KDE Linux? I thought KDE neon was their own distro?
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2026
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It's KDE Linux now: https://linux.kde.org/
They replaced Neon, because KDE Neon didn't make much sense. Because only KDE was updated, but the rest of the system was like an LTS. The main purpose was to test the newest KDE version for developers; it wasn't meant to be used by end users. It was a weird Frankenstein's Monster style mix. Now, KDE Linux on the other hand is a more normal and harmonized distribution, that also aims to be used by end users. It's a real showcase of standard KDE in a real operating system, not just a test environment for developers.
Not a spin of another distro, a from-scratch linux distro?
Was curious and checked. It's immutable and Arch based (similar to SteamOS I suppose):
KDE Linux is an “image-based” OS. This means the entire base OS is provided as one unit, rather than being split up into thousands of packages that are assembled into the final product on your computer.
Sometimes this model is called “immutable” because the base OS cannot be modified in the same way a traditional OS made of packages could. However, this terminology can be misleading; in KDE Linux, only /usr is provided in the form of a read-only image, and everything else on the system is modifiable like on any other Linux-based OS. And /usr is modifiable through the use of systemd extensions.
High-level implementation
systemd-boot is used as the bootloader.
The bootable image is an ISO-compatible .raw disk image built using mkosi. The base system comes from Arch Linux packages, with most KDE content built using kde-builder. Some KDE apps and 3rd-party apps are pre-installed Flatpaks.
/ is a read-write Btrfs volume. /usr is mounted on top of it in the form of an EROFS image/filesystem. Updating the system entails downloading a new one of these and its companion unified kernel image (UKI). 3-4 of these OS images and their UKIs are cached on disk at any given time, providing the ability to roll back in case of problems after updating.
A small helper program updates /etc from the content in /usr/share/factory/etc in the active OS image for anything you haven’t changed yourself. Btrfs snapshots of /etc are generated automatically.
/home is a Btrfs subvolume.
User-facing apps shown in Discover come from Flathub.
No package manager is included, but multiple methods are available for installing software that’s not available as a Flatpak app. This is an evolving topic that’s likely to change over time.
That is even better than I expected. Especially that it's arch-based for broad compatibility AND immutable making it ideal for testing.
I just went with Kubuntu I don't remember why I didn't consider KDE Neon, a debian/ubuntu based OS with Plasma as a desktop feels nice to use because most of the programs I run tend to support ubuntu officially and I can't stand Gnome. Before this I was running opensuse but I got tired when after updating I got a full system slowdown and 95% cpu usage on boot by Plasma for no reason and after 2 months of waiting (testing with system rollbacks of course) seeing how it wasn't fixed I just moved to Kubuntu.
It was/currently is. But soon won't be.
Proton has been defaulting to NTSYNC automatically for me since it was fully implemented?
Both when I was using EndeavourOS and when I switched to Artix and manually installed Plasma.
How can you check what's enabled?
There's an option in Mangohud called 'winesync' that tells you what it's using.
This is specifically about KDE's own Linux distro, which is still in alpha.
I think this is a global feature that can be used outside of Proton too.