If you want to do the reverse operation and switch from Gnome Shell to KDE Plasma, I also have a blog post on that.
Replacing KDE Plasma on Fedora 39 requires only a couple of dnf and systemctl commands to convert the Fedora KDE spin into the Default Fedora Workstation with Gnome Shell. It might also work on earlier and later versions.
I have verified these steps on a fresh installation. Be sure to check the console output to avoid accidentally uninstalling any required software if you perform the desktop swap on a productive system.
Start with upgrading all packages. It is generally a good idea when performing such a massive system change.
sudo dnf upgrade
Next, you change the type of the Fedora installation. This is required because Fedora uses package groups and protected packages. You allow removing the KDE package groups by swapping them with the Gnome package groups.
$ sudo dnf swap fedora-release-identity-kde fedora-release-identity-workstation
Last metadata expiration check: 0:19:04 ago on Tue 02 Jan 2024 08:37:17 AM CET.
Dependencies resolved.
==============================================================================
Package Architecture Version Repository Size
==============================================================================
Installing:
fedora-release-identity-workstation noarch 39-30 fedora 11 k
Installing dependencies:
fedora-release-workstation noarch 39-30 fedora 8.2 k
Removing:
fedora-release-identity-kde noarch 39-34 @updates 1.9 k
Downgrading:
fedora-release-common noarch 39-30 fedora 18 k
fedora-release-kde noarch 39-30 fedora 8.2 k
Transaction Summary
==============================================================================
Install 2 Packages
Remove 1 Package
Downgrade 2 Packages
Total download size: 45 k
Is this ok [y/N]:
And the second command.
$ sudo dnf swap fedora-release-kde fedora-release-workstation
Last metadata expiration check: 0:20:04 ago on Tue 02 Jan 2024 08:37:17 AM CET.
Package fedora-release-workstation-39-30.noarch is already installed.
Dependencies resolved.
==============================================================================
Package Architecture Version Repository Size
==============================================================================
Removing:
fedora-release-kde noarch 39-30 @fedora 0
Transaction Summary
==============================================================================
Remove 1 Package
Freed space: 0
Is this ok [y/N]:
Next, fetch the Fedora Workstation packages and dump them on your storage drive (omitting output for brevity).
sudo dnf group install "Fedora Workstation"
Now that Gnome Shell packages are installed disable SDDM and enable the GDM login manager on boot.
sudo systemctl disable sddm
sudo systemctl enable gdm
At this point, I would log out or reboot and log into the Gnome Shell.
As the final step, you remove the KDE spin packages and the remaining stragglers.
sudo dnf group remove "KDE Plasma Workspaces"
sudo dnf remove *plasma*
sudo dnf remove kde-*
sudo dnf autoremove
Be careful not to mistype sudo dnf remove kde-*! If instruct dnf to remove kde*, it will catch more packages than you would like.
That is all there is to turn the Fedora KDE spin installation into the default Fedora Workstation with the Gnome Shell.
You can achieve a similar result with the following commands. I assume they do not entirely turn the KDE spin into the regular Gnome variant but only change the desktop environment. The scope of the change appears to be smaller.
sudo dnf install @gnome-desktop
sudo dnf remove *plasma*
sudo dnf remove kde-*
Going this route, you cannot remove the @kde-desktop-environment as it will result in an error.
$ sudo dnf remove @kde-desktop-environment
Last metadata expiration check: 0:25:06 ago on Tue 02 Jan 2024 08:37:17 AM CET.
Error:
Problem: The operation would result in removing the following protected packages: dnf, sudo
(try to add '--skip-broken' to skip uninstallable packages)
The Gnome Shell will still work, but this minor inconsistency may or may not bother you – depending on your OCD 😉.
You can verify that all plasmoids have been removed by querying dnf to list the installed packages.
dnf list --installed | grep plasma
dnf list --installed | grep kde-
I hope this was helpful.
Thank you for reading.
The Codeslinger 
[…] If you want to do the reverse operation and switch from KDE Plasma to the Gnome Shell, I also have a blog post on that. […]
LikeLike