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PayPalGermany's Sovereign Tech Agency via the Sovereign Tech Fund announced over €1 million in funding for KDE to work on the Plasma desktop, KDE Linux and more.
A nice big win here for open source, and to help break people away from the American giants. If the EU truly wants to be more self-sufficient in tech, funding like this for various open source projects is essential. How much exactly will the KDE team receive? €1,285,200.00 according to the Sovereign Tech Agency across 2026 / 2027.
The Sovereign Tech Fund page for it is light on details right now, so you'll have to hop on over to the KDE announcement for more.
From the KDE post: "We have long invested in desktop technologies for a reason: they are the primary way people access and use digital services in everyday life" says Fiona Krakenbürger, Technical Director at the Sovereign Tech Agency. "The desktop holds personal data and mediates nearly every service we depend on, from booking the next medical appointment, to education, to the way we work. We are investing in KDE because it is one of the two major desktop environments used across Linux and plays a key role in how millions of people experience open technology. Strengthening KDE's testing infrastructure, security architecture, and communication frameworks is how we invest in the resilience and reliability of the core digital infrastructure that modern society depends on."
The KDE team said specifically on social media (Bluesky / Mastodon) that the funding will be used towards:
* Improving KDE Plasma & KDE Linux QA Infrastructure
* Improving KDE Plasma’s Recoverability Mechanisms
* Implementing Factory Reset Functionality for KDE Linux
* Improving Security Infrastructure for Organisational Usage across KDE Plasma
* Improving Data Backup and Restore Systems
* Strengthening Configuration Management as Core Desktop Infrastructure
* Improving Network Shares Experience
* Building KDE PIM QA Infrastructure and an End-to-End Testing for IMAP4 and WebDAV * Supporting IMAP4rev2
* Supporting WebDAV Push Notifications
* Standardising Account Configuration
* Improving KDE PIM Suite Desktop Integration with Flatpak-Based Delivery
Hopefully more hardware will end up shipping with KDE Plasma, which is my favourite Linux desktop environment. And it's what's used on the Steam Deck, Steam Machine and Steam Frame for their Desktop Mode too.
In other news the Sovereign Tech Agency also recently launched Sovereign Tech Standards to support open standards. They're doing a lot of good stuff overall.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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You can also find comments for this article on social media: 
Arehandoro a day ago
We are investing in KDE because it is one of the two major desktop environments used across Linux and plays a key role in how millions of people experience open technologyMaybe then support both?
Anyway, this is great news for KDE, happy for them!
mr-victory 24 hours ago
Quoting: ArehandoroKDE is based on Germany, perhaps that is why KDE got the priority.We are investing in KDE because it is one of the two major desktop environments used across Linux and plays a key role in how millions of people experience open technologyMaybe then support both?
Anyway, this is great news for KDE, happy for them!
EDIT: KDE e.v. is based on Germany
Last edited by mr-victory on 13 May 2026 at 11:01 am UTC
Quoting: ArehandoroThey have done so for GNOME already though?We are investing in KDE because it is one of the two major desktop environments used across Linux and plays a key role in how millions of people experience open technologyMaybe then support both?
Anyway, this is great news for KDE, happy for them!
https://www.sovereign.tech/tech/gnome
Arehandoro 21 hours ago
Quoting: LupertEverettAh, amazing! :)Quoting: ArehandoroThey have done so for GNOME already though?We are investing in KDE because it is one of the two major desktop environments used across Linux and plays a key role in how millions of people experience open technologyMaybe then support both?
Anyway, this is great news for KDE, happy for them!
https://www.sovereign.tech/tech/gnome
Quoting: CatKillerAlso of note for the Germany/KDE connection is [Blue Systems.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Systems)Also, Matthias Ettrich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Ettrich, founder of the KDE project) is german 😊
Here's a transcription of the original announcement:
https://kde.org/announcements/announcement/
fenglengshun 5 hours ago
I have asked for this for AGES. This should just be standard in every Linux! I shouldn't need to reach for a separate usb flashdrive to fix things! It's not like the concept is new - PopOS has been doing it for ages, they even have a whole GUI to make sure the recovery drive uses the most up-to-date ISO.
- Implementing Factory Reset Functionality for KDE Linux
I just want a nice GUI to soft reset settings and packages without touching the rest of my files, with an option for a more thorough factory reset, and ideally could maybe work as a recovery environment but we can talk about improvements after the basics been implemented.
It still frustrates me that immutable OS would have all these fancy protections and not have, like, the most simple fallback option that every other OS have, of which has been implemented on Linux on a non-immutable place, despite immutable OS theoretically already having an entire image of the system.
PlayingOnLinuxphone 2 hours ago
Quoting: PhlebiacNice to see a government investing tax revenue in public benefit open source, rather than wasteful things like bombs (where most of the money goes to rich corporatists and/or shareholders, and if the thing actually gets used it has even more negative economic impact, not to mention the human impact).Germany does indeed both: building real bombs (one of the biggest military producers in the world) and buying big tech bombs (such as Palantir in 3, soon 4 of 16 states), but also support free (as freedom) technologies. I expect the country to invest more and more in both kinds of technologies. The explanation is easy: different actors doing opposite things.
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