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Discussion on: Au Revoir, Gentoo - Sell Me A New Linux Distro

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willaaam profile image
Willem Mobach

My personal favorite has been KDE Neon as it ticks all the right boxes for me and most of my dev team.

Why Neon:

KDE is for me best DE right now, as it's mature, secure and can go from windows clone to tiling WM in minutes.

KDE Neon prevents me from hacking and upgrading my base OS as I feel like I'm having a fresh experience continuously. That stream of improvements to the software you interact most with on a daily basis allows you to just enjoy your computer instead of feeling that tinkering need deep down.

Experience:

KDE Neon is super stable and upgrades haven't failed me so far. Integration from discover (UI package manager) with flakpak and snap has been seemless for a few months now. PKCON (console package manager for KDE Neon) has also worked flawlessly with apt backend.

Sometimes you do run into an incompatible package from base ubuntu as that was packaged for an older QT/KDE libs version. Usually I then install that bit of software using snap or flatpak as it then ships with its own libraries anyway.

Hope this helps!

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deciduously profile image
Ben Lovy

Ive heard Neon doesn't always play well with non-KDE software. Have you found that to be the case, beyond the qt versioning issue?

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willaaam profile image
Willem Mobach • Edited

No absolutely not - all gnome library based software works absolutely great, and theming integration has gotten much better over the last few months as well.

As root filesystem editing is protected in KDE I usually use thunar for example, works fine. Same goes for Firefox, which has full integration with the taskbar for example.

I can't recommend NEON enough if you're a KDE user, it's super stable for us and it just feels great to get the latest and greatest in KDE land without the fear of complete system meltdown / full rolling release distro.

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deciduously profile image
Ben Lovy

Awesome. I'm leaning more and more in this direction.

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Khoa Dien

I'm also a KDE neon user and it's just fantastic! Very stable and well-supported Ubuntu LTS base + new and shiny KDE software on top which is super polished, intuitive, and somehow light on system resources. Definitely recommend it!

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Giuseppe Caruso

I'm following KDE Neon development lastly and I see that in the lasts months it's becoming more and more integrated also with Gnome applications making it a kind of universal OS for Linux plus its own niceties.
But what's the difference with something like Kubuntu since they are both Ubuntu based distro with KDE on top?

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Khoa Dien

Kubuntu is Ubuntu with KDE Plasma, so it'll get more updated packages from Ubuntu and you could also get a non-LTS base.

Neon on the other hand is always based on Ubuntu LTS, so Ubuntu packages may be a bit more behind, but you get the latest and greatest KDE stuff.

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Laughing Raven

The question though is how long will this distro last. Seriously sir, stop the anguish and just use Ubuntu. They are a stable company that is financially solvent and will still be around in a few years.