Clem suggests using the kubuntu ppa on top of linux mint 19 (see quote below). What about LMDE? (Even Ubuntu is based on Debian). Distrowatch lists a number of desktops, including KDE. Would it be better to install LMDE with KDE? He also mentions Arch, I would add OpenSuse Leap. But with Arch or OpenSuse, it won't be an deb package system any longer --- no apt-get, rather pacman and rpm. Everyone I know chose LMDE, I'm the only one with LM, but they also went with Mate not KDE. I'm finding it very difficult to leave KDE, even though I don't use a lot of their apps.
How would I install LMDE with KDE? Has anyone done it?
From: https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=debian
From: Monthly News – October 2017Desktop: AfterStep, Awesome, Blackbox, Cinnamon, Fluxbox, flwm, FVWM, GNOME, i3, IceWM, ion, JWM, KDE, LXDE, MATE, Openbox, pekwm, Ratpoison, LXQt, WMaker, XBMC, Xfce
Users of the KDE edition represent a portion of our user base. I know from their feedback that they really enjoy it. They will be able to install KDE on top of Linux Mint 19 of course and I’m sure the Kubuntu PPA will continue to be available. They will be able to port Mint software to Kubuntu itself also, or they might want to trade a bit of stability away and move to to a bleeding edge distribution such as Arch to follow upstream KDE more closely.