KDE Linux Emerges! Will It Supplement or Replace Neon?

General
,
1

Hello community,

While browsing Mastodon today, I came across news about KDE Linux on a source that shares Linux news. I had previously heard about the existence of a Linux distribution developed by KDE outside of Neon. As someone who closely follows KDE news and developments, I haven’t yet come across an official announcement from KDE about this new distribution.

Therefore, I’d like to pose a few questions to the KDE development team, both my own curiosity and to reflect the thoughts of users with similar questions:

1. Is KDE Linux a replacement for KDE Neon?What will be the difference between the two?

2. Does KDE Linux represent a more innovative and different vision than KDE Neon?

3. Also, is this new system ready and stable enough for mainstream use?

4. Does KDE Linux aim to offer KDE technologies in a more holistic way, or does it aim to take the current KDE experience offered by KDE Neon to a different level?

5. What platform does KDE Linux use, or will it be its own platform?

I’m eagerly awaiting the KDE community’s thoughts and goals regarding this new project, and how it will relate to KDE Neon. It seems like a significant development for the future of KDE, and I believe it’s important for many users seeking more information to find answers to these questions.

In my opinion, merging two existing projects under a name like KDE Linux or KDE OS would be a great step. Developing a distribution with KDE’s own native platform, rather than relying on the Ubuntu LTS platform, would allow the project to become more independent, robust, and sustainable.

Such a change could represent a major turning point in KDE’s vision. Switching to a constantly updated platform and keeping the system always up-to-date could make KDE a leading player in the desktop environment space. This step would make KDE a much more accessible and attractive option, not only from a technical perspective but also from a user experience perspective.

News Source

2

Would’t take much to replace Neon or Kubuntu.

1 Like
3

I’m not sure what they plan to do with it, but it should be called xenon.

4

Supposedly it’s a Immutable Arch distro. I’m voting for “Plasma Mut”.:rofl:

5

It’s merely an immutable, atomic, image based snapshot of Arch where you can install software with only flatpak and systemd-sysext. It doesn’t have even half the customizability of KDE Neon. The team within KDE that maintains KDE Linux is different from the team behind KDE Neon.

3 Likes
6

KDE Linux - KDE Community answers most of your questions

4 Likes
7

Hello again. The explanations here cover some information, but due to translation errors, they’re not entirely clear. I’m hoping for a concise and understandable explanation from someone truly knowledgeable on the subject.

8

That sounds bad, very very bad.

9

What translation errors? And did you see the link from that page to KDE Linux - KDE Community Wiki ? That has some more information.

I don’t know much more than what those pages say, but if you could say what isn’t clear to you after reading that, someone more knowledgable than I will probably see and answer.

10

“Apps primarily come from Flatpak and Snap”,

Good thing SSD’s are huge nowadays and we have access to a lot of RAM, because this distro I think is going to need it. I can understand the reasoning for for using Flatpak & Snap, but my god they’re not very optimised.

3 Likes
11

As far as I understand, the issue isn’t that important, at least not as I understand or imagine it. Therefore, I think it’s best to end this discussion here.

I’d like to take this opportunity to emphasize that KDE Neon is a great system, but it could be much better. As a user, I’ll do my best and contribute to this development with feedback.

However, I must say that an innovative Plasma system, developed as a single, independent project with its own core, called KDE OS or KDE Linux, would have truly impressed me much more.

I’d like to thank everyone who participated in this thread and shared their valuable ideas.

12

I like the idea, that KDE Neon is intentionally ‘lean’ in that it doesn’t come loaded up with a stack of software that you may or may not particularly like - or wish to use. Leaving the Neon system relatively ‘bare-boned’ is better than trying to remove pre-installed software - whose removal or partial removal may cause the system to crash. However, the one thing I question is the use of Canonical Ubuntu as the base. With Kubuntu part of the Canonical stable - it seems to make Neon redundant. I appreciate that my suggestion may be scoffed at - but perhaps the Neon team should consider moving to Debian. I don’t think there are too many KDE systems out there that offer the ‘barebones’ approach to Debian. Perhaps, it could find a niche that is more useful in that regard. As for a name - how about KDEB ?

13

Sorry for the rather late entry but as this is a high-ranking oogle result for “kde neon vs kde linux” (and moreso after I hit Send on this comment ig lol) … I’ll just add:

Re redundancy, I think you answer yourself. Kubuntu aims to be a full-featured general-purpose desktop that happens to leverage KDE as its centrepiece. KDE Neon is rather aiming to be “Just enough OS to run all of latest KDE”. I think that’s a meaningful distinction.

As for Debian, the problem there is you can forget about the “latest” part of Neon’s MO. Debian stable only just got past KDE5 with release of Trixie late last year. Neon may already build its own KDE packages in order to present the latest version, but a Debian stable base would mean it also had to do the same with a host of low-level dependencies. Basing on Ubuntu takes that workload (mostly) away.

If you mean Debian Sid (unstable), that would leave the Neon team on the hook for its bugs. Were I them, I wouldn’t want that risk of unforeseen showstoppers besmirching what’ll often be people’s first experience of KDE.

14

As of 2026-01-15, there are no formal plans for KDE Linux to replace KDE neon.

Speaking personally, I do expect KDE Linux to eventually replace KDE neon, for the following reasons:

  1. Vastly more automated, with less busywork required from developers to keep it running
  2. More buzz and excitement around it (one of the key currencies of any FOSS project)
  3. More contributors as a result of 1 and 2
  4. Safer core architecture
  5. Technological base that aligns better with that KDE developers like and use

As for when those advantages will result in KDE Linux replacing KDE neon? I have no idea. Could be a year, could be two years, could be never.

At the minimum, we’ll have to have user builds of KDE Linux, which means completing our Beta milestone.

Yes that’s right, we consider the release of a general purpose Linux distribution to be a beta! Our Public Release milestone targets shipping a UX that we consider to be on par with the big commercial offerings.

So KDE Linux is not just a “showcase of KDE” distro. We intend for it to be the real deal.

3 Likes