Fedora proposal to change default desktop to KDE

In the end I don't care whether the "default" Fedora is KDE or GNOME, as long as the spin of the other DE is maintained well. Except for the ootb experience which is better on the GNOME version with setup steps for proprietary drivers and whatnot, the KDE spin feels like a first-class citizen.
But KDE just makes more sense for most users I feel. Currently you start wondering where your tray icons went (for example) when switching from a non-Linux OS. For gaming, KDE is simply more mature with built-in Wayland VRR support for example.
- To be fair, it would make much more sense to switch to KDE for distributions like Ubuntu. Fedora never sold itself as a distribution targeting new Linux users coming from other operating systems. Therefore at least that point shouldn't be the reason to use KDE. Also distributions aren't just for new users and should not decide too much because of that. On top of that, a user is new for a very short period of time anyway. I digress...
  
  Whether it makes sense for Ubuntu I'm not sure, but I don't think that it would make less sense on Fedora either way.
  Fedora is a "batteries included" distro the way I see it, and besides, I don't see how KDE likely feeling more familiar for, say, Windows users makes it a worse choice for experienced Linux users.
  A big part of what should be the default DE for a given distro is obviously very subjective, so I'd actually be surprised if they really changed the default because of this proposal. It has valid points and I'd say KDE is on average more appealing to the very broad target audience that Fedora aims to have, although as I said: that's just my opinion/gut feeling.
  As long as KDE support stays at least as good as it has been so far in Fedora, I'll be happy.
- GNOME 46 has experimental VRR support too
  
  I know, that's available just now with Fedora 40. And you have to know that the flag exists, it's not a visible setting until you enable it. With KDE it's just there (and has been for quite a while).

Slowly more and more distros are looking over to a KDE future. GNOME devs being so incredibly hard to work with and this feeling of a huge community that is KDE and with how polished Plasma 6 is becoming, many distros are finally looking to at least give Plasma a try as a default. GNOME is well polished but there are so many extremely important and urgently needed features that KDE already implemented that are not even being discussed for GNOME. Many distros are getting fed up with how slow GNOME is into advancing their desktop. They take 2 years to change a few buttons around. And now that Plasma 6 has a 6-month fixed release schedule, it finally aligns with what distros want.
First Valve shocked the corporate distro world by choosing the seemengly less stable KDE as their default for the Steam Deck, which proved to be an amazing choice after all. Then recently, Nobara Linux, one of the most used Fedora distros, also switched to KDE as the default. And now Fedora is discussing into switching the main distro too. Qt6 is also a really flexible and promising framework and developers seem to have more fun working with it than with GTK4.
Recent switchers from Windows also largely prefer KDE instead of the minimalist approach, macOS-like GNOME. And linux has been gaining a lot of popularity and market share recently, and I could bet that a lot of these new users are not on GNOME, at least not on vania GNOME.
A great example is KDE having hit a HUGE record of bug reporting and feedback submissions, which means that more people than ever are using KDE actively and actually trying to help the project somehow. KDE has also been having a huge presence in social networks like YouTube and TikTok (especially because of its fun and interesting features that make GNOME look plain and a bit boring, needless to say GNOME vanilla wont convince a Windows user to switch...) which might speed up its adoption too.
- Ah i see kde has fixed the issue where dropdowns had broken behavior when scrolling https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/kirigami/-/commit/f6ca218607ff7e5d5066eb3224154c3256cb9516 this was my main blocker why i couldn't use it when i tried it around 2020. Maybe i could give it another try?
- Spot on.

Is this an April Fool? I trust nothing posted on 1 April!
- Man, why do people publish serious announcements on April 1st? Between the XZ backdoor that almost pwned all of Linux, a Silksong update, Bellular News taking some absolutely degenerate stance with games "journalism", and this, I don't know what the fuck to believe.
  
  Why did Bellular news do/say? Haven't caught up with that debacle yet.
- No. https://joshuastrobl.social/@me/112197672362783955
  
  Well then, it's an interesting proposal because it would be nice to see a major player default to KDE. I don't see it happening though.
- timezones are always crazy on 1 April. My initial assumption was it's a joke. It would be awesome though! More people should use or at least try KDE.

I personally don't see the Fedora team breaking away from Gnome just yet, but he makes some good points.
Starting in 2025, KDE Plasma’s release cycle switches to a semi-annual cadence that lines up with Fedora Linux releases, enabling a tight interlock of development and integration between Fedora and KDE.
This is the key change that might make such a move viable, imo. One of the key benefits of Gnome to point release distros, and Fedora in particular, is the predictable 6-month release cycle. If KDE achieve the same, then it will make the proposition a lot more attractive.

I'll believe that when I see it. Redhat is fully invested in Gnome.
- Red Hat doesn't have influence over the development of Fedora, that's the job of FESCo. Red Hat owns the trademark and is one of the sponsors of the Fedora Project, but their interest is solely in enterprise applications (a task that is not suitable for Fedora), not in consumer desktop platforms. I've already discussed this at length here and here if you'd like more detail; there's no point in rewriting it.
- It's probably not gonna happen, but it's great that this discussion is happening at all. Maybe it'll encourage Gnome to improve their customizability, which seems to be the main advantage point of KDE

This is not April fools. The submitter did want to mess with people, though.
https://joshuastrobl.social/@me/112197672362783955

Please

Funnily enough, leading the proposal is Joshua Strobl, the lead dev of the budgie DE. More here https://joshuastrobl.social/@me/112197620423915344

You have my vote. The out of the box experience would be polished and I have no doubt would be done very well.

In theory, I would love to use KDE and use Gnome only with many plugins and tweaks (like IMHO the majority of Gnome users out there, see Ubuntu desktop).
In practice, KDE has still too many unsolved problems:
For years now, I try KDE from stable mainstream distros in standard VMs, always something from the vanilla KDE setup segfaults within the first 30min w/o me even starting to customize it. It seems this is not only a personal anecdote, but the experience of a lot of people trying KDE. (Gnome in these VMs runs stable w/o any segfaults, these VMs sometimes are running for days)
KMail ... even the KDE community themselves point out all the trouble with KMail: It works, until it doesn't, no support for GMail OOTB, etc ... This problems with KMail are known/reported/experienced for years now, w/o being fixed. Thunderbird/Evolution work OOTB and stable for my needs since a decade by now
Online-Accounts for Gnome works on every distribution OOTB for me, for all my professional/private needs. Again, in theory Dolphin is a much better file manager than Nautilus, in practice I can remote mount everything in Nautilus
In summary: I am not a big fan of Gnomes UI and would much prefer KDE, but in practice Gnome works stable, lets me setup my online accounts/connectivity and email and simply works. The KDE community ignored too many of this issues for too long (stability) and is still ignoring the widely known issues with KMail (fix it, dump it or at least communicate it is not ready for general use). I lost trust that these issues will ever be fixed by now. (Was a happy KDE 3.X user back in the day.)
- I believe these problems would be sorted out pretty quickly if big player like Fedora really switched. We can only dream for now...
  
  I agree, it would give KDE a boost.
- How are you running the VMs, with VirtualBox? I can't say I've run a DE on a VM very often, but it's always been under libvirt and I've not seen segfaults. I don't disbelieve you, but I wonder if its the hypervisor.
  Not sure why you're fixating on Kmail; Thunderbird works fine on KDE and is the preferred choice across most distros IME. I'd use it before Outlook even if it were available on Linux.
  
  I run my VMs with QEmu or VMware.
  My fixation on KMail is simple, that I want to have an email client which is truly integrated in my DE and uses mostly the same libs. (Running Evolution btw.).
  If I just run KDE as an application starter, I honestly rather use Xfce or even more minimal. The whole selling point of an DE (for me) is that things are integrated.
- I'm sure kmail used to work (a number of years ago). But something happened to it and I never managed to get it to work again. I tried again recently and no luck.
  Of course Thunderbird worked immediately on a basic Imap account.
  And don't even get me started on Google integration. Although Google probably shares the blame (or is responsible for most of it) given the hoops they make you jump through to (very reluctantly) allow anything to talk to their apps.
- Merkuro Mail might fix some of KMail's issues. It still uses the same backend though, and isn't really stable yet.
  
  I know you mean good, but exactly this is the problem: Fix known issues with KMail or with KMails backend? - Nope. Write a new E-Mail client which someday, in the far future might work and have all the features we need? Let's go!
  IMHO Evolution had the benefit, that it initially was written by Ximian and brought up to be good enough(TM). Honestly, I don't see anyone investing this time, money and energy in a new KDE email client (or in KMail).
- Building KDE on gnome is not feasible

Given that Fedora is a distro that aims to be on the frontier of new features and technologies, the inclusion of KDE seems like a much better fit than Gnome.

Dang, I finally started liking gnome over kde because of fedora
- you could just use the gnome fedora spin, this is just about making it not the default.
  
  What about upgrades, are they going to switch everyone to KDE?
  
  Ye true

If this is real, this is actually a good idea. Even things like multi monitor management work a lot better on KDE imho

I don't like KDE at all. Too busy, terrible-looking right click menu on the desktop (some lines long, some short). It's that stuff that give me OCD. I like cleanliness in the UI.
- Lol, that's what makes me hate GNOME. If I wanted the bare minimum I'd just start a raw display server with only 1 program in it.
  But my brain has no issue with dozens of things happening at once (ADHD).
- Hmm... my right click menu looks uniform. Could be your theme.
- I like KDE’s conformance to open standards, which is better than GNOME’s, and pace of development. However you’re absolutely right that the UI on KDE is inconsistent, messy, and buggy as hell. GNOME is still my go to because it’s just so polished, but I’m looking forward to COSMIC this year for that nice tiling workflow
- I've said it before, I don't really like KDE or GNOME because they're on opposite ends of the spectrum.
  GNOME seems to have a very vivid ideal of beauty, and that ideal is "empty windows that don't do anything." Open up a utility app, Big window with lots of empty space with a few buttons crammed in the top bar and not enough options to do what you actually need to do.
  KDE feels a lot more amateurish in that...things don't line up as well, the spacing between elements is off a lot, and the whole experience is BUSY! Lots of UI elements everywhere. A basic utility will have more options than you knew what to do with just in case. It's hideous the way the control panel at a nuclear power plant is hideous.
  So I use Cinnamon. Which Gnome is trying very hard to corrupt, but for now it works while still being comfortable and comprehensible.
  
  I was reading this whole thing thinking “this is why I use Cinnamon.” I like that I can customize Cinnamon without it being ridiculous.
  That said, the best Cinnamon experience is on Mint. Fedora’s spin is crappy. So I don’t really have any teeth in the game.
  
  I agree with you.
- Similar here. I have switched to xfce after struggling with gnome and kde.
- If I recall correctly, the desktop right click menu was one of the things they fixed in Plasma 6, actually.
- Same here. I can't stand the lack of cleanliness in UI. In Plasma, within 5 mins of usage, I can already notice imperfections everywhere.
- If only it looked bad but performed well, I might still take it. No matter how many times I try, it's just not stable for me to daily drive.

Unfortunate date to publish a proposal on...

GNOME always seemed like an odd choice considering how little customization is available. It feels like a prescriptive approach, you will use your computer the way GNOME feels is appropriate, whereas KDE tries to accommodate however you want to use your computer.
- Back in the Gnome 2 days this wasn't as much the case. Plus KDE was kind of a mess back then so the main choices were Gnome or XFCE which had fewer features. When Gnome 3 came around the devs switched hard to a much more opinionated approach, leading to Gnome 2 forks like Cinnamon since KDE was still very underpolished. It's a bit regrettable that all that effort was poured into Gnome forks instead of improving KDE especially considering how great it is now.
  
  Gnome 2 was great and I wish MATE got more attention
- Having a company behind software means you can pay to have your bugs fixed. Big distros want that stability for their corporate customers. It's no secret or anything. KDE has sponsors, but doesn't have a direct relationship with a huge contractor like RH. Same reasoning for systemd.
  Politics, basically.
  
  I wonder if the Gnome team's cavalier aditude towards agreed upon standards is related to Redhat's influence 🤔 It's totally possible the devs are just high on their own fumes due to being the default for so long.
  
  Whoever pays the band decides what they play.
- This is the advantage to GNOME. I know that all I need to make a Linux desktop work the way I want is to install GNOME and GSconnect. I really like default GNOME, adwaita, and the actually usable out-of-the-box experience. Sure there's a learning curve but that's true of every desktop and I really hate the context menu hell that KDE imported over from Windows.
  Not to mention there are still a lot of amateur mistakes over at KDE like the recent themes fiasco.
  People who want the customizability of KDE will use the KDE spin or a distro that ships it by default. People downloading a massively popular distro like Fedora should get something as maximally functional as possible out of the box, and with all the stuff they've been adding recently, GNOME is more and more polished almost to a macOS point. I just recently found the built-in RDP, SSH, and filesharing toggles in the settings menu, and they're easy enough that I'd actually call GNOME quite beginner friendly at this point.

Late April fools joke?
- Don't think so as they asked for "Workstation KDE" and "Workstation GNOME" > Issue tagged with: changes, f42 I think Fedora was doing a lot of work on KDE anyways.

As long as a gnome spin stays maintained. I've been using gnome for 8 years and I really don't want to switch distros again.
- The Fedora Project currently maintains 10 desktop-oriented spins (excluding GNOME since it's the default), so they're not going to be abandoning one of the most popular DEs in use. GNOME is going to be maintained regardless of their default choice of DE.

I might use XFCE... but PLEASE GO KDE... I CANNOT EXPLAIN MY LOATHING OF GNOME
- oh I can explain mine, Bad performance, lacking features, devs who don't care about problems that effect the user.
  
  I felt that way before meeting a GNOME dev. Their target audience is the whole world of users who either don't already have a computer or don't know how to use one. They don't want people customizing their apps. They don't want a calculator named anything other than "Calculator". They're target audience is the 2B users that we don't currently interact with.
- I too hate Gnome with an unreasonable passion.
  So I just don't use it.
  If others want to subject themselves to it, well, I'm not one to kink shame.

why would they post this on April first this is amazing

I'd be against this, despite using Plasma on one of my systems and having an overall positive view of the project. Although admittedly I do slightly prefer Gnome because consistency is something I'm really anal about.
Gnome just feels a lot more stable and consistent. It works well, has a good release cadence (although KDE is making steps to improve theirs), and most people who use Fedora are happy with it.
Critically, Gnome has good accessibility features, and they're improving rapidly at the moment. I think good accessibility features are imperative for a workstation distro.
I've also never really heard any Fedora Plasma Spin users complain about the quality of Fedora's work, or it being called a "Spin" instead of workstation. It's already treated with pretty much the same level of care as Gnome is, so what would this achieve, other than months of bickering and a bit of confusion?

I've been using gnome as a "base" DE for years, what that means is I install it, then install my tiling wm and use all the gnome utilities.
I recently had to set up a few new machines and decided to try KDE on a couple and I'm really enjoying it. I haven't even gotten around to installing a tiling wm because I want to learn a wayland option and that'll take some time. I haven't ran into pain points listed here but one thing I like is when I want to do X, there's usually already something ready to do X for me. Years of gnome and I felt like the devs were always fighting me. I haven't really used a full gnome setup in a few years though, but I know the "mommy knows best" attitude is still prevalent with the devs.
- Install KWin script "Polonium" and you won't need any TWM anymore.
  
  Polonium
  Hm I'm not sure if that'd really give me what I'm looking for. I know its certainly possible to configure KDE and Polonium to get me 90% there but I think I'd rather just have a normal floating setup I can switch to if need be. I'd need to remap a significant amount of keyboard shortcuts that would stop making sense in the context of a full floating DE.
  I really just want a very fast app launcher like dmenu, dynamic tiling, and monitor independent workspaces. I have a particular setup using certain alpha keys for my workspace.
  I never really enjoyed the experience of tacking things onto an existing DE and having to mess with UI configuration. I've been really loving XMonad for a few setups and my ideal wm would be something that's extremely low power and low fluff. Even if I only eek out 10% more battery life, breaking the 10hr mark is more valuable to me than most bells and whistles.
  I'm just really lazy. I could load up my xmonad setup in 20 minutes but I wanted to see the state of wayland and that requires learning a new wm's configuration quirks.

Can someone ELI5 why this even matters/is such a big deal? Does the default DE have its tentacles so deep in the distro that it can't be changed by users to suit their preferences?
I run i3 on Debian, and...well, actually, there is no "and," I just installed the WM I wanted and that was it. And as I recall the installer asked what DE/WM I wanted to install anyway.
- OOB experience matters a LOT.
- It matters since a top 3 distro will identify with KDE Plasma desktop. This is not very common.
- Its a huge deal. If X desktop is the default, it shows that the distro developers and maintainers usually test and optimize more and better for that specific DE so your experience with the default DE will always be more stable and polished than non-official ones. Extra GUI tools that the distro makes usually are also better tailored to the default distro. Like Manjaro and all of their locale, kernel and other packages that are integrated inside the KDE settings. Or popOS and all of their utilities being integrated into Cosmic. Etc etc. More money and dev time is invested into the default DE.

I like the UX KDE gives over Gnome. It feels way more like a personal computer, something that you can modify and do multiple tasks with.
Gnome is a lot more limited in functionality, but it's also a lot more stable. KDE is buggy and has a tendency to crap the bed a few minutes after startup, which never happened to me with Gnome.
It's a though decision, but lately I've been thinking of switching back to Gnome.
- has a tendency to crap the bed a few minutes after startup
  Tell me you are an nvidia user without telling me. Either that is hard to believe. I use KDE daily for more than 8-9 hours a day, sometimes my pc goes for a full week without geting turned off, multiple apps tabs and servers on, themes installed, widgets on the desktop, I am such an extremely heavy KDE user you have no idea. Still, zero crashes. Sometimes something goes a bit "wut" like moving a window around gliches a liiiiiiitle bit, but it instantly corrects itself and goes back to being stable. And I am on Plasma 6.0.3, funny enough has been more stable than Plasma 5.
  Update your KDE or use a distro that has better KDE support. Some distros fck up KDE packages and get it unstable. Fedora KDE is rock solid for example. Nobara has been great too and its now KDE by default.
  
  To be fair, it's a laptop with an Nvidia GPU. Though I only use Intel's integrated graphics in a clean, vanilla Fedora 39 installation (no weird extras or tricks on top). I actually installed it from scratch because switching from Gnome made some things a bit iffy.
  I've had issues with windows disappearing into corners I can't reach in my own screen (happens with Firefox, not sure if other applications are affected as well), random and complete freezes (keyboard nonresponsive) and I can't drag and drop files from the file manager into mpv or view files properly with it or Fedora's default video player for KDE. Gnome as limited as it is, manages to be a way smoother experience.
  I really want to like KDE but my experience hasn't been the same. I even donated to the project lol.
- KDE is buggy and has a tendency to crap the bed a few minutes after startup, which never happened to me with Gnome.
  Then our experiences are vastly different. I have never encountered any bug or instability with KDE Plasma 5, and I have used it on a dozen or so devices. This is probably some driver problem specific to your machine.

That is going to be quite the debate. I'm sure it'll be healthy (only half joking).
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I will happily use any desktop environment that allows me to bring up a summary of all active windows by pressing the super key. That's just too ingrained in me now. I even find myself mindlessly doing it on Windows.
- Kde has you covered. MOD + w by default and you can switch it in settings to MOD only.
  You can even have hot corner like gnome does.
- You'll need to configure Plasma to do that, as the default is to bring-up the launcher. The overview effect is alf-tab iirc.

Good proposal

Not gonna happen obviously. It's so funny to see every fedora announcement on linuxfr.org detailing every single aspect of the release while ignoring completely KDE.
- Obviously it's a difficult sell - but if this got positive attention I could see Fesco relenting and "upgrading" the branding on Fedora KDE to Fedora Plasma Workstation

God no.

This would be a really nice change

Gnome is nice and minimalist. It'd be nice tto have built in extension by default to keep the dock always visible without having to activate it in top left corner (very unergonomic considering that the dock is at the bottom). It's unacceptable that you have to install a plugin to keep it on, as a beginner user I didn't even know to install extension manager and what extension to install.
KDE on the other hand is too busy and complicated for new users.
- It can also be used very simply though. It works out of the box with any changes necessary. The issue I find with gnome is that its simplicity quickly became a bottleneck for me. E.g. Konsole is just so great and I couldn't live without it anymore
- You just install the extension manager or use a web browser. It probably could use more documentation but I also understand that gnome is cautious about user generated content
  
  Yeah, but how will a beginner user know to install extension manager? I didn't. There's no prompt to install it.
  For newcomers it just seems like a very basic ui with no configuration options whatsoever. Very frustrating.
- KDE looks basically like a Windows 10 desktop by default tho. That makes it easy for most people to get into it
  
  i think that's the reason steam deck chose KDE as the default UI

That is not a great idea. KDE prioritizes features and customization over stability and out of the box experience.
The spin is there for those who want it.
- KDE prioritizes features and customization over stability and out of the box experience.
  I mean, the fact that the very new major release of KDE almost hadn't added new features and focused on a rather smooth upgrade kinda proves otherwise.
  
  KDE has tons of customization which is great for people who want to rice. Back in the day I was into ricing and DIY Linux. However, KDE is a poor choice for a mainstream workstation as there are way to many configuration options which leads to everything getting buried. It also doesn't look as nice out of the box.
  I think the KDE spin is great for those who want to customize. For everyone else there is gnome and its derivatives
- Like the stability of blowing up extensions and APIs across minor point releases?
  
  It really is not that big of a problem from my experience.
- Exactly. While I love Plasma for what it is, I also don't love certain things like lack of polish, stability etc. Again no offense. Fedora Workstation aims to be a stable OS with sensible defaults for wider audience including home users, disabled people and developers who want to get things done rather than tweaking their OS. GNOME may not have great customizability as Plasma but it is stable and well polished for average user.

10 years ago, my workplace forced me to use Gnome 3 (was horrible) and Wayland (was horrific then).
Since I changed my job, I've mostly used macOS for GUIs because PTSD.
- So you got PTSD from a desktop manger, a little extreme there.

KDE rules, not surprised more and more and moving its way
- The reason this is feasible now, is that KDE is changing the release cycle for Plasma, Frameworks, and the Apps to all be aligned with the sometime-before-the-distro-release 6-month cycle, that allows for a release of everything KDE to be taken, tested properly, and released with the 6-month release cycle for Ubuntu, Fedora and other distros following that release cycle. Until recently, we would have the releases of these components all separate throughout the year, meaning that it would be harder for the distros to package, test and ship Plasma as a flagship desktop because of stability concerns (also because of bugs).
  Now, with Plasma 6 being all about making Plasma better and more stable, especially in the Wayland department, I'd say Plasma is superior to GNOME in every way (except funding). At this point, it's not too unrealistic to see distros consider the switch to Plasma, including major distros like Fedora, as seen here. I really think this is the best time to consider using Plasma over GNOME.

Have you guys tried windows?
- sadly.
- Have you?

GNOME is grared toward dev people who need something almost as minimal as a wm. KDE is better suited for average users.
- Meanwhile I CANNOT be productive in GNOME. There are hundreds of maybe thousands of KDE features that make IT and dev work so extremely easy. I could make a 50 page comment just listing them. I can start with how horrendously basic and generic the default gnome terminal is.
  But then KDE also is in fact good for average ex-Windows users because it has stuff where people expect it to, has features that people expect too (cough minimize/maximize buttons cough) and well yea KDE is better for average users.
  So KDE is better for IT users and developers, and is also better for average users. And since it supports vsync off, VRR and HDR it is also better for gaming.
  So wait is KDE better for literally EVERYONE? 🤔
- LMAO no.
- Donno why i was downvoted. I've been an avid KDE fan for years.
- I'm a developer and I've strongly preferred KDE over Gnome for many years. I find the lack of features and customization in Gnome extremely irritating.
  
  Gnome Shell through extensions is very customizable but the two problems are that those extensions can break on Gnome updates and Gnome applications usually don't offer that. I used Gnome + non-Gnome apps for quite some time years ago because I wanted to use Wayland as early as possible.

Please don't! If RedHat start participating in KDE, it will kill it like it killed GNOME.
- This is probably the best take in fedora not adopting KDE i've heard to date lmao
- Red Hat has participated in KDE on many occasions. Not to a degree as with Gnome but it's not unheard of.

I'd love to use my proc to fry my breakfast
- Wat
  
  Kde is hotttttt