Recommended distro with KDE Plasma

[Guest]

What distro would you recommend that uses KDE Plasma? Some distros that I know include it are KDE Neon, Linux Mint, and Kubuntu. Kinda leaning Linux Mint as its dark themed out of the box, but I intend to customize them regardless. (I know all 3 of my examples are Ubuntu based, though the prior two are based on its LTS version.) Not too sure what each distro has to offer that is different from each other, and also not aware of how well each one is maintained/supported.

Edited December 9, 2017 by Guest
Wording

[vanished]

You can also get Manjaro (based on Arch iirc)

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

You can also get Manjaro (based on Arch iirc)

How do you feel about Arch based distros over Ubuntu (Debian?) derived ones?

[vanished]

1 minute ago, tjcater said:

How do you feel about Arch based distros over Ubuntu (Debian?) derived ones?

I'm familiar with Ubuntu so that may bias me, but I find debian based systems very easy to use.  You're also much more likely to find packages in the repository or just out there on the internet as a standalone.

 

Arch tends to be for the more Linux hard-core, DIY people who aren't afraid to have to learn something technical to do a simple task.  I think their packages are more up to date though as well.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I'm familiar with Ubuntu so that may bias me, but I find debian based systems very easy to use.  You're also much more likely to find packages in the repository or just out there on the internet as a standalone.

 

Arch tends to be for the more Linux hard-core, DIY people who aren't afraid to have to learn something technical to do a simple task.  I think their packages are more up to date though as well.

I hear openSUSE is more of a middle ground, do you know anything about it? (The rolling release version, tumbleweed, is the one I'm thinking off)

[LienusLateTips]

KDE Neon all the way

[Guest]

1 minute ago, JDE said:

KDE Neon all the way

Is that since KDE based applications are default and more up to date? 

[LienusLateTips]

Just now, tjcater said:

Is that since KDE based applications are default and more up to date? 

Yep, and I've found it to be pretty stable, fast and a lot of app support just from apt-get/app store.

[vanished]

9 hours ago, tjcater said:

I hear openSUSE is more of a middle ground, do you know anything about it? (The rolling release version, tumbleweed, is the one I'm thinking off)

I used it a long time ago, can't comment on the state of it today.  I know there is some sort of involvement with Microsoft though

[Guest]

It would appear that Linux Mint actual plans to drop KDE after 18.3, so for now it seems like I've narrowed down to KDE Neon and openSUSE tumbleweed (Rolling release version). Will likely go with KDE Neon since it seems like Ubuntu and its derivatives might have better software support, but I'm not too sure about that. Currently testing both out in a VM and will wait a bit before coming to a conclusion on which to install as a secondary OS for my laptop.

[noahdvs]

I used KDE Neon for about 6 months and it was a mostly positive experience. There were occasionally some problems with certain non-essential Ubuntu packages breaking because they depended on older versions of KDE or Qt software, but I think that's almost all gone if not already gone. If you already have experience with Ubuntu, there's not much to say about it since it will feel mostly the same, but with KDE. I eventually moved to openSUSE Tumbleweed because I needed newer non-KDE/Qt software than what Ubuntu 16.04 had (KDE Neon is based on Ubuntu LTS). My mother is currently using KDE Neon on her laptop for basic word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing and movie watching (Netflix and Amazon Prime).

 

I currently use openSUSE Tumbleweed (about 6 months now) and after I got used to it, I'm happy with it for the most part.

openSUSE tends to be stable, but it's quirky. For instance, unless you uninstall every Pattern that might reinstall other Patterns that you uninstalled to keep them from reinstalling software you uninstalled, a distro upgrade (`zypper dup`, the way you're supposed to update Tumbleweed) will reinstall everything that was installed by default. Or you can disable installing recommended packages by default in /etc/zypp/zypp.conf (solver.onlyRequires = true), which also makes it so patterns don't work unless you use the `--recommends` flag. Configuring printers requires you to enter your root password. You need to install the Packman repository to use patent encumbered codecs.

Getting software that isn't in the main repository is very similar to Ubuntu. With Ubuntu, you go to launchpad.net and add a PPA. With openSUSE, you go to https://software.opensuse.org/search and use a 1-click installer or add a repository.

 

I haven't used Kubuntu much, but I heard that after the awful 16.04 release, it has gotten much better. It currently uses Plasma 5.10.5, which is the final bugfix version of 5.10.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, noahdvs said:

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Have you experienced any software you might find packaged for Ubuntu not found on openSUSE? The only tools I have used to obtain programs so far has been through apt-get and .deb files, are .rpm files as commonly found for most programs and does it have something similar to apt-get? As you might have seen, most of my experience on Linux has been through Ubuntu(Debian) derivatives and I have only recently started testing openSUSE.

[noahdvs]

27 minutes ago, tjcater said:

Have you experienced any software you might find packaged for Ubuntu not found on openSUSE? The only tools I have used to obtain programs so far has been through apt-get and .deb files, are .rpm files as commonly found for most programs and does it have something similar to apt-get? As you might have seen, most of my experience on Linux has been through Ubuntu(Debian) derivatives and I have only recently started testing openSUSE.

For the most part, there isn't a lack of available software. If it's not in the main Tumbleweed repository, it can usually be found on that package search page. For instance, many popular game system emulators aren't in the main repo, but there are a ton of them in the Emulators repository and they're kept up to date, unlike Ubuntu which only updates every 6 months (2 years for LTS). The performance difference between the DeSmuMe and Dolphin-emu packages in KDE Neon and openSUSE Tumbleweed is obvious.

 

RPMs are often made for Fedora, not openSUSE, but they often work anyway. RPMs aren't quite as common as DEBs, but not uncommon either. In rare cases such as with the Oracle JDK, only an RPM is provided by the vendor.

 

`zypper` syntax is very similar to `apt` syntax and easy to use (no `pacman -Syu` type stuff). In many ways, it's more powerful than APT, but there's no equivalent to `apt autoremove` right now. For instance, there's this feature called "vendor stickiness". APT will upgrade to the highest version of a package in any of the enabled repositories. Sometimes you don't want that because the highest version may be unstable. With ZYpper, it will only use the highest version in the repository that is currently being used by default. If you add a testing repository for just 1 program, `zypper dup` won't try to upgrade all of the other packages that are on your system to testing versions. You can also set priorities for different repositories. I want to install packages from the main repo by default since those packages are tested by openSUSE's automated QA (openQA), so I give the main repo a higher priority.