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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.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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26 comments
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Quoting: pleasereadthemanual
Quoting: fagnerln
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI tried out KDE for a while due to a missing feature on GNOME, but KDE then broke a similar feature, so I went back to GNOME.

Yeah, that's exactly my experience. I really like the Gnome workflow, but because of disliking some of the dev's attitudes/opinions, and the fact that there's a lot of people hyping KDE (and now companies like Valve funding it), I keep an eye on every KDE release, but it's always the same: I try it, it breaks, I regret.

Maybe it's a "me" issue, but even on Windows, if I use it a bit, I find some bugs, even doing nothing. Gnome is just fine.

I just hope that Fedora Cosmic become a fantastic distro.
I really like GNOME, but it has a few deficiencies that are unlikely to be fixed for a very long time. I like KDE too, but the UX is not as good. In some places it's much better, but overall it's not as well-constructed. Both have bugs.

COSMIC is a great desktop. I ran it as my main desktop for a few weeks. I'd love to try it again when it's stable and has more features like support for graphics tablets and integrated input methods :)
My needs are fairly simple, so I ended up using Mate. When Mandriva died I was looking around for a bit, and found myself using Mint. At the time
--Gnome UI was weird and for me counterintuitive; they had just gone to Gnome 3, with the unofficial motto "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". So that was out.
--KDE was theoretically great with everything I could need, but wonky; whenever I tried it there always seemed to be things that annoyingly didn't work right. That was out.
--Mint's flagship Cinnamon was still kind of rough and also at the time wouldn't let me put an extra panel up the right hand side of the screen. With wide screens, I figure that's a good place for a panel; I like to put my launchers there. That was out.
--Mate was comfortable, not buggy, let me do my panel thing, felt like Gnome 2 or maybe Windows without the annoying shit and with better customization. Went with that. Since then, has never gotten in my way so I've stuck with it.

If I had to decide today, the state of various desktops is way different, so don't know where I might have ended up.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 10 November 2024 at 9:32 pm UTC
Quoting: Purple Library GuyMy needs are fairly simple, so I ended up using Mate.
I'm not a fan of XFCE (too confusing to me :P), but I've never tried MATE. It seems like a good choice! Not something I'd choose myself, but I likely wouldn't be overly unhappy with it.

I've tried Cinnamon and while it's fine and something I'd recommend to users coming from Windows (I can't recommend KDE because of its complexity and GNOME is too different), I don't like it. I'm not a fan of the design. It works well enough, I think, though I've only tried it in a VM.

I'm happy to accept the defaults of most desktop environments. I usually only end up changing the keybindings and a few other small things. As long as it has 10 workspaces, I can deal.

For that reason, I also like tiling window managers. I've tried Sway and like it, but I ultimately decided it was too much work and it lacked features I needed. COSMIC is not nearly as much work but still lacks features at the moment. I'm pretty happy on GNOME (for the exact reasons you dislike it :P), but I may end up on COSMIC eventually.

Or back to KDE. Who knows? Right now, only GNOME and KDE have all the features I want.
RedWyvern Nov 11
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: pleasereadthemanual
Quoting: fagnerln
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI tried out KDE for a while due to a missing feature on GNOME, but KDE then broke a similar feature, so I went back to GNOME.

Yeah, that's exactly my experience. I really like the Gnome workflow, but because of disliking some of the dev's attitudes/opinions, and the fact that there's a lot of people hyping KDE (and now companies like Valve funding it), I keep an eye on every KDE release, but it's always the same: I try it, it breaks, I regret.

Maybe it's a "me" issue, but even on Windows, if I use it a bit, I find some bugs, even doing nothing. Gnome is just fine.

I just hope that Fedora Cosmic become a fantastic distro.
I really like GNOME, but it has a few deficiencies that are unlikely to be fixed for a very long time. I like KDE too, but the UX is not as good. In some places it's much better, but overall it's not as well-constructed. Both have bugs.

COSMIC is a great desktop. I ran it as my main desktop for a few weeks. I'd love to try it again when it's stable and has more features like support for graphics tablets and integrated input methods :)
My needs are fairly simple, so I ended up using Mate. When Mandriva died I was looking around for a bit, and found myself using Mint. At the time
--Gnome UI was weird and for me counterintuitive; they had just gone to Gnome 3, with the unofficial motto "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". So that was out.
--KDE was theoretically great with everything I could need, but wonky; whenever I tried it there always seemed to be things that annoyingly didn't work right. That was out.
--Mint's flagship Cinnamon was still kind of rough and also at the time wouldn't let me put an extra panel up the right hand side of the screen. With wide screens, I figure that's a good place for a panel; I like to put my launchers there. That was out.
--Mate was comfortable, not buggy, let me do my panel thing, felt like Gnome 2 or maybe Windows without the annoying shit and with better customization. Went with that. Since then, has never gotten in my way so I've stuck with it.

If I had to decide today, the state of various desktops is way different, so don't know where I might have ended up.
Which is no coincidence, since MATE is the continuation of GNOME 2.

I got my start in Linux-land with MATE, Ubuntu MATE to be exact.
Initially from finding it to be the better available desktop when playing around with a Raspberry Pi.
Then once I got an ancient netbook going again to have something not as awful as my school iPad, I went with Ubuntu MATE since I was somewhat familiar with it.
Ended up sticking with it for 3 years, also on my new laptop where I did not like how Linux Mint Cinnamon (nor it's factory Windows 10) felt and worked.

Though as Ubuntu's snaps doubled the boot time of that machine, I started trying different things again, switching to GNOME 3 for a bit as I figured it would work well with a drawing tablet.
Which it did not, along with relying on extensions that break on every major update and the new UI design not being to my preference, modern GNOME is not for me.

So on my desktop I ran XFCE for a bit, which was quite good if a bit basic and the only animation being an annoyingly delayed panel auto-hide.
It's panels being both less and more versatile than MATE's in differing ways, despite being similar.
Stuck to that for a short while on my desktop, while keeping the heavily tweaked GNOME 4X I got working to my needs on my laptop.

After getting a Steam Deck and finding out how stable Plasma had gotten, I quickly gave it another spin on my desktop.
And while before it was too buggy for my needs, the later 5.2X releases have gotten very polished, ran those with a Windows 7-esque theming.
Then transitioned to Garuda Linux's MacOS like lay-out on both my machines, since theming aside I prefer it.
This lay-out has stuck to this day for me, though I revert it to resemble an older version of Garuda's layout and occasionally change the theming.
It works way better than GNOME 3/4X when operated with a drawing tablet too, something I was a bit afraid of when moving my laptop over.

And with Plasma 6.1 it has gotten to the point where I currently only consider KDE Plasma for general usage and find it polished enough to almost universally recommend.
Stretching from the MacOS like layout I run on my laptop and desktop to standard Breeze on a media PC and backup OSes.
Also moved my father over to it, who I initially got started on GNOME 4X but had to move distro due to Clear Linux having become unsuitable on desktop (still great for servers though, my home server will continue to run it).

Currently I consider TuxedoOS the distro to experience Plasma 6.1 with, if Arch Linux(/Garuda/EndeavourOS) is not a suitable option and KDE Linux/OS is not out yet or unsuitable (will be like SteamOS's desktop mode, so image based and Flatpak reliant).
Which has generally proven to be a good Ubuntu derivative for me, akin to Linux Mint but shipping more modern software and sticking closer to the base project defaults, but replacing Snaps with Flatpak by default.
This in addition to the standard repositories, to which they also added a normal Firefox packages.

Noting that Fedora KDE seems like a good option too, simply not one I have experience with.
Circling back to the subject of the article, glad to see KDE Plasma get this recognition.
Which matches my experience of 6.1 and beyond to be the best I have used yet.
And it helps people who would be put off by GNOME to give Fedora a try.


Last edited by RedWyvern on 11 November 2024 at 11:57 am UTC
Jarmer Nov 11
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualCOSMIC is a great desktop. I ran it as my main desktop for a few weeks. I'd love to try it again when it's stable and has more features like support for graphics tablets and integrated input methods :)

I'm very much looking forward to the unofficial spin the actual cosmic devs will put out soon. Last I heard it was planned for spring '25.
Quoting: Jarmer
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualCOSMIC is a great desktop. I ran it as my main desktop for a few weeks. I'd love to try it again when it's stable and has more features like support for graphics tablets and integrated input methods :)

I'm very much looking forward to the unofficial spin the actual cosmic devs will put out soon. Last I heard it was planned for spring '25.
Is this the spin for Fedora or openSUSE?
Jarmer Nov 12
Quoting: pleasereadthemanual
Quoting: Jarmer
Quoting: pleasereadthemanualCOSMIC is a great desktop. I ran it as my main desktop for a few weeks. I'd love to try it again when it's stable and has more features like support for graphics tablets and integrated input methods :)

I'm very much looking forward to the unofficial spin the actual cosmic devs will put out soon. Last I heard it was planned for spring '25.
Is this the spin for Fedora or openSUSE?

For Fedora 42. There's a post on twitter by the system76 head guy, but I can't find it because that site is a dumpster fire and won't let me look at stuff without logging in (and having no account makes that difficult lol).
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