What linux distribution do you prefer and why?

Software
362

and the main motivation seems to be the gripe that KDE makes the software

Kinda, it’s simply meant to be the best vanilla KDE experience possible, and without PackageKit present I do wholeheartedly believe this to be true, you also get early access to developer editions of Plasma.

I can sympathize, but at the same time I don’t see how making their own distro will address this.

It’s not the primary concern nor reason for creating KDE Plasma, I believe it was made more for 1. OEMs (KDE sells laptops and is partnered with Canonical’s half-owned laptop venture ‘Kubuntu Touch’, so they need a distribution they can market & deliver to companies and vendors reliably)
2. for new *nix users to get acquainted to KDE
3. KDE developers who need a platform to develop Qt apps on

Are they going to ban people from their forums who are not users of the KDE distro? Or answer every question with “just use KDE Linux”?

Nay, KDE’s main project was and always will be the Plasma desktop environment, the forum is open to anyone who is willing to report a bug that is Plasma’s fault and not the distribution’s

the standard answer to every Linux gripe is that you have to have yet another distribution, because that will surely solve the problem.

the problem fixing part was done for us all by Fedora/Red Hat around the late 2010s when they were the first to actually do immutability aligned with modern technology seriously, KDE Linux isn’t really out to do anything new that hasn’t been done already - this is just a project that the KDE team felt needed to be done

BTW, this isn’t anything new, we had KDE neon beforehand which set out to achieve more or less the same development purpose; here’s the thing, most desktop environments maintain their own Linux distribution because it’s way easier to just offer something for devs and enthusiasts alike built entirely around your desktop environment, three examples come to mind:

the developers of Cinnamon have their own distro
the developers of GNOME have their own distro
COSMIC was made and maintained by the Pop_OS! people

363

50% makes it sound like there’s a long way to go. :smiley: But if it’s stable as you say…

364

To be fair, a lot is left, no legacy nVIDIA support, no Secure Boot, not even an .ISO file to install the OS, yes, but 99% of the system you’d actually use is there

you get a Linux kernel, atomic read-only main directory, a Wayland compositor, Pipewire, clean updates through a GUI and everything through Flatpaks, DIstrobox preinstalled, there is quite literally nothing more to add anymore as far as I can tell

you can do gaming, 3D work, music production, drawing, development, about as well as any other distro, so for me it’s pretty much “good enough” already

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365

Two of those are just thin layers over Debian/Ubuntu; and Gnome OS is not meant for normal use, it is a testing/dev platform for Gnome.

Confusingly, KDE has neon, yet another in-house distribution. How many does one need?

366

KDE admits neon’s future is shaky, the Ubuntu LTS base proved unstable and enjoyed very little use, it is likely to be sunsetted within 3 years

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It ranks 18th on Distrowatch.

I think that in the Linux world, a lot of distro splits are caused by people disagreeing about something, which is then dressed up as technical terms for the public announcement. No, we are not starting this new distro because X and Y are at each other’s throats all the time, we are doing it because we want to make an obscure change to some tiny component, which will magically make it rock-solid, but cutting edge at the same time. Like the other 5k distros before us.

368

That is My personal argument for debian. Stable, Long time here and progressing, fast enough for me.

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369

DistroWatch has never been a reliable measurement for popularity, I had this drilled into my head after Fedora devs yelled at me for treating it as such :D.
As for neon the KDE developers have lost faith in it because actually developing Plasma on an LTS kernel while the Plasma build itself is alpha-access ends up in a lot of instability

I agree, absolutely, see Artix & Devuan for example

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370

So, why not a PPA for the latest Plasma, building on the latest Ubuntu release (updated every 6 months)?

FWIW, I think the various technical arguments a red herring here, it may have to do with people like Jonathan Riddell leaving KDE.

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371

That already exists, it’s the kubuntu-backports

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372

I don’t think a base that updates every 6 months is anywhere near fast enough for serious development, especially with new devices coming out

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373

But, from the perspective of KDE, it is NIH. Clearly they need their own distribution.

You can live on the edge without maintaining your own distro, eg Arch. Which already has kde-unstable.

374

I just built a pc to support video and photo editing. I’m migrating to DaVinci Resolve as a video editor. I had been using kdenlive, but dt has spoiled me with powerful tools for color management etc, and kdenlive has a way to go yet on that front. For Resolve I needed a GPU, hence the new build.

But Resolve on Linux has been known to be challenging to set up, with some requirements for the kernel and a number of dependencies.

So I found and installed Nobara Linux, a hobby distribution based on Fedora that has quite a number of modifications including kernel updates and many driver and support packages for gaming and content creation. It comes with an installer script for Resolve.

Resolve works out of the box. I’m impressed.

Due to all of the customization, it is recommended that most applications be installed as flatpacks or snaps. I’ve installed and tested the dt 5.4 flatpack and it runs well.

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375

I am a computer user with average knowledge.
I have tested many distributions.
Since I have a 4K monitor and need good scaling, there can only be one winner.
KDE Plasma, and the distribution is MX Linux.

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376

This reads like an ad :-D.

377

This isn’t an advertisement, but I can definitely recommend MX Linux. This distribution has a great tool called MX Snapshot, which allows you to quickly and effectively restore your system with all its settings. I’ve already had the opportunity to use it when I messed up my system a bit :slight_smile:

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378

Tumbleweed/KDE user, but always a Gentoo fan/admirer!

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379

I think I’ve already posted what/why in this thread. But I always get confused over the terminology. Is it right to say…

My distribution is Linux Mint
My desktop is MATE
My windows manager is Compiz
My windows decorator is Emerald

What and why revisited…

Linix Mint is close to Ubuntu, which is where I started with Linux. I don’t really care to explore the diversity, with its differing administration techniques and commands

MATE and its menus and panels is, for me, the way a desktop should be done. And I have to admit that the generation during which I believe that MS got that right influences me in that.

Compiz, for all its unnecessary fireworks and toys, has certain functionality I’d find it hard to live without.

Emerald makes stuff pretty.

The combination of those things, whilst not difficult, is a little deeper than most Mint users might want to go. I can sympathise. I do want my Linux easy to install and ready to go. I’ve been a Unix systems manager, self taught and evangelically enthusiastic! But that was a previous lifetime.

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380

A few weeks in and CachyOS has been perfectly fine. No issues, no drama :crossed_fingers:

I started using Niri and Noctalia shell and I’m quite enjoying it. Even in Windows I rely on keyboard shortcuts to move windows around and KWin just wasn’t doing it for me. Right out of the box Niri was pretty intuitive to use and I was able to tweak just a few keybinds to get things feeling real nice.

I think I want to try making my own bootc / Universal Blue style distro. I know there was some talk earlier in this topic about immutable distros. It took me a while to wrap my head around them but I think it’s probably the ideal for me. Definitely not for everyone.

381

whispers NixOS …

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