Asahi Linux lead Hector Martin took to Mastodon to explain the decision to use KDE as the default desktop environment (DE), citing its “configurability.”

Asahi Linux is a project aimed at bringing Linux to Apple’s custom silicon chips. The project has chosen KDE Plasma as its default DE due to the degree of customization it offers. As we pointed out in our review of KDE Plasma, the DE is hands-down the most customizeable and powerful available.

According to Martin, that power is exactly why Plasma was chosen as the default DE for Asahi.

The configurability of KDE is also nice, because it means we can ship tiny defaults changes to make the out of the box experience better, or at least document what are good options for Macs running Asahi. And it also means that I can feel comfortable recommending it to more people, since it is possible to tune it to work well for many different workflows (some other DEs are more opinionated, which makes some use cases easier and others impossible, so it’s harder to recommend them as a general option).

As with everything Linux, if someone prefers something else, they can certainly opt to use it. However, Martin recommends that most people stick with the defaults.

Should everyone use KDE? Of course not. But if you’re undecided, you don’t particularly care, or you’re open to change, I would encourage you to stick with KDE if you’re trying out Linux on Apple Silicon. It gets that extra little bit of love, things are a bit more likely to work well, and we’re more likely to directly work together with upstream when we run into problems.

Interestingly, Martin also credited the KDE developers, and how easy they are to work with, as one of the motivating factors in choosing Plasma.

I’ve had very positive experiences interacting with the KDE community. Bugs get fixed, the developers care, I can send out PRs and they get merged. We’ve already gotten a small pile of bugs fixed and new features added to improve the experience on Macs, and several of us on the Asahi side often contribute back upstream or help guide discussions on how to approach certain issues.

Being easy to work with is a common compliment aimed at the KDE devs, especially when compared with Gnome developers. KDE generally has a much-less opinionated approach that often makes collaboration much easier than with the Gnome Foundation.