This is a good point 
Totally missed that one…
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Clean install of Kubuntu 24.04 done last night.
Only flatpak at the moment is the one for Displaycal, due to the version which comes with Kubuntu 24.04 being somewhat broken due to python library version incompatibility (which is being worked on)
That’ll do for me I think 
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Alas, I spoke too soon.
It seems Kubuntu 24.04 (and Ubuntu 24.04 based distros) have updated certain libraries, which breaks some appimages. 
So I think I’ll give MX Linux KDE spin a try
Seems a painless install in virtualbox!
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As far as I know, that’s the fault of the people who made the AppImages: those are to include all dependencies, and should run on all Linux distros.
Download an application, make it executable, and run! No need to install. No system libraries or system preferences are altered.
Distribute your desktop Linux application in the AppImage format and win users running all common Linux distributions. Package once and run everywhere.
The key idea of the AppImage format is one app = one file. Every AppImage contains an app and all the files the app needs to run. In other words, each AppImage has no dependencies other than what is included in the targeted base operating system(s).
(https://appimage.org/)
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Yes, it’s the fault of the people who make the appimages. However it could be a long time until the appimage gets updated to run on the latest version of (K)ubuntu, due to it requiring a few external libraries.
Works for me! Although I go for the MATE flavour, not cinnamon. Of course, when we’re in an application, especially one that we run full-screen, everything looks the same (?pretty much) whatever is running it.
I don’t see myself moving away. I’d have to have a sudden very special need for that to happen: there are none in the foreseeable future.
Question to Arch Linux users here: my biggest gripe with Debian/Ubuntu is the management of software I compile from source (Julia, Darktable, and about 15 other minor or major utilities/programs). I do this because the main repository either does not have the software, it is outdated, or I want to use master or a branch from the git repo.
Am I correct in assuming that Arch solves this in a very elegant way by making the package build descriptions rather lightweight? So if I want something as a package, I can do it myself with little work, but chances are it is already in AUR.
Can I use this facility (makepkg) for compiling a branch from a git repo?
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Yeah, for example: PKGBUILD - aur.git - AUR Package Repositories
You can easily see that during the prepare function it executes a bunch of git commands, you can just checkout whichever branch you want and it’s good to go. Bonus points that if you want to uninstall the package afterwards, you can just do pacman -Rsn #name# and it’s done. This is especially elegant since you’re adding dependencies to your built package, so if you try to remove a lib that darktable depends on, pacman will throw an error and won’t let you.
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You can also try Debian, mother off all GNU based distro’s.
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As an update, I’ve now installed Linux Mint Debian Edition which is based on Debian 12 Bookworm.
Pretty painless install, the Nvidia drivers were easy enough to install via command line “sudo apt install nvidia-drivers”.
Oddly darktable 4.8 seems to be running a lot faster on LMDE compared to Kubuntu 24.04. Perhaps it’s partly due to running Cinnamon rather than KDE?
And Displaycal etc installed very easily.
Hopefully I can settle with this distro for a good while and actually use my system productively!
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Just read this – do you know stow?
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I am aware of stow, but it is not a good solution. It installs stuff just fine, but does not handle clashes and uninstalling does not always work out.
It is much better if everything is in packages, however lightweight.
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Sure, it’s more of a workaround than a solution, but better than having nothing at all. I don’t think I used it in the past 15 years.
nix/nixos solves this in a very repeatable manner; and you can install nix on any Linux distro.
Alas, I still seem to be distro hopping, ever seeking the dopamine hit that the next distro will give, and then end up not being satisfied, thus ever repeating the distro hop spin cycle to get that oh so sweet dopamine hit.
But with these new fangled linux distros with the new shiny Wayland display compositor I am not entirely sure they will work well either, especially on Nvidia GPUs and display colour profile management.
They won’t, for now.
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All the more reason to stick with something LTS like.
Or a distro that let’s you choose between X and Wayland.
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