Fedora Workstation with GNOME is the main edition of the Fedora Linux distribution, but their Fedora KDE Desktop Spin just got approval to become a lot more important.
As noted on their issue tracker, a proposal titled "Request to upgrade Fedora KDE Desktop Spin to Edition status under the Personal Systems WG" has now been approved! From the proposal:
"As discussed at Flock, the Fedora KDE SIG and the newly forming Fedora Personal Systems Working Group that will oversee the SIG are requesting that the Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop spin be upgraded to Edition status for Fedora Linux 42.
This includes the following:
- Listing Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition at the same level as Fedora Workstation Edition on fedoraproject.org
- Production of a flagship site page for Fedora KDE similar to Fedora Workstation on fedoraproject.org
- Marketing support in a similar vein to Workstation at events
The Fedora KDE SIG will withdraw its Change for Fedora Linux 42 to replace GNOME with KDE Plasma on Workstation with the acceptance of this request."
It was opened 2 months ago, and was formally approved about 16 hours ago.
Now the work begins for the KDE maintainers at Fedora to get it all ready, and sometime soon hopefully it will then be prominently listed on the Fedora website.
Pictured - Fedora KDE
As someone who mains KDE Plasma as their desktop environment, because I think it's fantastic, I'm really happy to see this happen.
Quoting: fenglengshunif one is labeled Fedora Workstation and the other Fedora KDE, then I wouldn't call that equal...Exactly. Workstation vs KDE is like PC vs Linux. I wonder how that happened… Anyone using Linux should know of (and be annoyed by) the horrible habit of using PC as synonym for Windows.
Quoting: LanzI see this as Fedora admitting that Gnome is a bit stalled at the moment.There are a lot of Fedora users and KDE maintainers pushing for KDE to be better represented. Fedora's KDE spin (now Edition) has a lot more maintainers than it had in the past, so it's as well maintained as Fedora Workstation (GNOME), as compared to other spins like i3, Sway, and XFCE.
This isn't the singular opinion of "The Fedora Project" but like all FESCO decisions, a community of disparate people coming together to discuss this. Some don't have any opinion on KDE because they've never used it. The KDE and GNOME people are completely different aside from Neal Gompa. A quote from the issue tracker:
Quote(Honestly, the only thing we have in common right now is Neal imo, otherwise we don'T really communicate as-is)
A member of the Quality Assurance team for instance is concerned about being able to assure the quality of KDE:
QuoteFor KDE, this would be extra 51 apps! Compare the scope. I believe it's impossible for us to have the same quality bar here. And even if we had a huge surge of volunteers to test those regularly, it would just mean that we'd hardly ever release, because the likelihood of discovering a broken functionality in 73 apps (22+51) is much higher than in 22 apps. Workstation is quite lean on pre-installed apps, and yet we already struggle with this, and many people get irked by the whole compose being blocked on a bug in gnome-clocks/gnome-contacts/gnome-calendar/etc.
And concluding:
QuoteEither the quality requirements won't be the same, or we need to lower the Workstation one and meet somewhere in the middle for both.
This discussion has been going on for several months and it's taken this long because the KDE SIG are the ones interested in becoming an Edition, while the GNOME people mostly don't have an opinion. There were a lot of objections in the beginning about how confusing it would be to have two Editions listed equally. It was hard to see how it could work. Especially because no one wanted to get rid of GNOME because Fedora has a great relationship with GNOME.
So while it is an acknowledgement of how good a job the KDE SIG is doing at maintaining the KDE spin (despite some decisions not being in line with upstream like dropping X11 packages), this says little about what Fedora thinks of GNOME.
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualA member of the Quality Assurance team for instance is concerned about being able to assure the quality of KDE:
QuoteFor KDE, this would be extra 51 apps! Compare the scope. I believe it's impossible for us to have the same quality bar here. And even if we had a huge surge of volunteers to test those regularly, it would just mean that we'd hardly ever release, because the likelihood of discovering a broken functionality in 73 apps (22+51) is much higher than in 22 apps. Workstation is quite lean on pre-installed apps, and yet we already struggle with this, and many people get irked by the whole compose being blocked on a bug in gnome-clocks/gnome-contacts/gnome-calendar/etc.
Thanks for the quote. I am not a Fedora user -- what do they mean by "apps" here? Other than the core plasma bits (settings, kwallet, etc.) the only "KDE apps" I have installed on my Neon system are Okular, Dolphin, and Gwenview.
Edit: I forgot Kate.
Last edited by no_information_here on 8 November 2024 at 7:47 pm UTC
Last edited by sudoer on 8 November 2024 at 9:18 pm UTC
This leaves Ubuntu as the last important Gnome by default outpost... and I write this from Kubuntu ;)
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