The name Jonathan Riddell should ring a bell if you read Linux and open source news. He was the creator and longtime lead developer of the Kubuntu distribution. He was forced out of his position by Ubuntu boss Mark Shuttleworth last year because he dared to ask what happened to the funds Canonical had raised for Kubuntu. (To the best of my knowledge, Canonical never really answered to his questions about finances.)

On Saturday, Riddell announced a new project: KDE neon. According to Riddell’s announcement “Neon will provide a way to get the latest KDE software on the day it’s released.”

After reading both the announcement and looking at the brief site, it appears that neon is a mainly a “rapidly updated software repository” that allows KDE fans to be on the bleeding edge. Instead of waiting for months for distro developers to release the updated KDE on their repos, you’ll be able to get it hot off the presses.

KDE did state in the noen FAQ that this is not a KDE created distro. In fact, they say “KDE believes it is important to work with many distributions, as each brings unique value and expertise for their respective users. This is one project out of hundreds from KDE.”

However, the way the site and the announcement refer to the fact that neon runs on Ubuntu 15.10 (until the next LTS version is available) and that there will soon be images makes me wonder. KDE could be saying this to keep Canonical from seeing this project as a competitor to Kubuntu. If they that there is a demand for KDE neon, they could spin it off as a full distro. Both the announcement and site state that this is a KDE Incubator project, so the future could hold anything for this project.

KDE neon

Does neon sound like it would be useful for you or are you happy with your current distro’s KDE release rate? Do you think there is room for another KDE distro (if KDE decides to head in that direction)? Let me know in the comment section below.