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Fedora Kinoite Beta & Nightly: Try the plasma desktop in its latest form

Jan 30, 2023

Users who want to try the latest KDE Plasma can now do so on a Fedora Workstation 37 basis. The KDE spin of Fedora 37 uses the same basis as the main release, but relies on more up-to-date software packages from the ecosystem of the KDE project as Fedora Kinoite Beta and Nightly.

Fedora + KDE + Immutable = Kinoite

The Fedora project, which, as usual, relies on the free Gnome desktop for the current Fedora Workstation 37 the official KDE derivative Fedora Kinoite as “The operating system of the next generation” and equips it with the current KDE Plasma 5.26.

It is a so-called immutable system with an immutable kernel based on OSTree. This core updates itself only twice in a year with a new release of Fedora.

Plasma, frameworks and gear up to date

In addition to the official releases of Fedora Kinoite, the fall back on the latest KDE Plasma, the project also has two unofficial derivatives on offer. Fedora Kinoite Beta relies on the latest Beta builds of the desktop, while Fedora Kinoite Nightly is based on the latest Nightly builds.

Fedora Kinoite Beta

KDE Plasma 5.27 Beta
KDE Frameworks 5.102
KDE Gear 22.12.1
Linux 6.1.x

Fedora Kinoite Nightly

KDE Plasma 5.28 Nightly

< li>KDE Frameworks 5.103

KDE Gear 22.12.1
Linux 6.1.x

In addition to the actual desktop, users also get the other components of the KDE ecosystem such as the KDE Frameworks, a collection of the in-house open source libraries and APIs, and KDE Gear – formerly KDE Applications – presented in their latest form as a pre-release and to try out offered.

System images as container images

The images for Fedora Kinoite Beta and Nightly are offered as container images and are available through the beta repository and the nightly repository.

In addition, the stable release of Fedora Kinoite (ISO) can be switched to the Beta or Nightly base using the console.

sudo rpm-ostree update –reboot sudo ostree admin pin 0 # For Kinoite Nightly: sudo rpm-ostree rebase –reboot ostree-unverified-registry:quay.io/fedora-ostree-desktops/kinoite-nightly # For Kinoite Beta sudo rpm-ostree rebase –reboot ostree -unverified-registry:quay.io/fedora-ostree-desktops/kinoite-beta

This makes Fedora Kinoite, alongside the unstable from KDE neon and openSUSE Tumbleweed, another option for trying out KDE Plasma in its latest form.

The project also considers Fedora Kinoite for users who are particularly keen on experimenting Rawhide, which already relies on the system kernel Linux 6.2 and other experimental software packages.