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                                                    Project
                                                        Banana
                                                    (now just KDE Linux)

               {src: https://www.asciiart.eu/food-and-drinks/bananas}
            

Quite recently, I learned about a Linux distribution that actually peaked my interest. It's rare that I find interest in new Linux distros nowadays as I've long discovered that most of them are just Ubuntu or Debian with added packages and sometimes a different desktop enviornment (usually one you can just get from an official flavour of Debian on Ubuntu). But this distro peaked by interest, and could become a major thing if successful.

For a long while it was officially referred to as "Project Banana", but it's now known as KDE Linux. Now, when I heard about this last night, I was quite confused - "KDE already has a Linux distribution??? Why would it need another???" - it came as a bit of a shock to me that KDE Neon was simply a side project for this bigger banana. Whilst KDE Neon was just one of those "Ubuntu with different software" distros, it was one that seemed justifiable given it worked as a pretty well done testbed for KDE Plasma.

But here we are with KDE Linux. The name is a bit odd I will admit - I liked the name KDE Neon and it would be pretty cool to have a similar name for KDE Linux in relation to Neon and Plasma. Maybe something like "KDE Mercury" or "KDE Silicon" would honestly sound quite the part. Or just call it KDE Banana and watch the Groovey Gorrilas go all over it. Anyways, the name of a distro is honestly mostly poinless, never judge a book by it's cover - it's what it is that matters, and this is where things get very, very interesting...

Now, I must clarify, I have not tested KDE Linux. Not on bare metal nor on a virtual machine. I can only give thoughts on what I read, however, according to a few news sources KDE Linux is ready for pre-alpha testing, albeit, probably incredibly unstable and practically unusable and/or risky as a daily driver. If you do want to try out KDE Linux, I suggest doing it on a virtual machine or on a spare unimportant machine you have lying around, such as an old laptop. I'm sure KDE would love to have people trying their shiny new flagship Linux distro and giving feedback and searching out bugs and pests to call the exterminator on.

So what is KDE Linux anyways, and how does it differenciate from KDE Neon? Well, whilst KDE Neon is pretty much Ubuntu with the latest and greatest Plasma and a few tweaks (pretty much Kubuntu but more tollerable), KDE Linux is built on Arch. But also, it's built to be an immutable Linux distro, something I've seen becoming quite popular in recent years. This does mean better security and stability as the actual system packages will not be going anywhere anytime soon, but also means you will not be installing system packages, not regularly anyways. You'll mostly be using Flatpaks and Appimages. I have mixed feelings on this - on one hand, I see the appeal. In an age of containerization and Flatpaks, it's only logical we make distros to cater to that. But on the other hand, I don't think we're ready to go to a fully Flatpak (or AppImage) world. While we've gone a long way, it's not perfect yet, and I wouldn't want to replace using regular system packages with Flatpaks fully yet, even thought I regularly use Flatpaks (and sometimes AppImages if I need to, although it's far from my go-to honestly). Also, you can't really install drivers easily at all (I've had that experience firsthand on SteamOS), and it is at the end of the day, taking a way a bit of control. While I do think these immutable distros could definitely be the way forward, it's a bit early to fully place our bets of them. Although, I suppose, if this distro was just Arch with KDE software, then it'd just be KDE Neon but Arch, and that would be stupid.

From what I've read, there'll be 3 branches of KDE Linux: Testing Edition, which will ship the latest cutting edge software before the rest, Enthusiasts Edition, which will ship new KDE software according to their release schedule - giving the latest publci release of everything, and Stable Edition, which will have a much more delayed cycle for the sake of testing if everything works (sort of like what Ubuntu and Fedora does) - probably what you want to daily drive if you don't want to fuss around too much with bugs and issues. They're also aiming for it to be a "batteries included" distro, with it shipping with all the drivers needed. Honestly, a pretty big need for any immutable distro, given the concerns I raied in the last paragraph.

Honestly, I think this is a good move. I can't give much of a verdict on KDE Linux right now as it is far too early to do that as of currently, but I'm a big fan of KDE and this is the first time I can say I've been excited over a Linux distro for a while. Will I use it instead of Fedora KDE when it comes out? No. It doesn't yet appeal to me well enough to want to hop distros, and I don't like distro hopping anyways. Fedora KDE has been a great distro and my first choice for a good while. However, I have been looking at backup choices lately given a lot of the talk around AI on Fedora and Red Hat's acquisation by IBM (albeit it's been a while since much controversy in Fedora has been circulating), and I think in a few years, if Fedora mess up enough to justify it, and when immutable Linux distros are developed enough for me to consider them, it could be a great choice for me to jump to, and even if I don't end up using KDE Linux, I'd probably still be recommending to people.

I wish KDE best on luck on this project!