Fedora KDE Desktop Spin Promoted To Same Tier As GNOME-Based Fedora Workstation

[mrg666]

It's about money, like most things in life.

This is why the KDE SIG group tried to have their version supplant the Gnome version, so that they could get all the dough, but obviously the Gnome version people were not about to give up their cash cow after all these years, so they worked out a compromise and decided to split the cash.

I wonder who is paying you money to spread so much crap. I want to have a word with your sponsor.

[szymon_g]

Yeah, so much confusion! It's not like other distro's don't offer choices. And Windows is also very easy to choose, with no S, Home, Pro, etc. editions. Android too, with all manufacturers going barebones and none of their own customizations and additions. Fedora is the only one confusing people.

Laptops and phones come with systems reinstalled on them already. The end user usually don't have tj chose the system

[King InuYasha]

According to this Fedora gets about 300 grand a year:

https://fedorarepository.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/AR-2023-Fedora18-1.pdf

It follows that if the Fedora SIGs that are responsible for various spins do not get any of this cash then the official version must be getting the cash.

It also follows that if there are now two official versions then the cash must be getting split.

Where am I wrong?

This is a different Fedora, unrelated to the Fedora Project that makes Fedora Linux. That's the Fedora Repository project, which is a project for archiving digital data. See the trademark note in their About page.

[Vistaus]

Laptops and phones come with systems reinstalled on them already. The end user usually don't have tj chose the system

They do in a way, because there are laptops with S, Home or Pro only.

But that wasn't my point.

[sophisticles]

This is a different Fedora, unrelated to the Fedora Project that makes Fedora Linux. That's the Fedora Repository project, which is a project for archiving digital data. See the trademark note in their About page.

Thank you for correcting me, after some searching I found Fedora Linux's financial statements from 2020:

https://budget.fedoraproject.org/budget/FY20/overall.html

Out of 206 thousand dollars Red Hat gave them 196 thousand.

No matter which way you slice it, someone is putting some nice cash in their pocket.

[kevmif]

Why do we even need 'spins'? Why can't we have a cohesive and feature rich installer that sets things up properly according to the chosen desktop environment?

I've recently compared everything netinstall, default workstation and KDE spin. I see the trend of bloating the installers whilst removing functionality is still going strong. Why do we need live installers? I really can't see the use case these days. A live version is never going to be reflective of the installed version. Anyone smart enough to want to try various distros is smart enough to use a VM.

The much older anaconda where you could actually select packages was better from a usability standpoint. I recall the very dark days of early new Anaconda where it could barely set up your disk. Not much has changed, we've just gotten used to having things taken away and dealing with one click defaults that thankfully mostly work.

Though I understand things are more nuanced these days making it harder to create a good out of the box experience with so much choice. Ultimately, the KDE spin appears very well polished and I look forward to installing it on my 2 Fedora 40 KDE machines, both of which have been running for years and have been through many, many system upgrades via DNF (absolutely time to start fresh).

Whilst I love the idea of a netinstall where I could actually choose, I'm not sure I trust that it will be sanely configured. Wish we could have it both ways, but ultimately I'm ecstatic to see the KDE spin being promoted to top tier. Keep up the great work Fedora KDE-SIG.

[anda_skoa]

Why do we need live installers? I really can't see the use case these days.

A live system can build confidence that the system will work with the hardware you have without requiring to go through the full install process.

For example if it detects and configures all your monitors correctly, if it supports multi-finger gestures on your laptop's touchpad, if it supports your laptop's touch screen, if you can print with the attached printer and so on.

Especially if you are considering a switch to a different distribution than the one you've currently installed and which you would like to keep using if the new one does fail one of your compatibility tests.

Anyone smart enough to want to try various distros is smart enough to use a VM.

I think this is a different use case.
Testing in a VM is more about general look&feel of the distro, e.g. how the desktop looks like, how default applications work, how well system tools are integrated, etc.

[mirmirmir]

While I'm very happy to see this increased exposure to KDE, I'm NOT surprised. Some big names in Fedora have already said KDE is effectively, low-key treated at the same class as Gnome in Fedora. For context, Gnome was considered a blocking software, where any package or anything that seriously broke Gnome would cause the overall distro not to ship updates to that particular software across the board (e.g. Kernel upgrades, or Gnome itself) until all major issues were resolved. Normally, the community spins (Cinnamon, XFCE, etc.) didn't necessarily have this privilege, but at some point, KDE's Community spin did unofficially get this privilege.

So again, Fedora's people have said that KDE has been treated at Gnome's level for a while now, so this big change and announcement are more of an acknowledgement and officiation of that fact. This says: "we treat this edition as a flagship so if you use it, it is at our top-level tier of official support" or something to that effect.

Aight, let's ignore the fact that some group of people tried to do hostile takeover. Surely people think fondly of KDE 👍👍

[woddy]

The reason for confusion is as there will now be two desktops offered by default that have vastly different levels of quality control and understanding of offering a quality product which practically means the KDE project as a whole has absolutely no understanding of quality at all. Overall it will be quite a quality downgrade to Fedora as a whole and may damage the brand of the project for years. It should have stayed a spin.

all the quality that Gnome offers is actually the removal of features that are now delegated to third-party extensions, which are nothing more than buggy features that get broken with each release.

[Mitch]

Aight, let's ignore the fact that some group of people tried to do hostile takeover. Surely people think fondly of KDE 👍👍

Can I trouble you with a source? I hadn't heard of this