I’m asking this question here because I’m hoping for a more balanced answer. I’m trying to find a mostly ‘problem free’ KDE Plasma distro.
The past few years I’ve always used Gnome-based distributions, but I tend to favour QT applications. I prefer Dolphin, Gwenview, Okular, etc. I also really like the Plasma DE itself and am really hopeful for the KDE Eco project.
But I never managed to run Plasma for more than a week before running into some show-stopper bug. The last time I tried was with the release of Kubuntu 22.04 LTS, where I ran into some conflict between Plasma, Fctix5 and other applications. The issue was known, was new, and would probably be fixed in some future release of Plasma. And there is also currently issue with IBUS input switching, visible from the moment of starting Fedora KDE, so that wouldn’t fix it for me either.
For the before mentioned bug, it only said that it would be fixed in a future release. There was no mention that the issue would be addressed for the LTS. I’ve also read people complain about bug reports that just kept coming from Kubuntu LTS users, for issues that were long fixed in newer releases of Plasma.
Which brings me to my question. Are you better off running a rolling release distribution if you want fewer bugs? This does not seem logical to me, but it’s the signal I get from other bug support forums and reddit. Or is LTS such as Kubuntu 22.04 the way to go after all?
One of the things in my Plasma using experience is that I’m never happy in an ecosystem which doesn’t bring in the latest stable KDE. KDE Plasma feels like software designed to be used in a rolling fashion.
If I’m using Kubuntu LTS, I immediately enable the Kubuntu backports PPA. The problem is sometimes the LTS doesn’t have a high enough Qt version to build the newest KDE Plasma stuff. This PPA only builds up to what the LTS version supports. This creates gaps which create bad user experience.
You can try a rolling release to always get the latest KDE Plasma. I believe Arch and openSUSE are probably good choices for this. The limit with a rolling release is your comfort zone and how you define stable.
If you want a fixed release cadence where your major updates come twice a year, but you want the latest stable KDE release, I recommend Fedora. Fedora isn’t a rolling release per se but they do keep the kernel and KDE updates coming in as they are made stable.
Again, using KDE Plasma, I have only been truly happy if I can run latest stable. To me it fits better with the KDE development cycle.
I currently use Fedora Kinoite but I have had great KDE experiences with both Arch and openSUSE.
You have condensed the general impression I get from what I’ve read online in this one paragraph. I wonder if everyone feels the same, which is why I asked the question. But perhaps there isn’t more to it.
Unless anyone begs to differ…?
Concerning your recommendation I have a small question: do you have experience using Bluetooth devices with Fedora KDE? I previously used Fedora 35 and 36 Gnome, but I always had to remove and re-pair all my Bluetooth devices after resuming from sleep. (This hasn’t happened yet with Ubuntu-based distros.) I was wondering if using Fedora Gnome or KDE made a difference in this regard.
I’ve been running Garuda for a little over a year now. It’s been an excellent experience…except for Plasma. I continued to use Latte Dock longer than I should have. Well, at some point, Garuda removed Latte Dock and I was (shouldn’t have been) surprised at the increased stability.
I have a laptop running LMDE. This distro was my first exposure to the Cinnamon desktop. I gotta say that I like it, but not as much as Plasma.
I like to try other desktops from time to time just to see what is new with that specific desktop, but in the end, I keep coming back home to Plasma.
Oh that’s okay. Thank you for replying anyway.