more details.
I have not tested KDE Linux yet, it is too early to do so. So this is just an FYI article. I wouldn’t recommend using the alpha version as your primary OS, but there’s no harm in trying out Live US, or maybe you could try it in a virtual machine or secondary system/drive.
