KDE Linux Prunes Its Insecure & Unused Software
KDE Linux Prunes Its Insecure & Unused Software
https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Linux-May-2026
Publish Date: 2026-05-31 13:08:00
Source Domain: www.phoronix.com
With the end of the month comes a new KDE Linux status report from prominent KDE developer Nate Graham.
During the month of May, KDE Linux developers worked on restructuring their build process for KDE software. Rather than generating Arch Linux packages for KDE software and using mkosi to install them, the process is now ported over to KDE’s kde-builder tool to compile all KDE software directly. The benefit is that this better aligns with how upstream KDE developers are compiling the software themselves and also makes it more distribution agnostic while also being much faster in doing so.
KDE Linux developers also worked on doing a “mini audit” of the insecure and unused software shipped by KDE Linux. For example, they switched away from the Zen kernel back to the vanilla Arch Linux kernel build after realizing the Zen kernel didn’t offer much beyond the kernel configuration tweaks they were already making.
KDE Linux also decided to replace the NTFS and CDemu kernel modules with the FUSE-based user-space versions, dropped the OpenRazer and APFS kernel modules due to blocking Secure Boot in turn, and removing a variety of other unused and unnecessary packages. Among those packages dropped ranged from Intel VPL-GPU-RT to Busybox, EncFS, HPLIP, and others.
More details on the KDE Linux changes made during the month of May can be found via Nate Graham’s blog.
