So Depressing

[BubbaBlues]

I have been a Mint KDE man for about ten years now and nothing else comes close. I've wasted hundreds of gigs of bandwidth
(which I have to pay a lot for) to be disappointed each and every time. The more distros I try, the more p_ _ _ _ed off I get at Mint
for dropping their absolute best os. I guess I'll just keep using 18.3 until I wear it out.

[xenopeek]

I can sympathize but, it is what it is. For those that missed it, Clem shared reasons for dropping KDE in monthly news October last year: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3418.

Another user is automating the process of adding KDE to Linux Mint 19 MATE, see viewtopic.php?f=60&t=274467. That may prove to be a viable option.

You can continue to use Linux Mint 18.3 KDE safely till April 2019. It uses Ubuntu 16.04 as a package base so you might have thought that would be April 2021 but KDE packages only get 3 years of support on Ubuntu 16.04 (see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/Rel ... t_lifespan). If you're too not worried about possible security issues in KDE packages you could continue to use it till April 2021.

[Schultz]

Since Mint is based on Ubuntu, have you tried Kubuntu?

[trytip]

KDE pissed me right the f@ck off when they stopped support for kde4 so i gave up on kde. mate desktop is starting to do the same thing, it used to be a fork of gtk2 now it's just going with the flow and using gtk3 which was not the intended outreach for the mate desktop. unity was the same, it was awesome in ubuntu 12.04 then they decided to "become modern" and it few years it dies

[MrEen]

KDE pissed me right the f@ck off when they stopped support for kde4 so i gave up on kde. mate desktop is starting to do the same thing, it used to be a fork of gtk2 now it's just going with the flow and using gtk3 which was not the intended outreach for the mate desktop. unity was the same, it was awesome in ubuntu 12.04 then they decided to "become modern" and it few years it dies

Maybe Xfce is for you?

Xfce 4.12 released <--Feb 28, 2015


Xfce 4.10 released <--Apr 28, 2012

[phd21]

Hi BubbaBlues,

Linux Mint 18.3 has Long Term Support (LTS) until 2021.

There are already a few good posts on this in this forum.

It would be nice if the Linux Mint Team people who used to create their version of KDE would provide their instructions which they used for creating previous Linux Mint KDE versions and if they have "scripts" to do that to provide those as well.

There are a few ways to get what is basically Linux Mint 19 KDE based on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic now for those who want to try it. I have tried 3 different methods so far and have managed to get them all working well, but it does take some time and effort.

1.) You can change the Linux Mint 18.3 KDE default repository files references from xenial to bionic and from sylvia to tara to upgrade. Took a long time on my ancient under-powered computer and I still had to manually install or re-install certain KDE apps and system components, but it works.

2.) You can install Linux Mint 19 Xfce or Mate and then install the KDE desktop into that. There are at least 2 options for doing this. I have successfully done this using two different methods and I still had to manually install certain KDE apps and system components, and it works. Using these methods, anyone will have two Linux desktops installed the base (Mate or Xfce) and KDE Plasma 5 which is ok, but a little confusing. I went through the effort to remove the non-kde desktop base which is not difficult to do.

3.) As has been suggested by many others, anyone can switch to another Linux KDE distribution, but none of their forums are as good as this one in my humble opinion from what I have quickly checked out.

Hope this helps ...

[trytip]

KDE pissed me right the f@ck off when they stopped support for kde4 so i gave up on kde. mate desktop is starting to do the same thing, it used to be a fork of gtk2 now it's just going with the flow and using gtk3 which was not the intended outreach for the mate desktop. unity was the same, it was awesome in ubuntu 12.04 then they decided to "become modern" and it few years it dies

Maybe Xfce is for you?

Xfce 4.12 released <--Feb 28, 2015
Xfce 4.10 released <--Apr 28, 2012

NOPE i already have the latest xfce in arch linux and had to downgrade a few xfce packages and thunar. xfce is doing the same thing mate was doing.

[BubbaBlues]

Since Mint is based on Ubuntu, have you tried Kubuntu?

I've tried them all I think. I have Kubuntu on another partition but it's always buggy and like phd21 stated the forums
aren't that great, in fact I find the moderators there to be somewhat rude. As for xfce, it's way better than cinnamon or
mate but dad gummit it just ain't KDE. hehe
It makes me wonder if the devs at the other distros aren't as good as the Mint devs or if they just don't care that much.

[lmuserx4849]

It doesn't surprise me that LM dropped KDE. Their main focus is Cinnamon, which uses the gtk framework. And it would be easier for them to carry additional gtk desktops like Mate and XFCE. Both frameworks, gtk and qt (kde), have been changing rapidly, and there is only so much time available. I haven't been with LM as long as you have, but I've always used KDE. The primary reasons my colleagues and I came to LM no longer exist. For some it was KDE, and for some it was LMDE rolling release. The LM rolling release didn't last very long

Have you tried netrunner based on debian or pclinuxos, Independent (forked from Mandriva). Opensuse is also good. The later two seem to have active forums and good doc. I like what Netrunner says: "Power-up, don’t dumb-down", "Add-ons, codecs, customizations", "Avoid lock-ins, favor libre alternatives" and that it is supported by Blue Systems.

[BubbaBlues]

I'll probably end up going back to PCLOS. I used to use it a lot back in the day. It's actually pretty good and dependable
if you can get used to the absolute mess that is their start menu. It's an rpm distro but yet it uses apt-get. Maybe that's
why it works well. (at least it used to) Worth trying it out I suppose.

phd21, you're probably a lot more savy than me on converting xfce to kde. I'd more than likely screw it up.