KDE launches its own distribution (again)

Summary

Welcome to LWN.net The following subscription-only content has been made available to you by an LWN subscriber. Thousands of subscribers depend on LWN for the best news from the Linux and free software communities. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to LWN. Thank you for visiting LWN.net! By Joe BrockmeierSeptember 10, 2025 At Akademy 2025, the KDE Project released an alpha version of KDE Linux, a distribution built by the project to "include the best implementation of everything KDE has to offer, using the most advanced technologies". It is aimed at providing an operating system suitable for home use, business use, OEM installations, and more "eventually". For now there are many rough edges and missing features that users should be aware of before taking the plunge; but it is an interesting look at the kind of complete Linux system that KDE developers would like to see. Development and goals KDE contributor Nate Graham wrote an announcement blog post on September 6 to accompany the release of KDE Linux. Harald Sitter had introduced the project as "Project Banana" during a talk (video, slides) at Akademy in 2024, and has been leading its development along with major contributions from Hadi Chokr, Lasath Fernando, Justin Zobel, Graham, and others. KDE Linux is an immutable distribution that uses Arch Linux packages as its base, but Graham notes that it is "definitely not an 'Arch-based distro!'" Pacman is not included, and Arch is used only for the base operating system. Everything else, he said, is either compiled from source using KDE Builder or installed using Flatpak. Some may wonder why another Linux distribution is needed; Graham said that he has expressed that sentiment himself in the past regarding other distributions, but he thinks that KDE Linux is justified: KDE is a huge producer of software. It's awkward for us to not have our own method of distributing it. Yes, KDE produces source code that others distribute, but we self-distribute o...