KDE Linux experiences

KDE Linux, the new Linux distribution from KDE, has been the subject of an in-depth look by a developer who has been using it daily for nearly a year. The distro is based on Arch Linux but has undergone heavy modifications and changes to make it immutable and atomic. It does not have traditional package management, relying instead on Flatpaks for application installation.

The developer praised the workflow, particularly the systemd-sysext tool, which allows changes to be layered on top of the previous system, making it ideal for testing and development of KDE Plasma applications. However, there were some challenges, including issues with servers not producing new images, resulting in occasional need to build applications manually.

The developer also noted some bugs with flatpaks, such as permissions issues and problems with XDG portals during OS updates. Gaming on Flatpaks worked well, but there were occasional issues with cursor locking. The developer found the container workflow cumbersome, preferring to install tools directly on the host. Performance was impacted when using distrobox versions of certain tools, such as eza, due to the overhead of entering the container.

The developer also missed having KMail and KOrganizer installed by default, as the Kontact flatpak was broken and lacked integration with other tools. Lastly, they noted that flatpak applications would not recognize Union styles, requiring separate KDE platforms to be built manually for specific use cases.