The past couple of months an elite team of KDE contributors worked on a top-secret project. Today we finally announced it to the public.
The KDE Slimbook
Together with the Spanish laptop retailer Slimbook we created our very first KDE laptop. It looks super slick and sports an ever so sexy KDE Slimbook logo on the back of the screen. It will initially come with KDE neon as operating system.
Naturally, as one of the neon developers, I was doing some software work to help this along. Last year already we switched to a more reliable graphics driver. Our installer got a face-lift to make it more visually appealing. The installer gained an actually working OEM installation mode. A hardware integration feature was added to our package pool to make sure the KDE Slimbook works perfectly out of the box.
The device looks and feels awesome. Plasma’s stellar look and feel complements it very well making for a perfect overall experience.
I am super excited and can’t wait for more people to get their hands on it, so we get closer to a world in which everyone has control over their digital life and enjoys freedom and privacy, thanks to KDE.
💺 Blog 
I think this is great news, and hope that eventually laptops will be offered also with Norwegian keyboard – and with support for high-resolution external display. 1920 by 1080 may be fine on a 13 to 15-inch screen, but it just doesn’t make sense for external screens 2560 x 1600 should be the minimum.
Would you please consider also offering desktops – even if it is just a mini PC such as the Asus Vivo (e.g. https://www.asus.com/Mini-PCs/VivoMini-UN65H/)? That takes away the issue of keyboard layout, and as long as they can take a fair amount of RAM they can function well as desktops for us non-gamers.
That’s awesome! You should now start a fundraiser to push this Slimbook into popular retailer stores! Would really catch someones eye!
The logo on the screen back looks backwards (mirrored) to me.
Awesome news from the KDE community! I’m just curious, how much control do you have over all the software on the laptop, for things like the EC or UEFI/BIOS? Is this all code provided by KDE from things like coreboot? Or does the manufacture provide that code, while allowing KDE/users to customize it? Or is it all locked down/secret, like other major manufactures?