I’m not a beginner anymore, but I’m much less interested in technical tinkering for its own sake than I used to be. These days I just want my computer to work properly without too much intervention from me.
I’ve been using Kubuntu for a number of years, but I’m also hearing increasing complaints about how Canonical is running things. I don’t think I’m ready to switch to a new distro yet, but it wouldn’t hurt to know what’s out there.
Is Kubuntu still a good choice for an “it just works” KDE-based distro, or has it been surpassed?
arch by far. just clean kde no downstream patches
Manjaro! I can’t run the KDE version myself, but I have both heard and seen good things about it.
Yea this has been my main for almost a decade. It’s all of the benefits of running Arch without the painful install. And KDE Plasma 5 is pretty solid now that many bugs have been fixed.
EndeavourOS is probably good too, I haven’t tried it, but it seems similar. People who don’t like Manjaro seem to prefer it.
I’ve been using Manjaro with KDE for a few years now. It works smoothly, I never ran into any issues with it.
The pacman package manager is pretty nice, too, I found it faster and easier to use than apt-get, and the provided packages are always kept up-to-date. Updating the system (even installing a newer Linux kernel) is very simple and works reliably. So you always have the latest version of your apps, the kernel, and the DE.
In the rare occasion that a program is not available in the official repositories or the community-maintained AUR, you can also install snap or flatpak packages.
And since Manjaro is derived from Arch, you can use the Arch Wiki, which is very useful when you want to set up a database, use the android debug bridge, install another package manager, or do anything else less than trivial.
Arch base (the difficulty of installing base arch is overstated, especially now that you can use archinstall), though here be tinkering to get it going. If not arch base then endeavorOS, purists will tell you its not arch but it really do be arch, basically. Both archinstall and endeavor will let you set up KDE on install.
Kubuntu is fine if you don’t mind the direction that Canonicla is heading.
Moving from Ubuntu to a debian based distro makes sense - a lot of stuff is familliar. Base debian is fine, but MX is a little more friendly. They have a KDE image here: https://mxlinux.org/download-links/
I’ve been using KDE Neon for the past several months. It seems to have the best overall mix of out-of-the-box usability and customization. I haven’t found anything I can’t do with it and lots of packages are readily available. Also no “political” exclusions so it allows you to install all the portable packages like Snap, FlatPak, etc. Don’t use it if you don’t want it, but it’s there if you need it.