Playing with KDE distros....Neon

[alquimista]

I have been playing with KDE Neon

After some fine tunning (non major), I got it stable and installed in one of my partitions. Lately I have tested Manjaro KDE, Mint KDE. Neon so far has been for me, the best one these 3 KDE distros tests I have done

[Lysander666]

Nice, mine crashed within two minutes last time I tried a live USB. I'm too wary to install it!

[alquimista]

Nice, mine crashed within two minutes last time I tried a live USB. I'm too wary to install it!

Did you try DVD? Worked for me

[kdemeoz]

Currently my Tower & Lappy both run Maui, which i rate as excellent. Til last year they both ran Mint 17.3 KDE4.

Also currently, in VMs in my Tower, i'm playing with KaOS, & openSUSE [per viewtopic.php?f=61&t=244762&p=1329939#p1329939]. KaOs doesn't seem to be my cup of tea, & it seems to break, for me. Per my linked post, openSUSE is so far really impressing me.

I also have a KDE Neon VM, which i use to explore the latest Plasma5 versions' features & functions before they later arrive in Maui... & openSUSE.

[exploder]

Yesterday I installed PCLinuxOS 2017.5 on my HP 655 laptop, it runs great! I have not used KDE in years but I knew Texstar would have everything tweaked just perfect! I have the most current version of KDE and it is nice and solid. Also, I can finally reboot the laptop and have working WiFi!

[rick gen]

I've tried a couple of these KDE distros a year or so ago.
They're nice and capable, but when it comes to updates I seemed lost.
They seemed crude and disorganized. You don't know exactly where you're updating from.
Mint distros are straight forward and they allow you to update from local sources.
Not to mention Mint's fantastic Software Manager. It's unbeatable.

[MintBean]

I fired up KDE Neon on a spare partition and I must say I was impressed. Very smooth experience, well polished and the OS felt very nippy. I'm sticking with Mint Cinnamon but that really is personal preference. I can't think of a single negative against Neon.

[alquimista]

Having used kde neon for a while as my base OS, there was an update available of VLC. I did update it and booom, all OS crashed. Could not restart it. How a simple app update crashed the OS? I decided to come back to Mint Cinnamon 18.0, I always had it as backup. Rock solid

[phd21]

Hi alquimista, & Everyone Else,

Like everyone else who uses or used Linux Mint KDE and found out they were not going to continue creating their wonderful KDE versions anymore, I too have been installing and testing various KDE Linux distributions. Linux Mint KDE 18.3 still has long-term support (LTS) until 2021.

I was able to use Linux Mint 19 Xfce and install the KDE (Kubuntu) desktop into that and it works very well but required installing a lot of KDE applications, and I also wanted to remove the Xfce components (easy).

"Kubuntu 18.04" was very easy to install and has most of the preferred KDE applications already installed. I had some trouble with this using the BTRFS filesystem with frequent lockups, but not with the typical "ext4" filesystem. This works like and is very similar to Linux Mint KDE. This might be the best choice for non-techie KDE users.

Now that "Neon" is using the "Ubuntu 18.04" base like Linux Mint 19.x does, it is a good choice and it installed easily. But, it is a very basic " bare minimum" KDE system, so the user has to install all the typical KDE applications, including the "Synaptic Package Manager (SPM)" although they have a new "discover" system, once that is done, it works great and it is fast. It too looks like and works very much like Linux Mint KDE. So far this is my favorite choice of a Linux KDE desktop to replace the Linux Mint KDE desktop, but I am a computer techie with a lot of KDE experience now. FYI: VLC 3.0.3 works very well in my Neon KDE system and updating it should not have crashed the whole system?

"Maui" was really nice, but it did not seem to be maintained for almost a year and last I checked was not using the "Ubuntu 18.04" base operating system like Linux Mint 19.x does.

"OpenSuse" was a little confusing to install but very nice. But, it is very different from Linux Mint KDE and some of the applications I use (autokey, etc...) were not easily available in that, although they could be installed using various techniques.

"Arch Linux" is more for computer techies and also different from Linux Mint in how it installs software and more.

I did not get a chance yet to try Manjaro KDE although I hear it is nice too.


This wonderful forum is still the best computer forum I have ever used and been part of, so I hope they keep the KDE sections available after 2021 even if they do not create their own KDE versions in the future.


Hope this helps ...

[trytip]

KDE Neon works most of the time but more unstable then arch linux. KDE Neon throws way too many untested updated on it's users.

for a while i had KDE Neon ppa added to my mint 19 cinnamon and things went smooth. i had forgotten i also had kubuntu backports enabled and neon didn't play nice with the backports. eventually i disabled kubuntu backports and fixed it so i would get no conflicts updating

but alas last week KDE Neon pushed a set of upgrades that killed a lot of things. no biggie, i didn't even try to fix it. after a few weeks of hit and miss updates from neon i decided it's not worth my time to always be fixing things that break.

used Timeshift to go back before the last neon upgrade and then disabled the ppa

moral of the story is, you can install KDE Neon but if you're a noob and just want the latest software because you think fresh off the grill is the way to go, you're in for a wild ride.

[Sundowner]

KDE Neon was never meant to exist as a true Linus distribution, but as a test bed for the KDE developers. Updates for applications can be troublesome at times. I usually dual boot Kubuntu along with Windows, but I also have Mint Cinnamon on my 2nd PC.

[rick gen]

"Kubuntu 18.04" was very easy to install and has most of the preferred KDE applications already installed. I had some trouble with this using the BTRFS filesystem with frequent lockups, but not with the typical "ext4" filesystem. This works like and is very similar to Linux Mint KDE. This might be the best choice for non-techie KDE users.

Which is why I went with Kubuntu 18.04, not to mention being one of my first introductions to Linux years ago.
I no longer have time to get myself familiar with other distros.
Current Kubuntu is almost similar to Mint KDE from installation to settings configuration, etc.
More important is, all my applications work without any issues from Firefox to Gimp, Krita and others.
Bottom line is try it yourself and see if it's the right one for you.

[kdemeoz]

Currently my Tower & Lappy both run Maui, which i rate as excellent. Til last year they both ran Mint 17.3 KDE4.

Also currently, in VMs in my Tower, i'm playing with KaOS, & openSUSE [per viewtopic.php?f=61&t=244762&p=1329939#p1329939]. KaOs doesn't seem to be my cup of tea, & it seems to break, for me. Per my linked post, openSUSE is so far really impressing me.

I also have a KDE Neon VM, which i use to explore the latest Plasma5 versions' features & functions before they later arrive in Maui... & openSUSE.

Oh my goodness, what a blast from the past. Much water under the bridge since i wrote that older post. Currently running Manjaro KDE on both my computers, & absolutely love it. Best Plasma5 experience i've enjoyed to-date... better than my previous distro of openSUSE Tumbleweed KDE, which was better than Maui, which was better than Mint KDE. Along the way i actually installed KDE Neon on one pc [ie, not merely in one of my VMs] & after many hours customising, personalising & finessing it to be just so, the %&((&&%$ crashed on me & destroyed itself. I'll never give Neon another chance on-metal. Though it scared me witless initially, i now feel comfy in the Arch rather than Ubuntu base beneath Plasma5. Non-trivial side-benefit is the glorious need no longer to have to depend on PPAs, & to always have up to date packages. There definitely IS an initial learning curve, & because Manjaro like Arch & openSUSE TW is a rolling release there definitely IS an ongoing need for maintenance tinkering, but the rewards are really substantial for those willing to look beyond the Ubuntu-based systems.

[catweazel]

Currently running Manjaro KDE on both my computers, & absolutely love it. Best Plasma5 experience i've enjoyed to-date...

What does plasmashell --version return for you?

[trytip]

Also currently, in VMs in my Tower, i'm playing with KaOS

Oh my goodness, what ... ?

when i first installed KaOS in 2015 i believe i fell in love. i hated the transition from KDE4 to Plasma5 i tried to but it didn't stick. i had an awesome kde4 setup with pclinuxos and swore never to install plasma5.

i finally did install Kaos because at the time the 2015 edition was just beautiful, i almost cried it had such glare. sniff, sniff ... but it didn't last long as the more i learned about Kaos the more i wanted to experiment. well , i learned i could download packages from arch AUR and use makepkg to install them woo hoo i thhought. almost everything worked untill i tried to install wine and 32bit libs

HE HE needless to say Kaos didn't like 32bit in the least, such a shame too cause i see them going backwards now. the themeing is uglier and what's up with changing the dolphin and menu to align to the right side. oh and they screwed up nvidia too, now when i boot with nvidia i get wallpaper and a mouse only.

[kdemeoz]

Currently running Manjaro KDE on both my computers, & absolutely love it. Best Plasma5 experience i've enjoyed to-date...

What does plasmashell --version return for you?

Code: Select all

$ plasmashell --version
plasmashell 5.14.2

[exactly as my post signature says... ]

Also, fyi, my kernel:

Code: Select all

$ uname -r
4.19.0-3-MANJARO

Lubbly lubbly

[catweazel]

[exactly as my post signature says... ]

They're usually out of date and ignored by the regulars. Yours is so tiny I thought it was a smudge on my screen.
Nevertheless, thanks for the output.