I’m looking to convert my windows laptop to a debian based distro with KDE. Any recommendations as to what might be a good choice?
In the past I’ve used Kubuntu but have felt it tended to lag a bit behind on kde updates.
I want a nice stable desktop from which I can run my dev stuff( IDE’s and VMs ) and of course normal browsers
Any feedback appreciated!
Well as far as Debian distro recommendations I guess it really depends on how up to date you are looking for KDE to be, Kubuntu isn’t far behind if the backports are enabled, other distros you have KDE Neon (very vanilla Plasma), Nitrux (very customized Plasma), Netrunner, Kanotix, ExTix has a Plasma Spin, Kaisen most directed at IT folks, FerenOS. Those are just some of the recommendations I can make off the top of my head.
MX Linux would be my first recommendation if you want to stay with a debian base.
I would go KDE Neon.
Very up-to-date plasma on top of a stable Ubuntu LTS.
It has worked perfectly fine for me in the past.
You mentioned it yourself, it is Kubuntu. Stable, Debian based and relatively new-ish.
If you want debian, I’d go kubuntu. Solyd X\K or Sparkylinux if you want newer debian.
Tumleweed and GeckoLinux NEXT are nice, stable newer distos as well
If you want to stay on Debian, the Debian KDE maintainer keeps a repository of the latest KDE Plasma and apps for stable, testing, and unstable on x86_64. These are essentially what ends up in Debian repositories once they get it running on all the other architectures.
I recommend running Debian Testing or Unstable as a daily driver.
If you just want to set and forget and be in the Debian realm, I agree with the others with Kubuntu.
I’m my experience KDE Neon starts to break as it gets older.
Edit:
I have also found that if you stay on the current stable version of Kubuntu and enable the Kubuntu backports PPA, you get a relatively fresh KDE. You might run into some trouble on the LTSes because they only backport to the latest KDE version the LTS’ Qt version supports.
If always being on the latest version of your desktop environment is important to you I would consider running a rolling release such as openSUSE Tumbleweed or Arch.
Wow. Norbert is maintaining new KDE packages even for Debian Stable, fantastic. Though he is not the official Debian maintainer, he does it externally because Debian is too slow and bureaucratic to keep up but the project takes his packages. If it were not because of him Bullseye would probably not release with a recent Plasma iteration at all.
Did not know this. Thank you for clarifying.
Thanks all for the feedback - Kubuntu seems the likely selection for me
Should you ever consider a non-Debian base I can recommend Fedora KDE spin or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.