Is KDE a Fedora "Spin" or not?

General
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Quite some time ago Fedora announced that KDE is no longer a “Spin” but promoted to the same level as Gnome.
According to the Fedora web site, there is however no change:
“for an alternative desktop environment such as KDE Plasma Desktop or Xfce, you can download a Fedora Spin …”
For many uses, especially anything to do with graphics, KDE Plasma is with its recent advances the most important desktop.

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it is currently a spin but Fedora 42 will use KDE as default desktop environment.

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Fedora 42 is scheduled to be released in mid to late April, so that is when you can expect the Fedora website to have changed.

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Hi - I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding there :slight_smile: Fedora Linux has multiple editions, spins and labs - going forward, among others will be:

  • Fedora Workstation Edition uses the GNOME desktop environment
  • Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition - the Fedora KDE Spin up through Fedora 41 - uses the Plasma desktop environment

“Fedora 42” is not the official name of any one single edition or spin of the distribution, but is a term for the overall release.

Folks who are particularly interested can see the activity that’s happened, and that is still happening, within Fedora to implement those changes on their sites directly - for example, Changes/Promote KDE Plasma Desktop variant to Edition - Fedora Project Wiki

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Up to Fedora 41, KDE Plasma is a spin; from Fedora 42 onwards, it will be a flavour.

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And
basically Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition will (probably) be the same Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition in 42 as in 41 (maybe slightly updated of cause) just put/lifted on the same Pedestal as the Workstation Edition.

I wonder if they come up with new names, though. My suggestion would be to “downgrade” the current Workstation Edition to Gnome Edition :laughing: .

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Forgive my ignorance, please, but what does this mean for an end user? What difference does it make whether Fedora KDE is a spin or an edition? Level of integration? Stability? Availability of software? Level of support?

I’m using, well test-driving is more like it, Fedora 41 KDE “spin”. What will be different from my perspective when Fedora 42 KDE is released as an “official” edition?

Thank you :pray:

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There are no practical or technical differences for Fedora KDE as a spin or an edition. Fedora KDE has always been strategically important to the Fedora Project, and thus Fedora KDE receives similar engineering quality verification to Fedora Workstation (GNOME).

The key difference for Fedora 42 is that as an edition, it receives top-level marketing as a flagship variant.

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Thank you very much :slight_smile: