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The KDE Project released today the alpha version of the KDE Linux distribution, an in-house operating system to showcase the latest in-development versions of the KDE Plasma desktop environment and KDE apps.
I heard rumors about KDE Linux in the past, but I never thought the KDE Project would put so much effort into creating its own distro, especially since we already have KDE neon, which, in my opinion, does a tremendous job at providing the community with access to the latest and upcoming KDE software.
Unlike KDE neon, which is based on Ubuntu, KDE Linux uses packages from the Arch Linux distribution as a base, but the devs don't consider it an Arch-based distro. It has an immutable base, but allows users to install extra packages and do some system changes by using the command.
Also, KDE Linux uses mostly Flatpaks, except for some core KDE apps like Dolphin, System Settings, Discover, Konsole, Info Center, Spectacle, and Ark, which are built from sources. AppImages and containers are supported too, and the devs also recommend users to build stuff from sources.
Under the hood, it uses Btrfs as the default file system, Wayland as the default display server, and PipeWire as the default sound server. Unfortunately, the system doesn't ship with a default package manager, so updating or installing apps is done only via the Plasma Discover application.
Hardware-wise, KDE Linux is limited to only UEFI computers with AMD or Intel CPUs. It doesn't support Secure Boot, and it won't work on machines with proprietary NVIDIA graphics drivers for pre-Turing NVIDIA GPUs. For older NVIDIA GPUs, users will need to manually enable the Nouveau driver.
So, KDE Linux is here only for die-hard KDE fans and KDE Plasma developers. The alpha version is available for download from the official website, where you will find detailed instructions on how to install it on a computer. However, keep in mind not to use it for production as it is a pre-release version.
The alpha release is provided as a RAW image that you have to write to a USB flash drive and boot it on a computer, so there's no support for running KDE Linux in a virtual machine, at least not right now.