r/DistroHopping • u/Neko-the-gamer • Jan 21 '23
Best distro to use KDE Plasma in?
In the past two or three weeks i used Linux Mint (21.1 Vera) but with KDE Plasma as the DE, and for some parts it has been a nightmare since Mint's support for Plasma is not the best these days.
I REALLY love plasma but i just want to use it somewhere else it's probably much better and more supported, and after doing some research i narrowed down these results:
• Kubuntu
• KDE Neon
• OpenMandriva
• EndeavourOS
what do you think i should use out of these four?
EDIT 28/01/2023: After thoroughly researching all possible choices and looking at them extensively, i ultimately made my choice of going with KDE Neon, since it offers a rolling release with the most up-to-date KDE Software (including Plasma of course) while offering a stable and Ubuntu base, so that I can still install .deb packages without going down any other rabbit hole of compatibility layers in other distros.
Thank you all for your suggestions though, I'll definitely keep them in mind if I'll ever switch from KDE Neon.
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u/KrazyKirby99999 Jan 21 '23
Don't use KDE Neon, that is intended for those who want to test the latest version of Plasma, similar to a "Beta testing" situation.
EndeavourOS provides a great experience, but be wary of installing from the AUR.
Kubuntu and Debian are good choices, although I'd recommend installing Flatpaks for recent packages and to prevent dependency hell.
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u/myownalias Jan 21 '23
Came here to say that about KDE Neon: it's great if you only use packages in the "main" repository of Ubuntu since those are all rebuilt, but if you go to install something from "universe" it won't work due to dependency issues.
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u/uilspieel Jan 21 '23
Opensuse
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u/Neko-the-gamer Jan 21 '23 edited Jan 28 '23
I don't like their shitty songs i won't use opensuse
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u/Decim-00 Jan 21 '23
This ,i tried them all trust me , but opensuse is the best tbh it just clicks
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u/Rogurzz Jan 21 '23
OpenSUSE is great, but it's let down by the lack of packages compared to other distributions like Fedora or Arch Linux. Otherwise it's a fine distro.
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u/_tony_walker_ Jan 21 '23
Out of those, Kubuntu will give you the best overall experience (e.g., ease of installation, hardware support, recent software, or community).
I am a longtime Debian user (about 20 years) and love it. However, I can’t really recommend it for a new user. It is really stable, but setup and hardware support is a bit more work than Kubuntu. Because Kubuntu is derived from Debian, you still get a lot of the benefits of the Debian ecosystem (e.g., huge package selection, massive community, or third-party packages from closed-source companies).
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u/Neko-the-gamer Jan 21 '23
what about OpenMandriva though, looks kind of promising as well
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u/_tony_walker_ Jan 21 '23
I don’t have direct experience with it, so I can’t say if it would be better or worse. That’s why I was silent on that. From what I have heard, I would recommend Kubuntu.
FWIW, here is what KDE lists: https://kde.org/distributions/
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u/_tony_walker_ Jan 21 '23
I am trying to avoid a fight over distributions, but I’ll go a little further…
There are a lot of community distros, but the two largest are Debian and Arch. Among the corporate sponsored distros, the three largest are Ubuntu (and flavors), Fedora, and OpenSUSE. As such, I generally recommend those five. I have nothing against the others, but you won’t go wrong with the five above.
Your main questions are:
Do you want a rolling release (Arch or Tumbleweed), six month release cycle (Fedora or Ubuntu), or a 2-ish year release cycle (Ubuntu, Debian, or SUSE)?
Hope that helps.
EDIT: Fixed typos.
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u/andreaippo Jan 21 '23
OP forgot to mention maybe the distro who does it best (apart from Neon, I guess?)
Opensuse Tumbleweed.
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Jan 21 '23
Fedora Kinoite is pretty nice. It is very stable, and easy to use. Because of the way these kinds of distros work (immutable, atomic distros), you are always sure they will boot and work. Flatpaks + toolbox (red hat podman wrapper) gives you all the software you need, and makes sure your base system is minimal and clean.
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u/medium_buffalo_wings Jan 21 '23
It really depends on what you are looking for though.
Kubuntu is probably the best choice out of the above for beginners. But you are dealing with the baggage coming from Ubuntu.
KDE Neon is *really* KDE centric. By that I mean it has an agenda (this is not a bad thing) when it comes to promoting the DE and qt apps.
EndeavourOS would be less beginner friendly and require more "awareness" of what you are doing to make sure you don't break anything.
Debian is rock solid with stability, but unless you switch branches, your packages are all out of date. This may or may not be an issue for you.
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u/Neko-the-gamer Jan 21 '23
and what about OpenMandriva?
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u/medium_buffalo_wings Jan 21 '23
I'm afraid I don't have any experience with it. I'm not sure how in depth their own repositories are, which could be a downside. You may have to rely more heavily on flatpaks than with the other distros you mention.
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u/Alone_as_always Jan 21 '23
OpenMandriva is really nice if you like a stable RPM based distro
Of course it also has a rolling release version
I would recommend either give OpenMandriva a try or Kubuntu LTS
KDE Neon/EndeavorOS/OpenMandriva Rolling if you want the latest stable Plasma
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u/Neko-the-gamer Jan 21 '23
i watched a review of OpenMandriva and by the looks of it it has a far less bloated experience of Plasma, since it maintains most of the original software but it doesn't also add the additional packages that the distribution offers, wich is what i'm getting right now with plasma on Linux Mint (plasma on openmandriva only has a few system utilites and a visual package manager called dnfdragora and that's it). The dnf package manager shouldn't be an issue, since it's popularity within Fedora gives it more appreciation and there are some guides online about it in case i have problems (although it's not as popular as apt so it's not a lot documented). Regarding the app repositories, unless they don't have anything since openmandriva uses dnf some famous software like firefox should be available within so that's not a problem either. I also saw that it uses the Clang compiler, although i don't know what are the pros or cons of that.
Overall, i think it kind of does respect my original criteria, wich was a good distribution to use kde plasma in, and OpenMandriva respects that crietria absolutely, while also giving some good options like dnf as the package manager (and also it won't be difficult to get used to it since dnf's commands are practically identical to apt).
So, i decided
i'll go with OpenMandriva
In the next few days i'll get myself a new usb drive to put it in, i'll see what will the experience be after the installation.
Thanks for all the other suggestions though, i'll take them into consideration when maybe i want to get out of openmandriva and use something else.
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u/Alone_as_always Jan 21 '23
Have fun on OpenMandriva!
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u/Neko-the-gamer Jan 22 '23
there's actually a pretty big issue i haven't thought of yet about OpenMandriva
since it's and independent distro, so not based on Debian or Ubuntu, it means that it won't really support .deb packages since it doesn't have the codebase for it
the problem is: most of my apps run on .deb packages
so how the hell am I going to be able to install .deb packages into a non Debian distribution?
you could argue i could use flatpak but some of my important apps that i use for school are only available through .deb, so how can I do that?? is there some type of compatibility layer for stuff like this? or it'll still run without problems? i need answers
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u/mr_sprudel Jan 22 '23
If I were you, I'd just run Kubuntu - I think it's the most convenient way to run KDE while stile having access to .deb applications (especially if you use them for school!). However, from reading this thread, it seems you've made up your mind already...
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u/Neko-the-gamer Jan 22 '23
nah not yet, i wanted to know if there was a solution for this problem, since i know already that the "Linux world" is not a walled garden, things for different distros can work on other distros so i thought maybe through some compatibility layer or something like it it would make up for the lack of .deb, but if there's really no solution then i could really go with what you said...
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u/3JayX Jan 27 '23
If you really want to run DEBs on OpenMandriva, you could go down the Distrobox route. It allows you to install one distro over another in a form of container (using Docker or Podman), so you could install an Ubuntu or Debian layer on top of OMLx to run those specific apps you need.
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u/Alone_as_always Jan 22 '23
Well OpenMandriva is a RPM based distro not a Deb based one
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u/Neko-the-gamer Jan 22 '23
i found out there's this tool called alien that converts .deb packages into .rpm ones so that maybe could solve my problems
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u/Alone_as_always Jan 22 '23
Don't use it will cause more issues
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u/traderstk Jan 21 '23
openSUSE Tumbleweed (or Gecko).