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.

Is this an April Fool? I trust nothing posted on 1 April!

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.

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.

Please

I'll believe that when I see it. Redhat is fully invested in Gnome.

This is not April fools. The submitter did want to mess with people, though.

https://joshuastrobl.social/@me/112197672362783955

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

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

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.)

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

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.

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.

Unfortunate date to publish a proposal on...

Late April fools joke?

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.

I might use XFCE... but PLEASE GO KDE... I CANNOT EXPLAIN MY LOATHING OF GNOME

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?

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.

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.

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.

That is going to be quite the debate. I'm sure it'll be healthy (only half joking).

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Good proposal