I'm Jeremy, Principal Engineer at System76. I've been working on improving the experience for users of alternative desktop environments on Pop!_OS. Some decisions made before were hostile to the installation of other desktop environments, especially those with their own applications like KDE. To solve this, I will be working on the following:

• Moving most applications to Recommends, so they can be uninstalled

• Refactoring hardware support, command line programs, and distribution patches into a lower-level package, instead of it all being in pop-desktop

• Potentially providing a Pop ISO (Pop Server?) without any desktop installed, that installs this lower-level package using a terminal interface. Then desktop packages can be installed on top, if desired

With these changes, you can install other desktop environments and remove GNOME while still getting much of the Pop experience.

I've been testing with i3 and KDE. Are there any other things you think Pop!_OS could do to improve support for alternative desktop environments?