KDE Neon vs Debian

[bester69]

Thanks to btrfs im feeding up of testing differents distros in my debian installation partition without formatting, furthermore i can use my home settings as a snapshot to replicate a perfect system migration.

Ive already tested several KDE distros, and these were my conclusions:

- Arch based on KDE's such as Manjaros, Kaos, etc: I find pacman, and this type of packages manager, an eventually failed.
Sooner than later you get a mess in the system, i see litle control over the system for a regular user. Conversely, Synaptic is clean, easy to understand and to mantain, you can mix third sources, and manual installation without getting into much trouble.
- Opensuse based on KDE: Its kind of the same than Arch derivades

In my opinion the best KDE systems are Ubuntu's/Debian's based on distros.:
- Neon Kde, Mint Kde, Debian Kde

They are best ones to mantain, and keep an stable and solid KDE system. As for my feeling, I see more solid, and mantainable debian's KDE than Ubuntu's.

Tested both KDE's Neons distros, and I didnt find anything better than in debian's, I just saw ubuntu with a Neon's added repository. As for the migration to Neon, it mathed 100% with success without any problem. What I most liked about Neon, was the wizard installation and the clean, minimal KDE's installation it does. It just install the necessary system and DE packages, its a very small installation.

So Ive finally reached the conclusion that Debian (to me testing) is best distro to stay in , i dont see any disadvantages with respect to others KDEs.

[wizard10000]

I'm currently running Neon Dev Stable while waiting for Sid to finish freezing and flooding. I'd started out with Dev Unstable but nightly git pulls from a slow repo and occasional minor glitches convinced me to back off a bit.

Sid is usually less than a week behind Neon. Still running Debian on my home server and hopefully will be back to Sid once everything calms down

edit: If I wasn't so happy with Debian I'd certainly run Neon. Latest KDE on an LTS base? Cool.

[MALsPa]

In my opinion the best KDE systems are Ubuntu's/Debian's based on distros.

"Opinions are like..." (well, you know the rest).

I've got a couple of KDE installations: Debian Jessie (installed Feb 2015, back when Jessie was still in Testing), and openSUSE 42.2, installed Nov 2016. I've actually been running openSUSE with KDE since the 12.1 release, back in 2012.

openSUSE makes KDE look nicer than what you'll get in Debian, but default appearances are mostly irrelevant to me. openSUSE is good, though; gives me no problems, which is why I've continued to run it. Same with Debian.

Really, it doesn't seem to matter, use whatever works best for you over time. One user "testing" several distros and then coming here to proclaim one or another as the best, that tells me absolutely nothing about what my preferences will turn out to be.

[sunrat]

I use and recommend siduction for a good Plasma 5 experience. https://news.siduction.org/ . Basically it's Sid with a custom kernel and a few tweaks. Currently it has Plasma 5.8.6-1, same as Stretch which I also tried and it seemed to work well too. Stretch will forever have Plasma 5.8 whereas siduction (and Sid) will move to 5.9 in time presumably after Stretch is released. 5.9 offers a few nice new features - https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.9.0.php
KDE Neon also worked well when I tried it, and as it is the KDE showcase it will always offer the latest Plasma available. I prefer a pure Debian base though.

[bester69]

I use and recommend siduction for a good Plasma 5 experience. https://news.siduction.org/ . Basically it's Sid with a custom kernel and a few tweaks. Currently it has Plasma 5.8.6-1, same as Stretch which I also tried and it seemed to work well too. Stretch will forever have Plasma 5.8 whereas siduction (and Sid) will move to 5.9 in time presumably after Stretch is released. 5.9 offers a few nice new features - https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.9.0.php
KDE Neon also worked well when I tried it, and as it is the KDE showcase it will always offer the latest Plasma available. I prefer a pure Debian base though.

It sounds interesting "siduction", I didnt know it, thanks. You also have Sparky for a debian testing based on distro, i used it to make the transition to debian testing.

After four/six months stretch has been released, I will consider move on to testing. It will depend on how boosts or downgrades happend to the new testing in my 2008's laptop. As i have a btrfs filesystem and testing is a rolling release It will be very easy to upgrade to new testing, and rollback if im not satisfied with the performane (the wonderfull advantages of btrfs's snapshots .

[wizard10000]

...I prefer a pure Debian base though.

Me too.

I did try to full-upgrade Sid to Neon; I was advised in /r/kde that it was a lousy idea but if I'm gonna blow a machine away I might as well have a little fun first.

Neon does have Ubuntu dependencies; the breakage I expected did happen and it was kinda fun trying to make it go anyway. When it became Not Fun to try and fix it I blew the machine away and installed Neon.

[bester69]

I use and recommend siduction for a good Plasma 5 experience. https://news.siduction.org/ . Basically it's Sid with a custom kernel and a few tweaks. Currently it has Plasma 5.8.6-1, same as Stretch which I also tried and it seemed to work well too. Stretch will forever have Plasma 5.8 whereas siduction (and Sid) will move to 5.9 in time presumably after Stretch is released. 5.9 offers a few nice new features - https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.9.0.php
KDE Neon also worked well when I tried it, and as it is the KDE showcase it will always offer the latest Plasma available. I prefer a pure Debian base though.

Ive now read it, that debian's sid has no security support, so "siduction" seems not a very good idea if you are some concern about your security. I think testing makes more sense to me, so "sparky distro" its more suitable.

[sunrat]

Ive now read it, that debian's sid has no security support,...

Not strictly true. Most security updates in sid come via package maintainers and are pushed to testing where they are handled by Debian security team.

I think testing makes more sense to me, so "sparky distro" its more suitable.

If you are so worried about security, I think stable makes more sense.

From https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing -

Q: How is security handled for unstable?

A: Security for unstable is primarily handled by package maintainers, not by the Debian Security Team. Although the security team may upload high-urgency security-only fixes when maintainers are noticed to be inactive, support for stable will always have priority. If you want to have a secure (and stable) server you are strongly encouraged to stay with stable.

Q: How is security handled for testing?

A: Security for testing benefits from the security efforts of the entire project for unstable. However, there is a minimum two-day migration delay, and sometimes security fixes can be held up by transitions. The Security Team helps to move along those transitions holding back important security uploads, but this is not always possible and delays may occur. Especially in the months after a new stable release, when many new versions are uploaded to unstable, security fixes for testing may lag behind. If you want to have a secure (and stable) server you are strongly encouraged to stay with stable.

Sid will often have security updates before testing.
siduction's dev team are really fast at fixing breakages that get into sid and have a "fixes" repo that takes precedence until the sid version is fixed. This is one of the main advantages of siduction over sid and has saved me a few times.

[bester69]

....

In other words: Testing is generally more stable than unstable, but has poor security due to the delay between unstable and testing. Perhaps I shoud try sid now, i can take btrfs snapshots, and see how it works to me. I'd like to enjoy kde 5.9

Sunrat, How do i migrate to "seduction",
I had planned following steps:
0- Upgrade to sid
1- Relace sid's sources with "seductions" and dist-upgrade
what do you think, it it ok this way?

[sunrat]

siduction uses Debian sid repos which don't have Plasma 5.9 yet. Probably need Neon for that currently, but then you would have a Ubuntu base.
And I don't think either testing or unstable have poor security. They do have regular updates including security related ones.
I have read on the siduction forums of people changing to siduction from sid using your proposed method but personally I prefer a fresh installation.

[L_V]

You should have a look to Neptune
https://neptuneos.com/

[Innovate]

It's the matter of KDE developers vs Debian developers's distro loyalty.
Without KDE team there'd be no KDE for Debian.
Debian itself doesn't have it's own orignal DE dsitro like Mint, Deepin, Elementary, Solus did.
Gnome official distro whom which distro that starter of developing gnome? still mysterious.
Thx to Neon now they've exact away completely from Kubuntu. Now we finally aware that KDE team used to mixed up with Kubuntu.
Without Debian there'd be no KDE Neon they use debian based for deb package manager.
Car without fuel it cannot run. Have a fuel without car to run is also pointless.

But FYI you seems to be loyal to Debian than to be loyal KDE fan. Otherwise you won't stay chat around in this forum.
So it's the trial test of love matter how much faithful you're between these 2.

[L_V]

NeptuneOS is just using KDE packages from ... Neon.

SID + some packages from experimental do the same job.
=> Nothing else but Debian.

[bw123]

It's the matter of KDE developers vs Debian developers's distro loyalty.
Without KDE team there'd be no KDE for Debian.
<snip>
So it's the trial test of love matter how much faithful you're between these 2.

I'm not sure how all the packaging works, and I just got kde working. Never tried NEON, and I go pretty far back with debian so I won't stray too far, unless they like, I don't know... there would have to be something really dumb. Maintaining a system on debian is always very smooth, rarely huge upgrades and hardly ever a mistake, and fixed quickly when it does happen.

I sure think the debian version of kde is outstanding. I'm an old guy, and I have old hardware. I never thought I'd see these machines look and work this way.
Whatever maintainers got this stuff together, all I can say is a big THANK YOU!

[Innovate]

There's an odd feeling for me between these 2

Debian KDE5
- dolphin root work fine KDE5 still old enough
- icons align item vertically 7 in 1366x768 resolution even set line 2 to 1 the gap between icons still big
KDE Neon
- More easy to color & theme panel
- dolphin root not working anymore, whether sudo, kdesudo are unsusable
- icons align 9 items vertically in 1366x768 resolution they've finnally fixed

Debian KDE we're lucky that KDE5 dolphin root still worked.
I start to known that feel now why Mint drop KDE silently. KDE's Neon dolphin unrootable is the hint.
Buster KDE in future might affect this so I'm bounce back to Xfce to avoid that. Since the icons align 10 items as I wanted.