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A couple weeks ago I decided to switch from Kubuntu 25.04 to a relatively new, immutable distro with the KDE Plasma desktop. It is called Kalpa Desktop , though I sometimes will just call it Kalpa Linux instead. It’s based on openSUSE MicroOS, which itself is basically an immutable version of openSUSE Tumbleweed, a rolling release distro. I figured it would be an interesting exercise to see how far the immutable distro space has come now that the Steam Deck (which runs an immutable distro) has been out for a couple of years, and I also figured it would be a nice way to run a relatively stable distro that still has the latest version of Plasma, since I would like to contribute and file bug reports.

If you’re curious about what I think of it, I think it is excellent and only needs a couple of minor improvements. Below you can find my more detailed thoughts:

What it does well

Note: I use a Framework Laptop 13 with an Intel Core i5-1240P processor. I do not use an NVIDIA GPU, and I imagine getting Kalpa working could take a bit more effort in that scenario. You may be better served with Bazzite because they have a dedicated NVIDIA ISO.

The install process, though using an older openSUSE installer program, is very simple and easy to understand, and I also really like the minimal app selection. I think not bundling Kontact and the KDE PIM suite was probably the right move, as I feel most people probably use either webmails or Thunderbird instead, and openSUSE’s pattern system already makes the PIM suite a bit cumbersome to keep off the OS.

When you first install the system, you will basically be greeted with the most boring, typical KDE Plasma installation known to man. Which is pretty much exactly how I like it. As with most immutable distros, apps are handled via Flatpak primarily, but for those who are more willing to get their hands dirty there is also distrobox , which I will go more into later. What I really love about this setup is that it is very easy to keep the system storage usage low. On other distros, it can be easy to lose track of what packages you have installed, and more importantly, which were installed by you manually and which ones came with the system. I find it can be overwhelming to prune packages in a classic .deb or .rpm-based system to clear up storage, but on Kalpa you have your minimal base system, and from there everything is stored in /home for the most part. You can graphically install or remove Flatpak apps via Discover, or if you want to just start over you could likely nuke everything in /home and have a fairly clean system (note: I have not tried this!). And on the subject of starting over, you could theoretically copy your /home to an external drive, reinstall the OS (or probably install a different immutable system like Bazzite ), and all of your apps, settings, and files will be back. Even if I wanted to move back over to Kubuntu, I’d probably just need to install Flatpak and then everything I once had on Kalpa would work again.

Virtually every app I use is available as a Flatpak these days, whether it be Firefox, LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Signal, Discord, Steam, Heroic Games Launcher (for GOG games), Calibre, the Tor Browser, Nextcloud Desktop, Sonic Robo Blast 2 (yes), Proton VPN, it’s all there. The only apps I make heavy use of that aren’t available are Kate (which is automatically installed as an RPM on Kalpa) and Reaper, which technically has a Flatpak but it is virtually useless if you rely on Windows VST plugins, which I do. This was the part of the setup that worried me the most, as my music setup, as detailed in this post , is a bit complicated. However, I was able to make an Ubuntu 24.04 distrobox and use its version of Wine, and from there everything basically worked after I installed Yabridge, with one caveat that I was able to fix. The best part is that I can export this container to a file and then reinstall it on any Linux system with Podman and Distrobox, and I’ll instantly have my music setup back and working again.

This is a huge deal for me because there have been times when updates have broken certain plugins for me. In particular, Wine 10 caused major slowdown with the UI of the pitch shifter I use, Pitchproof, and it outright broke a synth I use called Lokomotiv. But with Distrobox, I can just keep using the same version of Reaper, Wine, and Yabridge in its own little isolated container, and it will continue to work until the end of time. Even if I switch distros, I can just reinstall the container and get back to work. It’s amazing.

And of course, as mentioned earlier, I can play games, write documents, program (I can develop DS homebrew with the BlocksDS docker container in Distrobox, and edit source files with Kate!), browse the web, watch videos, and on top of all of that, create metal music. It is incredible how far immutable Linux has come.

What it does not as well

Most problems with Kalpa are papercuts that can usually be fixed with a single command. For instance, one documented problem is that Steam games relying on Proton will not work out of the box. This is because of SELinux, the security system used in Kalpa. As noted here , though, it can be fixed by running this command:

sudo setsebool -P selinuxuser_execmod 1

I also noticed some 32bit Windows VST plugins would not work within my Ubuntu distrobox, but the above command fixed it too. I think it would probably be best that this setting is automatically enabled in future versions of Kalpa since it prevents these things from working out of the box, but that’s just me.

Another annoyance is that when you log into Kalpa, you will be prompted to enter your KWallet (a system which securely contains certain passwords stored on the computer, such as WiFi logins) password, which by default is just your login password. This is a packaging error; Plasma relies on the pam_kwallet6 package to automatically open your KWallet, and Kalpa does not install it by default. It will probably be fixed when Kalpa enters beta, because then it will use an updated pattern which includes pam_kwallet6. The same thing goes for KDE Plasma 6’s new Ocean sound theme, as currently Kalpa only ships the fallback Freedesktop sound theme. Kalpa beta will also include KDE Connect, as it currently does not.

I would say my biggest problem using Kalpa is one specific to using a laptop. Kalpa is designed such that system updates are installed automatically, and applied upon reboot by booting a new snapshot of the root filesystem. The problem I have is that the systemd service that runs the update has a requirement that the system is connected to AC power before it updates, and it only attempts to update once per day. I usually charge my computer when it is asleep and then use it when it is done charging, so for all intents and purposes I never actually get an update triggered automatically. For now I have resorted to plugging in my laptop and manually running sudo systemctl start transactional-update when I’m ready to update, but I really wish the AC power requirement was removed in Kalpa beta (I don’t know if this is already planned). For what it’s worth, all that needs to be done is the removal of one single line in the Systemd service.

The final item on my Kalpa wishlist is a bit of a longshot: I would really love it if the system had hibernation and suspend-then-hibernate working out of the box. My laptop burns through its battery quite fast in sleep mode, even when using s3 (deep) sleep. Since hibernation setup tends to be rather involved on most distros, it would be super cool if it automatically worked upon installing Kalpa. But I do understand this is quite an undertaking, especially since it requires a bit more involvement on a BTRFS-based system, and apparently it can fail to work with secure boot on some systems from what I’ve heard.

I will keep using Kalpa!

Overall I’ve had quite a great experience with this system in spite of its papercuts! Since it’s so stable, I think I’ll just keep using it for the forseeable future. I’m really excited for the beta version of Kalpa to come out and address some of the minor issues.

If you are reading this, SFaulken, thank you for the awesome OS :)