Nobara Linux Official 39 Ditches GNOME in Favor of Plasma

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Nobara Official has now be rebased on KDE instead of GNOME for several reasons:

  1. VRR (Variable Refresh Rate/Freesync) functionality. Gnome currently still requires patched-in VRR functionality. The pending MR has been waiting 3 years, and even doing so still breaks the system tray.

    See:
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/1154
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/6955

  2. DRM Leasing functionality. This is a requirement for VR (Virtual Reality) in wayland. This is another pain point that has had constant back and forth on the gnome side, but is implemented already in KDE.

    See:
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/3205
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/1743

  3. Fractional scaling functionality. This is what allows the desktop to be rescaled in fractions rather than whole percentages. This is still marked as experimental in GNOME even though it was merged in 2019, 5 years ago, while being implemented already in KDE.

  4. Drag and drop from Archive manager functionality. As stupid as this is, GNOME file-roller STILL cannot drag+drop files into nautilus folders, while KDE’s Ark can. Again, another bug opened 5 years ago.

    See:
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/file-roller/-/issues/4

  5. Better integration with Steam. By default the Steam Deck uses KDE as the desktop mode. This inherently means it receives updates from Valve in terms of desktop related fixes, and they are actively working with KDE developers to bring updates to KDE (https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/t2184m/is_there_any_cooperation_with_valve_and_kde/)

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Did not know that - thanks for sharing!
I think it is always good for all of “us” when competent people like GE get more involved in KDE stuff. :slightly_smiling_face:

And another distribution I will at least run in a VM to be informed.

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I just had a brief look (from a live USB) and here are some things I observed within those three and a half minutes:

  • KDE PIM and Akonadi server are not installed by default (which is a good thing in my opinion - IIRC Fedora KDE Plasma Spin does install it by default)
  • the default session is Wayland
  • Nobara comes with Chromium instead of Firefox
  • the theming is quite decent compared to many other distributions IMHO (but I still prefer standard Breeze :slightly_smiling_face:)
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another one for your plasma distro table

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OT:
I thought about it for a moment - but then I would also have to include Fedora KDE Plasma Spin, Arch, Garuda KDE Dr460nized, Manjaro, openSUSE Tumbleweed, MX Linux, SpiralLinux, BigLinux, Solus, FreeBSD and many others (and my other half would kill me if I invested that much more time in stuff like this… :laughing: :wink:).
Distrowatch is a better place than my little table if you want to have a look for some of the other distribution’s (KDE) components than the major *Ubuntu-based ones and much more comprehensive.

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YES!

…and that would be a good thing.

but i understand.

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