As an exciting announcement out of the KDE Akademy 2025 conference kicking off in Berlin, Germany… The KDE Linux distribution is now in alpha! This is their in-house reference Linux distribution for the KDE Plasma desktop.
KDE Linux is now available in alpha form as the “reference implementation” for the Plasma desktop and KDE applications. While the likes of Kubuntu and KDE Neon have served as sort of a reference/leading-edge platform for KDE in the past, there is now KDE Linux as their own official Linux distribution.
KDE Linux will ship with all the latest KDE applications, provide a quick update cycle, and aims to be safe, maintainable, and modern.
KDE Linux remains under heavy development and testing but is no ready for more power users and developers to try it out. Today’s press release explains that KDE Linux is “The KDE OS” and intends to be suitable for general use but not as optimized for specific uses compared to other Linux distributions.
KDE Linux is built on an immutable base OS and leveraging Arch Linux packages for the core platform.
Here are some of the official screenshots the KDE project provided in advance of today’s embargo lift for the KDE Linux alpha release:
Those wanting to download today’s alpha release or learn more about the KDE Linux OS can do so via kde.org/linux/.
