Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Kevin Ottens has a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence which led him to focus on ontology engineering and multi-agent systems. As a student, he fell in love with the KDE community and has been involved for the past 20 years.
Next to contributing code, he has also been helping with the community stewardship, for instance participating in the creation of the KDE Manifesto.
Nowadays, Kevin strives at enioka Haute Couture having a very wide view on software engineering. His responsibilities range from software architecture and code to Open Source strategies. He also spends time coaching teams and other engineers in leadership positions.
He still lives in Toulouse where he participates to regular C++ meetups.
There is a new Ubuntu variant in town, it is called Ubuntu Core. It's been thought for IoT uses first and is based on snap packages. It's made of snaps from start to finish. Lately there's been a push for an "Ubuntu Core Desktop" which goes beyond headless devices to have a full desktop session.
KDE Plasma couldn't be left out from such an effort, and this is how the "KDE Neon Core" idea came to be. Trying to get all the benefits of KDE Neon but on top of an Ubuntu Core base.
This makes for an interesting challenge which can help our community improve its interactions with the snap ecosystem.
In this talk we will show how KDE Neon Core is structured, what is does offer and its limitations. We will also cover the basics of how the snap confinement works. Finally we will explain the issues we encountered which led to patches in KDE software or in snapd itself. This will be an opportunity to reflect on the challenges to debug such an immutable system.
The talk should provide interesting insights for people curious about how the processes in a Plasma workspace session integrate, or about the interactions between snapd and applications.
If you want to hear battle stories on building this kind of systems and learn what we discovered along the way, this talk will be for you.
KDE is an open-source community developing free software for desktop and mobile, including the powerful Plasma desktop environment. Join the KDE community to contribute, learn, and shape the future of open-source software!
🔗 Explore KDE:
🌐 Website: kde.org
💬 Forum: discuss.kde.org
📢 Follow KDE on Social Media:
🐘 Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde
📹 PeerTube: tube.kockatoo.org/c/kde
📘 Facebook: facebook.com/KDE
💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/kde
👾 Reddit: reddit.com/r/kde
🌿 Lemmy: https://lemmy.ml/c/kde
📷 Instagram: instagram.com/kdecommunity
🌌 Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/kde.org
🧵 Threads: threads.net/@kdecommunity
🔔 Like, Share & Subscribe for More Open-Source Content!
📌 Hashtags:
#KDE #Plasma #OpenSource #Linux #FOSS #FreeSoftware #KDECommunity #KDEApps #Tech
Kevin Ottens has a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence which led him to focus on ontology engineering and multi-agent systems. As a student, he fell in love with the KDE community and has been involved for the past 20 years.
Next to contributing code, he has also been helping with the community stewardship, for instance participating in the creation of the KDE Manifesto.
Nowadays, Kevin strives at enioka Haute Couture having a very wide view on software engineering. His responsibilities range from software architecture and code to Open Source strategies. He also spends time coaching teams and other engineers in leadership positions.
He still lives in Toulouse where he participates to regular C++ meetups.
There is a new Ubuntu variant in town, it is called Ubuntu Core. It's been thought for IoT uses first and is based on snap packages. It's made of snaps from start to finish. Lately there's been a push for an "Ubuntu Core Desktop" which goes beyond headless devices to have a full desktop session.
KDE Plasma couldn't be left out from such an effort, and this is how the "KDE Neon Core" idea came to be. Trying to get all the benefits of KDE Neon but on top of an Ubuntu Core base.
This makes for an interesting challenge which can help our community improve its interactions with the snap ecosystem.
In this talk we will show how KDE Neon Core is structured, what is does offer and its limitations. We will also cover the basics of how the snap confinement works. Finally we will explain the issues we encountered which led to patches in KDE software or in snapd itself. This will be an opportunity to reflect on the challenges to debug such an immutable system.
The talk should provide interesting insights for people curious about how the processes in a Plasma workspace session integrate, or about the interactions between snapd and applications.
If you want to hear battle stories on building this kind of systems and learn what we discovered along the way, this talk will be for you.
KDE is an open-source community developing free software for desktop and mobile, including the powerful Plasma desktop environment. Join the KDE community to contribute, learn, and shape the future of open-source software!
🔗 Explore KDE:
🌐 Website: kde.org
💬 Forum: discuss.kde.org
📢 Follow KDE on Social Media:
🐘 Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde
📹 PeerTube: tube.kockatoo.org/c/kde
📘 Facebook: facebook.com/KDE
💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/kde
👾 Reddit: reddit.com/r/kde
🌿 Lemmy: https://lemmy.ml/c/kde
📷 Instagram: instagram.com/kdecommunity
🌌 Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/kde.org
🧵 Threads: threads.net/@kdecommunity
🔔 Like, Share & Subscribe for More Open-Source Content!
📌 Hashtags:
#KDE #Plasma #OpenSource #Linux #FOSS #FreeSoftware #KDECommunity #KDEApps #Tech
