Linux Mint Forums

Hi All,
I'll be switching to Linux Mint (from Fedora) in the next few days and I intend to use KDE. I'm having a little trouble understanding the differences between Mint KDE edition vs. installing "vanilla" Mint and then using apt-get to install and run KDE on top of it. What are the advantages of the KDE edition?

I like to get updates rapidly, and since regular Mint is released before Mint KDE, I'm tempted to go with regular (and install KDE) just to get updated packages a little sooner. Is there a downside to that approach?

Thanks for your thoughts!

Hello rsking84 and welcome to Mint,

You can do it either way. If you choose to use the apt-get method. you'll want to install the mint-meta-kde package. the only thing that may be different is that some of the mint tweaks will not be in the packages in the apt-get repositories. I don't think you'll really gain anything by doing it that way if you've already settled on KDE. as the packages aren't normally put in the repository until the new version is released. So you won't get newer package until the kde version is released at least as a beta.

the one advantage to doing the apt-get way is that you'll already have the cinnamon or mate desktop installed and be able to try them also.

you can also install the KDE version and then apt-get the cinnamon version or mate if you want to try they.

Whatever you choose hope you enjoy
HNY!

thanks that helps. Mint KDE includes packages with Mint specific tweaks, but the KDE packages in the regular Mint repos do not. Wouldn't I still get distribution upgrades sooner with regular vs. the KDE edition though? (judging by the 1 month delay between regular and KDE releases)

Both versions use the same set of repositories, so update timing will be the same for each.

I strongly caution you AGAINST installing any other desktop flavour first if you want to use the KDE desktop.

I did this for my wife and have regretted it ever since. I started with Cinnamon, then tried to add mint-meta-kde, bad mistake, the only option I had that worked was to install kde-standard, then try to mint-ise it by adding packages that would be in the regular KDE version, however, not all were installable.

To name a couple of major irritations, the update manager icon in the kicker panel will fail to load and the only way to get it running is to log out of KDE and into Cinnamon. This is because it relies on gnome transport mechanisms and it uses only those, not the KDE ones. Another major issue is the time and date revert to UTC with NO way to change it from within KDE so that applications like emails etc will have the correct timestamp. We are in GMT +12, so all her emails arrive BEFORE the date and time they are sent.

If you want to use KDE, start with KDE and do not deviate from that path. You can install the mate or cinnamon desktop AFTER you have KDE installed and things will go well, but DO NOT start with anything modelled from or derived from the garden ornament "Gnome" because things are done very differently and there will be unsatisfiable inconsistencies throughout the system.

Just another word of caution though, sometimes the sources list of a fresh install KDE 14 gets mucked up, nadia is placed where quantal should be in the ubuntu lists, so watch that one. It's easy enough to find and replace all nadia's with quantal though.

Just another word of caution though, sometimes the sources list of a fresh install KDE 14 gets mucked up, nadia is placed where quantal should be in the ubuntu lists, so watch that one. It's easy enough to find and replace all nadia's with quantal though.

I've read about that happening, but all of the repos in my 14 install were labeled properly and I had no such issue.
Apparently some do and some don't. No big deal though, as m_pav said, it's a very simple fix.
If you want the best, get Mint KDE 14 to start with. If you try to achieve it any other way you'll never be happy with it.

@m_pav and @BubbaBlues,

Thank you. Those little annoyances are EXACTLY the kinds of things I was wondering about. Based on everyone's advice above I've gone with the KDE edition and am very happy with it. In my case the repos were set up properly; no find and replace needed.

Just as a word of warning to everybody else, the mint-meta-kde package will try to install mint-info-kde first, which conflicts with mint-info-*. This package is basically trivial, but you have to uninstall the other one first otherwise the meta package won't install. I haven't heard of any other problems until now, but I'd still suggest going with the pure-KDE edition.