It's actually fascinating to me, the number and maturity of immutable distros being released recently, that is ones that have most of the root system read-only with minimal changes allowed to the system.
I also don't know if I'd call it ironic that Arch, the most DIY of all the "core" distros, is the foundation of many such locked-down distributions.
In addition to KDE Linux, Arch also powers the base SteamOS, while Bazzite is Fedora-based. I find it notable that all have chosen KDE over other graphic environments; even the current distro-du-jour, Catchy, is reported to have dropped GNOME support.
The sea change in the Linux desktop is the now-muscular support for games thanks to the enormous support given by Valve to the Steamdeck and all things Linux. A new KDE reference system (still in alpha) is not that sea change, power users are already well cared for in this world. What's genuinely new is that Linux now has a legitimate shot at attracting newcomers thanks to un-borkable OSs and game support that sometimes surpassed performance under Windows. Further, in a world where Nvidia seems to be running away with the GPU market, the Linux approach seems to heavily favour AMD.
- Evan