KDE Linux Alpha Available for Daring Users

Sep 10, 2025

It's official, KDE Linux has arrived, but it's not quite ready for prime time.

If you've been antsy to get your hands on KDE Linux, now's your time. However, this is a first (alpha) release, so don't expect it to perform well, be stable, or be worth your time.

First off, KDE Linux is only available as a raw image, which means you'll need to burn it to a USB drive with an app like ISO Image Writer. You also cannot run KDE Linux as a virtual machine, so if you don't have a spare PC lying around, you won't be testing this distribution.

Why release another KDE Plasma-based distribution? The developers want to create the KDE operating system that is immutable, based on Arch Linux, and as user-friendly as it gets. The goal here is to create the best implementation of KDE Plasma on the market.

There is a hitch (at least at the moment). You won't find a traditional package manager on KDE Linux. Instead, all apps are installed via Flatpak, Snap, or AppImages. The reason for this is that KDE Linux is immutable, so the only way to install software is for it to be containerized. Default apps include Firefox, Haruna, Elisa, Gwenview, and the usual KDE apps (KMail, Kate, KWrite, etc).

As far as system requirements, you're looking at UEFI firmware, an AMD or Intel CPU, 1GB of RAM, and 6GB of storage. Of course, you're definitely going to want more than 1GB of RAM and 6GB of storage.

You can learn more about KDE Linux from its official Wiki page.
 
 

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