F42 Change Proposal: Fedora Plasma Workstation (System-Wide)

[Aoife Moloney]

Wiki - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/FedoraPlasmaWorkstation

This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes
process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive
community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved
by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

== Summary ==
Switch the default desktop experience for Workstation to KDE Plasma.
The GNOME desktop is moved to a separate spin / edition, retaining
release-blocking status.

== Owner ==

* Names: [[User:joshstrobl | Joshua Strobl]], [[User:marcdeop | Marc
Deop i Argemí]], [[User:tdawson | Troy Dawson]], [[User:farchord |
Steve Cossette]], [[User:aleasto| Alessandro Astone]]
* Emails: joshua(a)buddiesofbudgie.org, marcdeop(a)fedoraproject.org,
tdawson(a)redhat.com, farchord(a)gmail.com, aleasto(a)fedoraproject.org

== Detailed Description ==

With the release of Plasma 6, KDE Plasma has developed into a high
quality, well-regarded desktop experience.

=== Improved end user experience ===

Plasma has been at the forefront of creating a cohesive desktop
platform that empowers the user to have full ownership of their
computing experience.

Plasma provides this approachable, highly-flexible, user-extensible
experience with predictability across Plasma releases. Unlike other
desktop experiences such as GNOME Shell, the APIs leveraged by Plasma
applets / widgets have been more stable across “minor” Plasma
releases, reducing long-term user frustration and promoting a
healthier ecosystem for developers and users alike.

This extensibility additionally applies to the underlying window
manager, KWin, with effects and scripts that provide both utility and
personalization, such as:

* Automatically blocking compositing for full screen applications
* Fun effects such as window glitch and portals

Plasma provides a more traditional user experience that could be
viewed as being more approachable to everyday computing users, serving
as a smoother "on-ramp" to using Linux-based operating systems.
Alongside its wide breadth of personalization capabilities, it
provides an out-of-the-box desktop experience that is more predictable
than some of its counterparts. As an example, Plasma provides a system
tray for applications supporting StatusNotifierItem (e.g. Flameshot,
OBS Studio, VPN clients), which is not functionality supported by
default in GNOME Shell and requires an extension which may break
between releases.

=== Standardization support ===

The KDE community has a long heritage of collaborative standards
development and supporting capabilities that application developers
and users need for a productive experience.

KDE is heavily involved in the development of cross-desktop standards
and tools that benefit the larger open source desktop community. From
the XDG icon theme specification to D-Bus to StatusNotifierItems and
Wayland protocols, KDE has been front and center for evolving the
Linux desktop platform in a manner that benefits the wider community.

Many of the specifications and protocols in use today originate or are
heavily influenced by KDE, and KDE has continued to be a bastion of
innovation in a user-centric and community-centric manner.

Notably, the following recent Wayland protocols have been driven or
influenced by KDE:

* xdg-toplevel-drag (dragging tabs in and out of windows)
* content-type
* drm-lease (enable applications to selectively gain privileged
display device access)
* tearing-control (enable faster than display framerate refreshing, ie
no “vsync lock”)
* ext-idle-notify
* xdg-activation (enable notifications to bring a window to the
foreground on user activation)
* xdg-decoration (server side decorations, derived from KDE’s protocol)

There are several upcoming protocols being driven by KDE as well, such as:

* alpha-modifier (set alpha values for a surface)
* ext-blur (enable blur effect underneath a surface)
* xdg-toplevel-icon (enable applications to set window icons)
* ext-placement (allow application window positioning)
* window-id (consistent, uniform method window IDs)
* xdg-pip (picture in picture overlays)
* dbus-annotation (link D-Bus objects to surfaces)

This demonstrates that KDE works not to just enable new technologies
and features for Plasma Wayland, but they also do it in a way that
drives larger community adoption, success, and growth.

=== Wayland support ===

KDE Plasma offers the most advanced Wayland desktop experience today,
providing support for highly-demanded features, such as:

* Fractional scaling
* Color management
* Variable Refresh Rate for capable displays
* Support for optionally allowing legacy X11 applications to access
desktop resources
* Screensharing for legacy applications
* Global shortcut support for legacy applications
* Support for accessibility, including integration with the Orca screen reader
* Support for AR/VR displays

=== Industry support ===

KDE Plasma has been garnering wider industry support in consumer
products over the last couple years. This includes various PINE64
products (PinePhones, PineBooks, etc.), the Steam Deck from Valve, and
Tuxedo OS from Tuxedo Computers.

The Steam Deck in particular has brought the Linux desktop in the form
of KDE Plasma to more people than ever before, through the desktop
mode in SteamOS 3.x releases. As a result, Valve has heavily invested
into KDE and its technology stack for mainstream usage. Game
developers are also testing on KDE Plasma more often nowadays as part
of SteamOS compatibility testing.

=== Community Support ===

A number of Fedora downstreams have launched with KDE Plasma as the
flagship experience or migrated to it over time. Notably Fedora Asahi
Remix uses KDE Plasma as the flagship due to significantly better
support and features for ARM based platforms and the hardware that
Apple Silicon systems have. Nobara uses KDE Plasma as the flagship due
to a high quality Wayland experience that supports gaming and game
development well.

Developers of Linux XR applications and services already recommend
using KDE Plasma to be able to leverage AR/VR experiences in a modern
desktop.

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.

== Feedback ==


== Benefit to Fedora ==

* Fedora Linux advertises and advocates for the most advanced Wayland
desktop experience with broad community support and engagement.
* We ship a desktop experience that supports the wide range of user
needs and enables the experiences people expect from a modern desktop
(HDR, VRR, VR gaming, HiDPI) and strives to support as many users as
possible in a manner that results in positive engagement with the
community.
* We align the default Fedora workstation experience with what the
larger PC ecosystem expects for a high quality desktop.

== Scope ==

* Proposal owners: fedora-release: -kde subpackages get renamed to
-workstation-kde. -workstation subpackages get renamed to
-workstation-gnome.

* Other developers: Fedora Plasma Workstation is added to the main
landing page and promoted as the default desktop experience

* Release engineering: [https://pagure.io/releng/issue/12043 12043]
<!-- REQUIRED FOR SYSTEM WIDE CHANGES -->

* Policies and guidelines: No, it would not required changes as it is
already release-blocking.

* Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
* Alignment with Community Initiatives: N/A

== Upgrade/compatibility impact ==

Existing Fedora Workstation systems will not be switched to KDE
Plasma. This will only affect new installs of Fedora Workstation.
Existing Fedora KDE installs will be upgraded to the Plasma
Workstation branding.

== How To Test ==

As the fundamental experience is not changing in the existing KDE
Plasma variant, users can try out the Fedora KDE spin to see what
Fedora Plasma Workstation looks like.

== User Experience ==
The user experience does not change from the existing KDE Plasma
variant. Existing Fedora Workstation users won’t see their experience
change. New users of Fedora will get KDE Plasma instead of GNOME.

== Dependencies ==

N/A

== Contingency Plan ==

Retain the existing default GNOME experience for Fedora Workstation.
Move Fedora Plasma Workstation back to spin branding.

== Documentation ==

Documentation would need to be updated to reference Plasma and point
links to KDE rather than GNOME.

== Release Notes ==

Fedora Linux now offers a new default workstation experience as
“Fedora Plasma Workstation” using KDE Plasma Desktop. This replaces
the previous Fedora KDE Plasma spin. The previous "GNOME Shell"-based
desktop experience can now be accessed through its dedicated Edition
page.


-- 
Aoife Moloney

Fedora Operations Architect

Fedora Project

Matrix: @amoloney:fedora.im

IRC: amoloney