If I want to use KDE I should just install Kubuntu straight right?

[mrchow19910319]

I've heard many people complaining about KDE broke Gnome and made ubuntu un-stable.

Do you guys recommend me to use Kubuntu instead? 

 

[Guest]

[Shills in Manjaro KDE]

[Sauron]

Kde Neon, Kubuntu, Manjaro KDE are all good options - plasma will work well on pretty much anything though, and the defaults look pretty good.

[Ralphred]

I've been using KDE for years, sometime during major upgrades there are a few regressions, but these have been less and less over time now.

My last major upgrade was silky smooth; upgrade packages, restart GUI, all running as expected. (baloo can run away sometimes, but a killall on logout script reigns it in).

 

As a side note, if I get guests that are doze proficient, they can do most of what they want to on my machine with little supervision, much quicker transition than anything else.

[mrchow19910319]

5 minutes ago, King Poet said:

[Shills in Manjaro KDE]

 

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Kde Neon, Kubuntu, Manjaro KDE are all good options - plasma will work well on pretty much anything though, and the defaults look pretty good.

This is why I can never get ANYTHING done on a linux machine. 

 

why I busy jiggling with all these different DEs and such, here's a picture of my face. Enjoy!

 

 

Spoiler

 

[Sauron]

25 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

This is why I can never get ANYTHING done on a linux machine.

why I busy jiggling with all these different DEs and such, here's a picture of my face. Enjoy!

Well... you could always use a VM to try them out without having to install from scratch every time.

[Ralphred]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

try them out without having to install from scratch every time.

Doesn't that take like 15 minutes per distro nowadays though, just treat it as learning time and blow away the hard drive with parted b4 you reboot to the next potential distro.

 

 

[Sauron]

6 minutes ago, Ralphred said:

Doesn't that take like 15 minutes per distro nowadays though, just treat it as learning time and blow away the hard drive with parted b4 you reboot to the next potential distro.

Yeah sure, he gets to use his computer at the same time though if he uses a vm.

[Ralphred]

Just now, Sauron said:

Yeah sure, he gets to use his computer at the same time though if he uses a vm.

The amount "it just works" stuff these modern installers want to do make me nervous, I tend to hide my real drives when I'm experimenting like this.

[Guest]

55 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

I've heard many people complaining about KDE broke Gnome and made ubuntu un-stable.

Do you guys recommend me to use Kubuntu instead? 

 

 

45 minutes ago, Ralphred said:

I've been using KDE for years, sometime during major upgrades there are a few regressions, but these have been less and less over time now.

My last major upgrade was silky smooth; upgrade packages, restart GUI, all running as expected. (baloo can run away sometimes, but a killall on logout script reigns it in).

 

As a side note, if I get guests that are doze proficient, they can do most of what they want to on my machine with little supervision, much quicker transition than anything else.

Imo KDE is the most polished and well made, modern DE ever. 
Just compare the RAM usage to GNOME, which is something like 1.1GB, like Windows.
I always found GNOME laggy unlike KDE since the 3.0 release, but I have to say it's good for games and handles fullscreen very well, always disables the compositor so you'll never get any performance drop, and it's the most likely to be supported for every app

My kubuntu install on the other hand weights 480MB on startup, his file manager is the best thing on earth, the style is coherent, handles 144Hz monitors very well, doesn't lag, has tons of features like KDE connect, support for Telegram, all music players on the desktop and the lockscreen (also GNOME but it's better made)  but it has some flaws too, it's prone to crashes some times (I use Kubuntu 18.10), and is a bit tricky on "unsupported games" that don't tell the desktop to disable the compositor, which you will get a performance drop unlike in GNOME (There is a workaround in there that every fullscreen app will have the compositor disabled even if it the app, like Portal, doesn't tell to) and have worse Wayland support at this current state. Also the display manager transition is a bit crapp*y unlike gnome + gdm, it has better integration, also night shift is enabled on the display login.

But it's my supposition that Neon should have the best stability since it's made directly from KDE developers unlike the Ubuntu one so changes, updates and bug fixes are more likely to happen faster.

Edited January 5, 2019 by Guest

[QXC]

To answer the question in your title, if you want to use KDE then yes, the easiest option is to use it with a distro that has KDE installed by defualt, such as Kubuntu.

To answer the question in your post, if you don't want to use standard Ubuntu with Gnome, there are many variants with different DEs. Which one you prefer to use will ultimately come down to personal taste. I'm very familiar with XFCE and thus use Xubuntu.

Most major distros now will also allow you to live boot from an ISO image (Typically written to a USB drive) which makes trying out different distros either in a VM or on bare metal very easy.

Best to think of it as being in a candy store with a pocketful of cash. Set aside a few hours to try out a bunch of different stuff and see if there's anything that you like more than the others.