 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 806, 18 March 2019 |
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Welcome to this year's 11th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
There are a lot of Linux-based distributions in the world, hundreds in fact, and sometimes it can be difficult to know what sets projects with similar goals apart. This week we begin with a side-by-side comparison of two similar projects: Kubuntu and KDE neon. Both run the Plasma desktop on top of an Ubuntu base, but are there any features which set them apart? Our Feature Story explores the similarities and differences between these two projects. In our Opinion Poll we would like to hear which of these two distributions our readers prefer and why. People who want to compare more projects side-by-side may be interested in testing an early version of znx, a tool for deploying multiple distributions on the same device without the need to partition the disk. Plus we talk about the Debian Project Leader election and congratulate Ubuntu Studio on continuing its official Community Flavour status. SUSE announced this week that it is now an independent entity and we cover this change in our News section. We are also pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Kubuntu versus KDE neon
- News: Debian gears up for an election with no candidates, Ubuntu Studio maintains official Community Flavour status, SUSE becomes independent
- Technology review: Managing multiple operating systems on one drive with znx
- Released last week: Univention 4.4-0, ROSA R11
- Torrent corner: Arco, Berry, Container, EasyOS, Endless, IPFire, Lakka, PCLinuxOS, ROSA, SmartOS, Ultimate, Univention, Voyager
- Upcoming releases: Tails 3.13
- Opinion poll: Kubuntu or KDE neon
- Reader comments
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Kubuntu versus KDE neon
Often times when I'm browsing open source forums I run into variations of the query "Why do we need KDE neon when we have Kubuntu?" Or, possibly the inverse: "What is the benefit to running Kubuntu when we have KDE neon?" Sometimes the question is more neutral: "What is the difference between running Kubuntu with backports and running KDE neon?"
These are fair questions. While Kubuntu tends to be seen as being more geared toward end users and KDE neon tends to be regarded as being a way for curious testers to try out the latest KDE technology, there is a lot of overlap between the two projects. Both are based on Ubuntu, both feature recent releases of the KDE Plasma desktop, and both stick pretty close to a vanilla KDE experience. This got me wondering if there is much of a difference between the two projects from the end-user's point of view. Are they basically the same experience with slightly different configurations, or are there practical differences in play that would make a users choose one over the other?
I decided to find out. I downloaded a snapshot of the User edition of KDE neon and a copy of Kubuntu. Since KDE neon is based on Ubuntu long-term support (LTS) releases, specifically Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, I opted to download Kubuntu 18.04.2 in order to make sure the base operating systems were as close to the same as I could get. Then I started comparing the two side-by-side.
Getting started
Before installing these two distributions, there are a couple of noteworthy differences. The first is that Kubuntu runs on 32-bit and 64-bit x86 machines and its ISO is 1.8GB in size. KDE neon has a slightly smaller ISO at 1.4GB, and also supports 64-bit x86 machines. However, KDE neon does not offer a 32-bit build, instead providing an aarch64 build for Pinebook computers.
While both versions of the distributions I downloaded were based on Ubuntu LTS (specifically Ubuntu 18.04 LTS in this case) with five years of security updates, the Kubuntu project publishes new releases every six months with the non-LTS versions offering nine months of support.
Installing
Booting from the KDE neon live disc presents us with the Plasma desktop. On the desktop is a single icon which launches the Ubiquity installer. There is a panel at the bottom of the desktop that holds the application menu launcher and system tray.
KDE neon 20190215 -- The KDE neon desktop and application menu
(full image size: 756kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Starting the graphical Ubiquity installer brings up a screen which asks us to select our preferred language and offers a link we can click to update to the latest version of the installer. Clicking the update link did nothing on my system. The next page offers to download new packages and/or third-party software such as media codecs and wireless card support. The installer then walks us through partitioning the hard drive, selecting our time zone and creating a user account. The install process is pleasantly quick and easy.
Kubuntu boots off the live media and presents us with a welcome screen where we are asked if we would like to try the live desktop or jump straight into the installer. On this page we can click a link to open a web browser which will show us a list of past Kubuntu releases and, optionally, release notes for each version. Proceeding with the installation will bring up a prompt asking if we want to perform a Normal install (with a full suite of desktop software) or a Minimal install, which basically just sets up a bare Plasma desktop with a web browser. I opted to do the Normal install as it was the default. The rest of the install process was the same as it was with KDE neon, where we are asked if we want to download third-party packages, how we want to partition the hard drive, and what we want to name our user account.
Both installers worked well and, though there were sometimes delays while packages were downloaded over the network, both distributions installed without any problems.
Early impressions
KDE neon boots to a graphical login screen where we can sign into either a Plasma on X.Org session or a Plasma on Wayland session. Signing into our account presents us with an empty desktop with a red and star-covered wallpaper. A modern, single-pane application menu enables us to launch programs. I am not a fan of this style of application menu as it takes more clicks and mouse movement to get around, though this can be offset by using the menu's search bar to look up programs. The Plasma desktop uses a grey theme combined with fairly colourful icons.
Kubuntu boots to a similar graphical login screen and offers a Plasma on X.Org session only. Kubuntu features purple & brown wallpaper and there are two icons on the desktop for launching the Dolphin file manager. Kubuntu uses the same application menu as KDE neon does, though the panel and menu have a darker, charcoal background. I liked the darker theme used by Kubuntu as I found it made the text and icons stand out more.
With both distributions there are virtually no distractions or notifications. When software updates were available, an icon in the system tray would light up. Otherwise Plasma pleasantly stayed out of my way.
Kubuntu 18.04.2 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 640kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Hardware
It should not be any surprise that, since the two projects share a common base, they perform almost identically in the same test environments. Both distributions integrate nicely with VirtualBox and can make use of the host machine's full screen resolution. Both projects detected all of my workstation's hardware, allowing them to play audio, detect my wireless card, connect to the Internet and stream videos. I found both distributions were a little sluggish to start and respond when run in VirtualBox. Both were still usable, but there were slight delays to input in the virtual machines. When run on physical hardware both systems were responsive.
There were some small differences in relation to hardware and performance. KDE neon used 370MB of RAM (memory usage was approximately the same whether I signed into the X.Org or Wayland sessions) and the distribution used 4.8GB of disk space. Kubuntu used 380MB of RAM (almost an identical amount), but was smaller on the disk, using 3.6GB of my disk's storage capacity. I found this interesting as Kubuntu ships with a good deal more applications. Which brings me to...
Applications
Kubuntu, at least when it is installed with its Normal software set, ships with more application out of the box than KDE neon. Kubuntu offers users KDE Plasma 5.12 with the Qt 5.9.5 library. The Firefox web browser, KMail, the KDRC remote desktop client and LibreOffice are all installed for us. The KTorrent bittorrent client, the Akregator feed reader and Kontact address book are included. Digging further through the menu we find the Okular document viewer, the Gwenview image viewer and the Skanlite scanner program. The Cantata music player, VLC multimedia player and K3b disc burning software are also offered. Kubuntu can be installed with codecs for playing most audio and video files.
Kubuntu 18.04.2 -- Running Firefox and LibreOffice
(full image size: 378kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
There are a number of other small programs too, including an archive manager, the Kate text editor, Kleopatra for managing security certificates and the Dolphin file manager. There are also common applications such as a task monitor and log viewer. Kubuntu ships with version 4.18 of the Linux kernel and uses systemd for its init software. (I believe Kubuntu 18.04 originally shipped with version 4.15 of the kernel and it was updated for media refreshes, bringing it to 4.18 when Kubuntu 18.04.2 was made available.)
KDE neon offers users KDE Plasma 5.15 and version 5.12 of the Qt libraries. Like its cousin, it ships with Firefox, VLC, Okular and Gwenview. The same task monitor, Dolphin file manager and Konsole virtual terminal are present. KDE neon ships with the same Ark archive manager, but uses KWrite instead of Kate for text editing. KDE neon also makes it easy to find the KDE Help documentation. In the background we again find systemd being used for init and version 4.15 of the Linux kernel.
KDE neon 20190215 -- Adjusting settings and checking for updates
(full image size: 427kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Both distributions feature the KDE System Settings panel and, by default, the panel is presented in a two-pane mode. Categories of settings are displayed down the left and specific settings are shown on the right.
Kubuntu 18.04.2 -- Adjusting the look of the desktop
(full image size: 430kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
When running both projects, I found they played multimedia files smoothly and without problem on my workstation, but VLC would crash when asked to play video files when I ran either distribution in VirtualBox. Audio files would play on both distributions in either test environment.
Software management
Both Kubuntu and KDE neon notify the user of software updates by highlighting an icon in the system tray. Clicking this icon pops up a widget which lets us know new packages are available and we can click a button to open the Discover software manager. Discover will then display a list of available updates and let us select which ones we want to download. The process is smooth and gives us flexibility in what we want to install.
KDE neon 20190215 -- Installing software using Discover
(full image size: 369kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
Discover is used for installing and removing desktop software too. Discover's overview of settings and available categories of applications can be found in a sidebar to the left. A list of available software in a selected category is shown on the right. Programs are listed with their name and icon and we can click a single button to queue a package to be installed or removed.
Kubuntu 18.04.2 -- Browsing available applications
(full image size: 383kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
I found Discover worked fairly well. Sometimes the software manager would lock up for a few seconds when switching between pages, but otherwise it functioned as expected. Discover offered the same experience on both distributions for all practical purposes. My one complaint with Discover is that it prompts us before performing any install or removal action. We can queue up as many new packages as we want to be downloaded, but then we need to sit and babysit Discover, putting in our password for each item in the action queue.
Kubuntu also ships with the Muon package manager. Muon looks a lot like Debian's Synaptic and deals with lower level packages rather than just desktop programs. Muon has a nice look to it and I found its interface easy to navigate. This was appreciated as Muon offers a good deal of software categories, information and software management options. I do not think KDE neon has a similar GUI tool for managing non-desktop packages, but both projects can make use of the APT command line tools for low-level package management.
X.Org and Wayland
I briefly tried the KDE neon session option that runs the Plasma desktop on Wayland. While it was functional, I kept finding little problems that made the experience less enjoyable than the default X.Org session. Most of these involved the inconsistent handling of the mouse pointer. I also found some application windows would open partially off screen. These issues were not really serious in the big picture, but they did convince me to focus on using the X.Org session for most of my trial.
Kubuntu with backport PPA
I wanted to try running Kubuntu with the latest available Plasma desktop available. There is a page on the KDE website which explains how to enable a repository of backports which provides newer versions of packages. I followed its instructions and, while many packages were updated, when the process was done (and I had rebooted) I was still running Plasma 5.12. The 5.12 release appears to be almost identical, functionally speaking, to the newer 5.15 release on KDE neon.
Conclusions
At first, I saw very little difference between the two projects. Kubuntu and KDE neon support different secondary CPU architectures (32-bit x86 and aarch64, respectively), and the live media boots to a slightly different initial screen, but otherwise the two projects offer very similar first impressions. Kubuntu gives us the option of installing more software with its Normal package set, so it is probably a better choice for less experienced users, however, like the default colour themes, it's a small difference.
Once I got started using the two distributions I still did not notice much difference. KDE neon had a Wayland session available by default while I would need to install Wayland separately on Kubuntu, but otherwise the two projects offered nearly identical experiences in applications, hardware support, settings and software management.
For the first couple of days I did not run into any key features that separated the two, even though the two desktops were running different versions of Plasma. Eventually, I did start to spot a few minor details that set the two projects apart, and I suspect they could all be explained by Kubuntu running a slightly older version of Plasma. The software manager, Discover, had a more polished layout on KDE neon; its elements line up better on the screen. The Spectacle screenshot tool has fewer save options and better defaults on KDE neon too. After a while I started to notice KDE neon offered a slightly more responsive desktop than Kubuntu, though I'm not sure if this resulted from which default services are run or improvements in Plasma's code.
In the end, I came away feeling that both projects, for most people, effectively offer the same experience. Kubuntu's theme looks a little nicer and is a little less bleeding edge. KDE neon offers the very latest KDE software, in stable or cutting-edge editions. Unless a person absolutely needs less common hardware support, or wants to test a brand new KDE feature, I think most users will be equally happy with either distribution.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card, Ralink RT5390R PCIe Wireless card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Debian gears up for an election with no candidates, Ubuntu Studio maintains official Community Flavour status, SUSE becomes independent
The Debian project regularly holds elections for the position of Project Leader. The elections happen in three stages: first candidates are nominated, the nominated developers then state their platforms and campaign, and then the developers vote for their preferred candidate. Developers typically nominate themselves. However, this year the nomination period came and went and no one, including the current Project Leader, entered their name into the race. When this happens, the period for nominations gets extended by an extra week to give potential candidate more time. However, there have been questions raised as to what happens if none of Debian's thousand developers steps forward to become Project Leader? LWN has the answer: "This being Debian, the constitution naturally describes what is to happen in this situation: the nomination period is extended for another week. Any Debian developers who procrastinated past the deadline now have another seven days in which to get their nominations in; the new deadline is March 17. Should this deadline also pass without candidates, it will be extended for another week; this loop will repeat indefinitely until somebody gives in and submits their name.
Meanwhile, though, there is another interesting outcome from this lack of candidates: the election of a new leader, whenever it actually happens, will come after the end of Lamb's term. There is no provision for locking the current leader in the office and requiring them to continue carrying out its duties; when the term is done, it's done. So the project is now certain to have a period of time where it has no leader at all. Some developers seem to relish this possibility."
Since this story was originally published, five candidates have put forward their bid to become the next Debian Project Leader during the extended nomination period. The campaigning candidates are: Joerg Jaspert, Jonathan Carter, Sam Hartman, Martin Michlmayr, and Simon Richter.
* * * * *
Last week we discussed Ubuntu Studio developers working at gaining upload rights to the Ubuntu repositories, a requirement for official community flavours of the Ubuntu family. The Ubuntu Studio team reported two of their team members now have access, fulfilling the requirements and allowing development of Ubuntu Studio 19.04 to continue. "During a meeting of the Ubuntu Developer Membership Board on March 11, 2019, two Ubuntu Studio developers, Council Chair Erich Eickmeyer and Council Member Ross Gammon, successfully applied for and received upload rights to Ubuntu Studio's core packages, fulfilling the requirements...."
* * * * *
SUSE, the company which develops and supports SUSE Linux Enterprise and the community-run openSUSE, has announced that it is becoming an independent entity and will no longer be owned by Micro Focus. SUSE is now independently managed and is adjusting its management positions to match. Details on the change can be found in SUSE's news post.
* * * * *
These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Technology Review (by Jesse Smith) |
Managing multiple operating systems on one drive with znx
One of the problems with dual-booting multiple distributions is, typically, each operating system needs to be set up with its own partition - sometimes multiple partitions. This can lead to all sorts of inconveniences if we start out planning to run two operating systems on the same disk and later want to add a third. If we don't have any spare space on the disk, we may end up resizing multiple partitions to make room, risking damage to the existing distributions.
To help deal with this situation, along with other problems related to updating Linux distributions, the Nitrux team is working on a tool called znx. They describe the utility as follows:
znx is a tool that lets you deploy multiple operating systems and keep them updated without having to re-partition the drives. It's all about simplicity and reliability.
How does znx do this? Basically it allows the user to download multiple Linux distributions and write their ISO files to an external drive or a USB thumb drive. The znx tool then sets up a boot menu on the removable drive so that we can select which distribution we want to load. Changes we make and data files we are working on are saved to a partition of the drive, providing persistence. The data partition is set up as a Btrfs volume, making it possible to mount and retrieve files from it on any Linux distribution.
We can download znx as an AppImage archive that should run on any modern Linux distribution. The archives on the project's Releases page do not have the .AppImage extension, instead they are simply called znx_development and znx_stable. The Stable edition is the one I downloaded and its archive is about 1MB in size. The source code for both versions is available.
I downloaded the Stable znx AppImage, made it an executable file and plugged in an external drive. One of the first things I discovered about znx is that it needs to be run by the root user, or using sudo, otherwise it refuses to run, even to display the program's help text. Running "sudo znx -h" does provide useful usage information, including some examples. Here is a short summary of the commands znx will accept:
| Command |
Action |
| init <device> | Initialize the storage device. |
| deploy <device> <image> <URL | path> | Deploy an image on a storage
device. |
| update <device> <image> | Update the specified image. |
| revert <device> <image> | Revert to the previous version of the image. |
| clean <device> <image> | Remove the backup that is created during an update. |
| remove <device> <image> | Remove the specified image. |
| list <device> | List the deployed images. |
To get started using znx we need to initialize the external disk we will be using to store multiple distributions. This will wipe the disk of any existing data. We can do this with the znx init command and giving it the name of our external disk:
sudo ./znx init /dev/sdb
The initialization command sets up two partitions on the target disk. The first is a small, 131MB FAT partition and the second is a Btrfs volume which takes up the remaining space.
We can then download and install (deploy) a distribution by running the deploy command and providing it with the name of the distribution we want to install and the URL of its ISO file. The location of the ISO file can be either a remote URL or a local file on our computer. I started out by trying the example command which downloads and deploys Nitrux:
sudo ./znx deploy /dev/sdb nitrux/stable http://repo.nxos.org:8000/nitrux_release_stable
I discovered a few interesting things early on and one of them is the image name we provide ("nitrux/stable" in this case) must be in the format "distro/branch". For example, "debian/stable". We cannot provide just a distro name such as "Puppy" or "Nitrux". We also cannot put decimal points in the branch name. For instance, "mint/tessa" would be okay, but "mint/19.1" is not. Providing a name znx does not like results in the cryptic error:
znx: Error: The image name must match the extended regular expression: '^[[:alnum:]_-]+/[[:alnum:]_-]+$'.
Assuming the deploy command completes successfully, we can see which distributions are installed on our external drive by running the command
sudo ./znx list /dev/sdb
After confirming Nitrux had installed to my external drive I rebooted the computer and, at first, nothing happened. I soon discovered the problem was my system was booting in legacy BIOS mode. The systems installed by znx only work when the system boots in UEFI mode. Armed with this information I was able to boot into Nitrux and explore the distribution from the external drive. Files I created during the session were saved to the drive's Btrfs volume and could be accessed again in later sessions.
So far things were going well. Once I had sorted out the command line syntax and some more of znx's naming restrictions I felt comfortable with the utility. One other restriction is znx will not allow there to be any spaces in an ISO's filename. Even if the filename's spaces are escaped or the filename is quoted on the command line, znx will still report an error. In other words "slackware-12.0.iso" is okay, but a file called "slackware 12.0.iso" cannot be used.
I then tried installing a few other distributions, including Linux Mint 19.1, Slontoo, and the latest snapshot of Archman GNU/Linux. None of these distributions were able to boot from the znx managed external drive. Each of the distributions appeared in the disk's boot menu, but trying to run them brought up a black screen with the text "Press any key to continue". I would then be returned back to the boot menu. I looked through the znx documentation for clues to fixing this problem, but the supporting documentation is still very brief at this stage and I did not find any help there.
At the moment it looks as though znx might only work with the Nitrux distribution, though that is my conclusion so far based on only four tests. It may be that other distributions will work and I just had a run of poor luck.
In short, at this point I think znx is an interesting idea and I like how easy it makes creating a USB thumb drive I can load up with multiple distributions to try out later. Plus the built-in file persistence is a nice feature. In fact, I have a few more thoughts to share about file persistence.
When we are running a distribution off the external drive, files we create or edit in our home directory get saved to the drive's Btrfs volume. This volume can be mounted from any other distribution, revealing our files under the disk's data directory. When I was running Nitrux, for example, my files ended up under data/home/user/ which was easy enough to find and it made transferring files between my main distribution and the one on the stick a lot easier.
At the moment znx is still in its early stages. It will probably need some polishing to make the command line more forgiving and to get it working with other distributions. Still, the concept is good and I like that it uses Btrfs to do the heavy lifting, allowing us to roll back operating system updates and share data files between systems. The znx tool is off to a good start and I suspect I will be using it more in the coming years once other distributions work seamlessly with it.
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| Released Last Week |
Univention Corporate Server 4.4-0
Univention Corporate Server (UCS) is an enterprise-class distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux. The project's latest release is Univention Corporate Server 4.4-0, which is based on Debian 9 "Stretch". "Univention is pleased to announce the availability of Univention Corporate Server (UCS) 4.4-0, the fourth minor release of UCS 4. It provides several feature improvements and extensions, new properties as well as various improvements and bugfixes. Here is an overview of the most important changes: With this release the new app Admin Diary is available, with which administrative events of all UCS instances of a domain can be viewed and evaluated centrally. Changes to users, groups or other objects in the directory service can be tracked just as easily as updates to servers or (de-)installations of apps. The Admin Diary is delivered as two components: a backend for data storage in an SQL database and a frontend for integration into the UMC. Recording of events is part of UCS 4.4 and is automatically activated when the backend is installed. The self-service app has been enhanced in two areas: End users can now use the self-service web interface not only for changing passwords, but also for editing their own contact information. Administrators can now use the self-service to invite new users by mail. In this process, new users are send a self-service token that they can use to add their password and contact information to the prepared account in the UCS domain." Additional details can be found in the project's release announcement.
ROSA R11
Svetlana Savelyeva has announced the release of ROSA R11, a new stable version from the project that develops a set of desktop-oriented distributions (originally forked from Mandriva Linux). The new release is available in four variants featuring KDE 4, KDE Plasma, LXDE and Xfce desktops. Some of the improvements in this release include: updated Linux kernel 4.15; updated desktops - KDE Plasma 5.14.4.1, LXQt 0.14.0 and Xfce 4.13.2; added support for installing system on M.2 and NVME SSD storage devices; added file system support for FfFS flash drives to the ROSA installer; improved graphic subsystem when ROSA is used as a guest system in virtual machines based on KVM and Hyper-V; added firmware to installation images to support Epson scanners; the system now creates a universal initrd instead of a hardware-specific one by default; the new btrfs-progs 4.19.1 now includes support for zstd compression algorithm.... See the release announcement and release notes (both links in Russian) for further information.
ROSA R11 -- Running the Plasma desktop
(full image size: 223kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 1,307
- Total data uploaded: 24.3TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
Kubuntu or KDE neon
We started this issue with a look at Kubuntu and KDE neon and some of the little differences which separate them. While the two projects have a lot in common, they offer slightly different approaches and we would like to know which one our readers prefer.
You can see the results of our previous poll on automatically starting desktop applications in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Kubuntu or KDE neon
| I prefer Kubuntu: | 342 (19%) |
| I prefer KDE neon: | 349 (20%) |
| I like both the same: | 137 (8%) |
| I do not like either: | 383 (22%) |
| I have not tried them: | 568 (32%) |
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| DistroWatch.com News |
DistroWatch database summary
* * * * *
This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 25 March 2019. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • KDE Neon (by Jordan on 2019-03-18 00:16:22 GMT from United States)
Third week of using KDE Neon exclusively. Like it. Speed and stability. Easy to get software, etc.
Keeper.
2 • Kde Neon (by DeeVee on 2019-03-18 01:06:52 GMT from Brazil)
I am using Kde Neon on my notebook (production/enterprise) and I like it a lot. It seemed to pack a slim set of software (eg no pre installed office suite, etc) so I could add only what I really needed, without bloating the system unnecessarily or having a crowded system as my starting point. Already set to get the latest kde updates is also good - no fiddling with special configs and Plasma is already pretty solid and stable. Definitely recommended.
3 • Anything KDE (by Friar Tux on 2019-03-18 01:16:00 GMT from Canada)
I used to be a KDE fan (ran Kubuntu for a while) but found that it got so bloated that two years ago it started having major issues. After hunting about for something that would work, I found the Cinnamon DE and fell in love with it. It's a nice middle road between bloated KDE and stark naked XFCE. Now I prefer to run nothing else. (Trinity DE comes a close second if the Grim Reaper ever comes for Cinnamon.)
4 • KDE Neon (by Mark on 2019-03-18 01:57:18 GMT from United States)
Moved to KDE Neon after falling in love with KDE on Netscape and Maui. I would certainly not feel too put off moving to Kubuntu, and if Neon wasn't available, it would probably be my regular go-to.
But I do like the build-from-the-ground-up principle to Neon. Neon's probably not the best for utter newbies, but I do like that it doesn't throw a lot of extraneous software at you, and generally lets you set up the system exactly the way you would like. It kind of makes sense, since KDE tends to allow for so much customization of the desktop environment, that the Neon Distro would give you the blank slate to start to customize your system your way, as well.
5 • KDE (by Vern on 2019-03-18 02:58:00 GMT from United States)
I've been using Kubuntu disco since I got my new computer. The old integrated nvidia just couldn't handle the graphics. I'm very impressed with Plasma. The only complaint so far is the bottom panel that can't use transparency. With all the knobs and switches that KDE has this is a puzzlement. This is a way around this, but one has do a lot of work to accomplish it.
I'm loving KDE once again!
6 • KDE Neon Installer (by Ali on 2019-03-18 05:23:45 GMT from Iran)
Jesse, Kubuntu uses Calamares installer. I suspect KDE Neon also uses Calamares instead of Ubiquity.
7 • KDE Neon (by mes on 2019-03-18 06:53:58 GMT from Netherlands)
I was a happy Neon user. I liked the minimal installation. But after a couple of months I got some problems. I think that the match of the stable base of ubuntu 16.04 and the latest KDE-version became worse. I am not sure.
Now I switched to Kubuntu with the minimal install option and I am impressed with it.
8 • Neon, and @5 Transparent (by Angel on 2019-03-18 07:09:05 GMT from Philippines)
Would use Kubuntu, but I stay with Neon, no special reason. It may, as @7 said, become unstable (rarely) and has more frequent updates.
If you want a transparent panel, the ktrans provides one.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/69485990@N05/47409862081/in/dateposted-public/
9 • KDE (by Wedge009 on 2019-03-18 08:30:32 GMT from Australia)
I use Kubuntu with backports and seem to have the latest KDE stuff available (for a Kubuntu release) so I'm not sure why Jesse didn't notice a change after updating.
I find (speaking very generally) that GNOME seems to get more love than KDE, so it's very nice to see this comparison (I wondered about KDE neon when it first started). I wonder if @3's experience with bloating comes from the troubled days of KDE 4 (not that I personally had much trouble with it). Current generation of KDE Plasma seems to be a bit better in that regard - I've been using KDE since 3.5.
10 • DE's (by pin on 2019-03-18 09:08:40 GMT from Sweden)
It seems to be such a focus on DE's going on. On one hand, this is understandble, on the other hand, its sooooo boring!!!
I don't use a DE, I don't really care about a GUI software manager... I don't even use Network manager.
It would be nice if we could read about other things once in a while, something different from a flashy DE that together with your web browser uses GBs of RAM.
It would be nice...
11 • KDE needs two things (by Sven on 2019-03-18 10:26:40 GMT from Estonia)
First, Settings should be split into two levels, simple and advanced. For a newbie, that full set of settings is overwhelming.
Second: both distributions in question should be supported for 5 years, same as their Ubuntu base. I do understand the extra workload problem, but 3 years is simply not enough for production machines.
Just my .02 cents
12 • Neon: not actually full KDE? (by Carney on 2019-03-18 13:00:40 GMT from United States)
Isn't the whole point of neon to go full blown KDE? Even the KDE website pushes it. But they're not eating their own dogfood.
Looks like neon ships with LibreOffice instead of Calligra (the former KOffice) as the default office suite, and Firefox instead of Konqueror as the default web browser.
13 • KDE Neon and Wayland (by Terry Parris on 2019-03-18 13:39:20 GMT from United States)
Jesse,
One thing I noticed is that you didn't mention the variants of KDE Neon as there are three.
User Stable
Developer Stable
Developer Unstable
For those wishing to be bold you can run Developer Unstable, but prepare to send in lots of bug reports. I myself run Developer Stable and have used both Wayland and Xorg display managers. Developer stable doesn't appear to have the stability issues with Wayland as does the User Stable. Part of this may be that the packages for the Developer editions are even more current than the User edition.
As to package management, even though both come with Discover, and Kubuntu ships with Muon as well, you can still install Muon or even Synaptic in KDE Neon besides the command line APT. To each their own on this issue though as Discover is becoming much more stable. I rarely use the other two package managers now.
As to the Virtualbox issues you experienced, I to have used both in Virtualbox. The issues stem from the use of KWin while in Virtualbox. The distributions act equally responsive once you disable ALL 3D visual effects in Virtualbox. Nothing more need be said here.
My only other comment is the reason I love KDE Neon is that you can better customize your applications to your working methods instead of removing applications from Kubuntu and having to install new software.
Hope this helps people better decide between the two distributions and what to stick with.
14 • KDE Neon or Kubuntu? (by Ostrol on 2019-03-18 14:05:02 GMT from Poland)
KDE Neon or Kubuntu? Both.
KDE Neon developer unstable moved to disco repos, so you get the newest KDE apps plus the newest base packages and with kernel 5.0 -- fully rolling,
or,
Kubuntu 19.04 daily with plus backports -- just a little bit less rolling.
Both has the most fully fledged DE of all Linuxes.
15 • Installer (by Jesse on 2019-03-18 15:13:39 GMT from Canada)
@6: "Jesse, Kubuntu uses Calamares installer. I suspect KDE Neon also uses Calamares instead of Ubiquity. "
This is not true. Kubuntu uses the Ubiquity system installer. (You can check the package listing for the live media if you want to confirm.) One of the KDE neon devs has reported that they want to switch from Ubiquity to Calamares, but it had not happened yet when I wrote the review.
16 • Kubuntu or Neon? (by @63 on 2019-03-18 17:10:43 GMT from Canada)
At one time either of them would have worked for me, but with KDE5 and the direction it seems to be heading, I voted for neither. Sorry KDE but it seems that you have headed backwards. As in KDE is now less configurable, the new look, looks like something designed by pre-schoolers and they keep trying to shove that dang breeze theme crap down our throats, while trying to keep the good looking oxygen icons out of the picture. WHY????? I thought Linux was about choice. The more KDE "improves" the better XFCE looks!
17 • Reactions (by Jessey on 2019-03-18 17:33:46 GMT from United States)
AT one time I understood why both existed. Kubuntu had old versions of KDE. It is now 2019 and for right now both are about at the same version. How ever you have to rembmer that they will not as time comes do to 18.04 having 10 years of support. KDE Neon will be on KDE 6 and Ubuntu LTS will still be on 5. So there is a reason for Neon in the long run. Now comarping Neon to Tubuntu (Trinity +Ubuntu) would be more interesting. or getting the Fendora KDE 1 running on Ubuntu. A KDE vs KDE distro battle like this is not intrustinig. Now if you were to go to ROSA or PCLinux that might be decent to read.
@President. I am not supprised no one wants to run. Most of Debian are coders and don't want to have to deal with the backlash like the last guy who killed off all non System D versions of Debian. That and most knew users use Ubuntu or Mint.
@Solus: Ya a new version...It will not install on my computers just like the last update did not. Lost interest in it. I hope some one makes another distro like theres based on a forked Debian/Devuan.
@Sugestion: T know that news is dead about linux right now with ubuntu 19.0 comming out next month or 2. How about looking into AROS? IT has only been metioned once on LAS once when Lunduke was on. Just saying it has been years and I don't think you guys ever covered the OS. Iciros Desktop is the most complete. It is so diffrent from what most Linux users have delt with. I am not saying it is bad. just alot to learn if you have never used an Amiga before. Freedos would be good to if you want to try some thing diffrent. Hell testing some thing dead like Jnode might be fun.
18 • seems about right (by Tim on 2019-03-18 18:17:06 GMT from United States)
What I took from the review today was that basically there's not much difference between the experiences of two well polished and highly regarded versions of Linux, especially with the same desktop and base.
I think this is a pretty good description of Linux in 2019. Some nasty reviews and commenters will say that things have stagnated, but I think the opposite is true. Pick a base you know, pick your favorite desktop, and you'll be pretty set for a while. Desktop apps continue to develop, bugs continue to be squashed, and the Linux kernel keeps gaining support for new hardware. But things keep working about the same.
The only major negative change for me in the last 4 years has been the loss of Banshee. But I run that in a VM now so it's ok. I've only had two major positive changes- LibreOffice 5.0 was a major leap, and Linux 4.18 meant a laptop that needed a wifi dongle now had wifi work natively. Otherwise I'm about the same, and that's how I like it.
19 • Kubuntu vs KDE Neon - Qt version (by Poppy Cock on 2019-03-18 19:53:42 GMT from United Kingdom)
Kubuntu 18.04 LTS user here. One factor to consider is if you are using PPAs to install newer versions of Qt applications or Qt applications not in the Ubuntu repositories. Many of these will be built against Qt 5.9 LTS for the Bionic base of both Kubuntu 18.04 LTS and KDE Neon, and some have issues with Qt 5.12 in KDE Neon.
Also, the latest versions of Latte Dock and plasma-browser-integration are backported to Kubuntu 18.04 LTS, so you get some of the newer goodies with the Backports PPA.
I find the minimal install in Kubuntu to be a great feature.
Will check out the RC of Disco Dingo, but very happy with Bionic Beaver.
20 • KDE vs Kubuntu (by Robert Brenner on 2019-03-18 20:28:57 GMT from United States)
off the top - i agree, both are very similar.
But there are differences that show up with use.
Neon has more useful defaults. The big one I noticed was the Xorg touchpad library is installed on Neon, but not Kubuntu. Also, Snap support in Neon allows full use of Discover for installation - had to use the terminal with Kubuntu.
Network, mouse settings, and a few other deeper controls are different between the two, but too varied to list..
On the plus side for Kubuntu, it seems to have more libraries in its base (18.04.2 minimal install version).
- Wacom Cintiq pro (very new) was able to work fairly well with Kubuntu, not at all with Neon (tho it worked better than either when using Mint Cinnamon)
- Could not get Minecraft Java launcher to function at all in Neon, but no issues with Kubuntu.
- Playonlinux installs more non-listed windows apps in Kubuntu than Neon
And I agree that Kubuntu's default color scheme is prettier than Neon.
There are features in 5.15 that I wish were in 5.12 (root in Dolphin) and Discover is smoother and better integrated visually with 5.15.
Overall, I can do more of what I need with Kubuntu than Neon BUT...the starting out of the box configuration of Neon is a bit more useful than Kubuntu. It was after installing 3rd party stuff and using external devices that Kubuntu's usefulness outpaced Neon.
21 • Konqueror (by Jordan on 2019-03-18 21:48:53 GMT from United States)
@12 Have you tried to use Konqueror? No?
Good. ;o)
22 • @10: "It seems to be such a focus on DE's going on" (by Andre Gompel on 2019-03-18 22:25:37 GMT from United States)
@10: "It seems to be such a focus on DE's going on"
Could not agree more.
For example, I found out (by experience) that Fedora/Redhat has usually better hardware support that Ubuntu. Better Network Discovery of printers, better auto-loading of printer drivers (at least for HP), better support for latest hardware (AMD Radeon, Nvidia, etc...) etc...
Furthermore, I am concerned to see that the rush to Ubuntu tends to create much more support for DEB (Debian) based packages that RPM, even though RPM (along with DNF) is far superior: Delta RPMS's, Do/Undo capabilities, history etc...
Worse than that, this is PATHETIC some popular and excellent Linux Magazine (Linux Format) seems hellbent to just ignore the very large base of RPM's based distros (Fedora, Suse, Mandriva etc...).
So I understand the fact you comment DE's, Desktops Environments (I prefer MATE), but please document installers, File System supports, Packages freshness, and more of not so visible however important par of the Linux Experience.
On the DE, LxQt seems to have excellent potential, but is still missing useful features, among then plugins/widgets (so good in MATE !).
23 • KDE Neon & Kubuntu (by Charlie on 2019-03-19 01:33:28 GMT from Hong Kong)
I think views are a bit different for normal users.
Firstly, even if Kubuntu provides the newest Plasma in backport repo, I won't bother to install Kubuntu first and add the repo if I want the newest KDE experience. Since Neon does everything for you, why do you need to do extra work?
Secondly, themes aren't such big issues since it can be tweaked in just few clicks. The dark theme comes with Plasma by default, you can change the theme in less than a minute in Neon.
Conclusion: Neon looks more convenient if you are looking for an updated KDE experience.
24 • KDEs (by Gary W on 2019-03-19 03:00:23 GMT from Australia)
I said "I do not like either", but in fact I do like any KDE for attractiveness, flexibility, and good apps. However, "I do not use either", as I find KDE to be too much of a good thing. I prefer simpler, less resource intensive traditional desktops like XFCE and MATE.
25 • All Lts Ubuntu (except Ubuntu Studio) flavours have only 3 yr support.... (by Peter on 2019-03-19 04:28:19 GMT from Australia)
Just a point of clarification as I read somewhere above that Kubuntu has 5 (or more) years lts support. Only Ubuntu has 5 yrs support!
“......Support lifespan
The 'main' archive of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years until April 2023. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, and Ubuntu Core. Ubuntu Studio 18.04 will be supported for 9 months. All other flavors will be supported for 3 years....”
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseNotes
26 • @24 KDE's (by kc1di on 2019-03-19 10:08:20 GMT from United States)
Actually KDE is less resource hungry than Mate and maybe even xfce. They have done a great job over the last several releases in taming the resource needs of KDE plasma.
27 • LTS support (by Jesse on 2019-03-19 14:40:12 GMT from Canada)
@25: "Just a point of clarification as I read somewhere above that Kubuntu has 5 (or more) years lts support. Only Ubuntu has 5 yrs support!"
What I wrote was that both projects (KDE neon and Kubuntu) are based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS which receives five years of security updates. Though, as you pointed out, that is a bit ambiguous. What it means is core components of Ubuntu's child distros will get five years of support (since they share repositories), but some custom pieces or community repos might not. All parts of Kubuntu 18.04 get official support through to 2021.
28 • KDE (by Jessey on 2019-03-19 18:00:12 GMT from United States)
@27 Yah no Mark him self told the world that 18.04 will last 10 years so it can be put into the financle sector and automation sector. I don't know if this is just Ubuntu Server or all of Ubuntu. Those who say other wise do not follow Linux news. I know it just happened in 2019 so not all the hermit system admins who live under a rock have heard about it yet. Not to be rude as I live under a rock too :) .
@26 not realy KDE 5 takes up 100 MB more RAM then LXQT. How ever this was on hardware that had 3d acceleartion and modern graphics. That means that KDE 5 has reached the level of XFCE. I think that that is only if most ot the graphics options were disabled like on Kubuntu. I don't remember if Neon has them enabled or not on there distro. Even Lummina now has a second menu to replace the junk of the defualt one. We just need a real port of it to linux. There is one ppa, but that is dead like the PaleMoon PPA if not deader.
@12 Kubuntu still wants things to work for there uses. Koffice is not good yet. I have had to many crashes with it to want to figure it out just like OpenShot. Also the GUI just is not friendly for those who just want to get work done. Just like Libre office 6 it has a bad interface to the side that takes up to much space. Unlike on Libre office you can't even get it back once you minimize the thing.` Also have you used Konqueor as a web browser? The last time I did was on 14.04 with KDE 4 and it SUCKED. WE pages would crash just like they now do on Midori. Youtube would not work if you had HTML 5 and flash was a mixed bag (see the avgn episode of the CDi). I have also tried kong the dragon web browser and it was not much better. I also tried the TDE version and it also sucked.
@22 Yah they should because not every distro supports the same stuff. This is allso why the home folder option does not work when you upgrade/change distros. For example Linux Deepin supports BTFS, but Debian does not. This means you can't make your /home folder at /home on your new system. Sure you can do it after words, but you have to make a mess of your system. Sure if you use EXT 4 you should be fine. Also Ubuntu 19.04 will be out soon so then there would be more news. It would be interesting for them to do some thing else that is not Linux. For example FreeDOS is a good choice. It has a package manager now so it is not as bad as it used to be. Haiku OS is making progress unlike React OS and that project needs alot of love from FOSS users.
29 • DEs? (by nano-me on 2019-03-19 19:27:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
@10: DE's. I share your irritation at talk of Desktop Environments, and there was a time, pre-systemd, when I would embrace whethever DE came with the distro. Then I discovered the "subversive" world of alternative init systems: Epoch, Runit and now "sinit+busybox". Once free from the constraints imposed by KDE, Gnome, etc, I could use Openbox+obmenu, tint2, lx{terminal,task}. This approach works with Void and Devuan as the underlying distro.
30 • My KDE Is Very Zippy (by M.Z. on 2019-03-19 20:26:48 GMT from United States)
@3 & @24
I like both Cinnamon & KDE, but I have to point out I find the 'KDE = bloat' accusations completely unfounded. Grated all of the hardware I run is under 12 years old; however, the oldest box is still fairly long in tooth for a muti-core machine. At any rate modern KDE feels very snappy everywhere, at least if you increase the animation speed under 'System Settings > Display and Monitor > Compositor'. Move the slider up just one past the middle & everything absolutely flies. I'm not sure why moving like molasses is the default in so many places; however, I maintain that KDE Plasma 5 flies on most any recent hardware with one minor tweak.
31 • Dissing DEs (by Friar Tux on 2019-03-19 22:23:52 GMT from Canada)
@10, @29... while I understand that Linux is all about choice I do have to say, 'Come on guys, this is the twenty-first century. I think running your system through a glorified text editor, trying to remember hundreds of commands, arguments, and options is ludicrous and a waste of my time. I do use the 'glorified editor' for a few things but a good DE is well worth my time. Just because I'm not a mechanic doesn't mean I can't drive a car. Just because I'm not a pilot doesn't mean I can't fly to where I wanna go.
32 • DE's (by nano-me on 2019-03-19 23:24:48 GMT from United Kingdom)
@31 I don't understand the "hundreds of commands, arguments and options" element of your rant. I work with GUI's most of the time. I am just particular which ones I use, rather than putting up with what the KDE-corp or Gnome-corp select for me. I also prefer to start with lots of free memory so that Firefox can fill it with whatever.
I did not suggest that everyone ditch the DE's. I only pointed out that there is another way to use general-purpose distros that have not consumed Poettering's Shilling..
33 • KDE (by Bob on 2019-03-20 02:48:31 GMT from Austria)
KDE on Opensuse, no swap partition, all desktop effects disabled, works like a charm. Stopped trying out alternative DEs long time ago.
34 • Ubuntu (by penguinx64 on 2019-03-20 03:18:16 GMT from Bahrain)
Wow! Ubuntu dropped to #5 in the Distrowatch 6 month Page Hit Rankings. I remember when Ubuntu used to be #1. I switched from Ubuntu to Linux Mint a few years ago for several reasons. First, I didn't like the changes to Ubuntu's graphical interface. Second, Ubuntu does not give me the option of installing multimedia codecs or proprietary drivers out of the box. Support for older ATI video dirvers and wifi adapters are problematic with Ubuntu. And third, Mint seems to have a better selection of packages in it's repositories. But it seems like everybody and their brother is making custom distros based on Ubuntu to address these issues. Ubuntu could be more popular if they addressed these issues themselves.
35 • @29 and @31 (by pin on 2019-03-20 07:08:45 GMT from Sweden)
@31
I do have a GUI, I think you got it all wrong. Kind of what @29 tried to explain already.
I haven't been using *nix that long, maybe that's why I still remember the reason that brought me here ;)
36 • @31 Friar Tux: (by dragonmouth on 2019-03-20 12:17:10 GMT from United States)
If you've used Linux even for a little while, you should have realized by now that using a "glorified text editor, trying to remember hundreds of commands, arguments, and options" is unnecessary. Linux can be enjoyed and gainfully used without ever leaving the GUI. It is YOUR choice, not the systems.
37 • You switched from Ubuntu to Ubuntu? (by R. Cain on 2019-03-20 15:08:19 GMT from United States)
@34 --
"Wow! Ubuntu dropped to #5 in the Distrowatch 6 month Page Hit Rankings...I switched from Ubuntu to Linux Mint a few years ago..."
Linux Mint has not occupied the #1 spot on DistroWatch since 2017.
Mint has not been Distrowatch’s #1 distribution since Mint's version 17.3.
Mint has been solidly entrenched in the #3 spot for the past 1-year, 6-month, 3-month, 30-day, and 7-day accounting periods, sometimes dropping as low as #4 (*other* than right now); and at times coming within 150 points of being overtaken by Ubuntu.
In the latest 7-day rankings Mint is #4 and Ubuntu is #5.
Won't be long, now...
38 • Distro Popularity (by M.Z. on 2019-03-20 18:06:18 GMT from United States)
@34
"...Ubuntu dropped to #5..."
If you dig much into what is behind the numbers & consider things like Google search results, you get a very different picture than what you might get if you just pay attention to DW Page Hit Rankings. If you follow what is almost certainly the most popular course of action & Google 'ubuntu', you'll get no DW page in the initial results describing the distro; however, for 'manjaro' the DW page is the second Google search result.
The meaning behind this is that the most popular search engine on earth could do a lot to affect DW page hits on distros, because if the DW Ubuntu page was rarely if ever hit from Google search results & the DW Manjaro page was visited heavily from Google search results, whatever the actual install base of the two is Manjaro will look disproportionately larger. The most likely scenario is that 80-90% of potential Linux users run a Google search on a distro to do research before installing, & may click the first 2-3 search results depending on how much they want to do research & how much they want to get on with it.
At any rate, major search engine results will tell you far more about why DW Page Hit Rankings look the way they do than DW PHR tell you about actual installation & usage of individual distros. Just check all the caveats on the DW page about PHR.
https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity
I'd bet that Ubuntu blows away Manjaro in real world installation numbers & the DW numbers are skewed by how search engines rank the relevance of DW project pages differently for different distros. There is probably some degree of correlation to 'getting hotter in the Linux world' & DW HPR, but it isn't a great indicator or real world use.
39 • Ubuntu (by Jessica on 2019-03-20 20:29:54 GMT from United States)
@ 38 & @ 34: Makes sence to me as Ubuntu is old news at this point. They switched to Gnome and added paid. support and lied about it (hope they get sued for false advertising (mark did not mention the support was paid until 2019 4 months after his annoucment). Ubuntu has killed all interesting uses of there distro. Phones killed, Vending Machines killed, Android layer..killed, BSD killed, Unity killed. See no new projects that are interesting to the average person who goes to CES type of crowed. Also there is little news on snaps ether with the new version. No buz aroaund getting new snaps. For example would it be great if we could get simcity 3000 as a snap or sims for winex as a snap. Sure, but there is no new news like that. How about how to lanch ROM's from your menu. All Chanonicle is doing is working on stuff for there IPO. Unless they stay private that is not a good idea. Public investors suck.
Also Mint is good..but it has stalled. Wow new XFCE and Cinnamon in 18.04...I don't care if I can't run it on my PowerPC Mac's. Fern OS is interesting as it is built on LM, but is rolling. Hell want to get interesting Linux Mint...BRING BAKE KDE FOR LINUX MINT 19. Not just KDE, but TDE too. I would love to see mint Fix TDE's defualts. Hell LM for the Pie would be awesome or an more indipendent LMDE that goes indipendant from Debian but is still based on it. Hell even bring in packages from PPA's would be interesting.
@30: KDE was slower and more bloated even up to the Early KDE 5 ara. Now it is much lighter. But unless you tried the recent versions you would not know of that. Even then you have to have good hardware. On a G5 you need a good graphics card and 3d acceleration. That means a AMD GPU and on PowerPC the 3d is 100% software based so it chugs. KDE 5 is not as bad as it was, but it could get better. The fact that Kubuntu has turned off settings to make it run lighter tells you some thing when TDE, Mate, and XFCE don't have to do that. Light enough to use know which is good, but we had YEARS ok KDE 4 to get over.
40 • DEs (by Friar Tux on 2019-03-20 21:45:33 GMT from Canada)
@36 (dragonmouth) That what I was trying to say. There is no need to use a terminal these days as the GUIs are quite good. I much prefer point and click to typing out commands and such, though I am quite adept at command line stuff.
41 • At 38 popularity (by mandog on 2019-03-21 02:28:52 GMT from Peru)
I'd bet that Ubuntu blows away Manjaro in real world installation numbers & the DW numbers are skewed by how search engines rank the relevance of DW project pages differently for different distros. There is probably some degree of correlation to 'getting hotter in the Linux world' & DW HPR, but it isn't a great indicator or real world use.
You can't tell Manjaro users that Ha Ha
42 • KDE resources (by Gary W on 2019-03-21 04:08:45 GMT from Australia)
@26 I have to say, it has been a couple of years since I tried some KDE distros. They were pretty underwhelming on my low-end hardware (which is hardly surprising). I'll try again when I have better hardware, maybe Manjaro or when the new Debian is released.
43 • Kubuntu or Neon (by Rooster12 on 2019-03-21 08:23:51 GMT from United States)
Used Kubuntu years ago and really enjoyed KDE, have also tried Neon and think Kubu is just a much better distribution.
In the last five years have enjoyed window manager only distributions that are quite small with as little as possible installed regarding apps. The simpler the better.
Kubuntu will always be a favorable memory and really enjoyed it early on, not yet tried anything as close or superior. On the other hand no longer a DE person!
44 • @38, et al Re: DW Numbers (by Rev_Don on 2019-03-21 14:17:49 GMT from United States)
"I'd bet that Ubuntu blows away Manjaro in real world installation numbers & the DW numbers are skewed by how search engines rank the relevance of DW project pages differently for different distros. There is probably some degree of correlation to 'getting hotter in the Linux world' & DW HPR, but it isn't a great indicator or real world use."
Not quite, but you are on the right track.
From the DW FAQ page.
What is this "Page Hit Ranking"
It is a light-hearted way of looking at popularity of distribution. Since each distribution has its own page, we thought it would be fun to track the number of visitors viewing individual distribution pages. The Page Hit Ranking (PHR) figure represents hits per day by unique visitors; as determined by the visitor's IP address. This prevents those readers, not disciplined enough, from rigging the results by re-loading the pages multiple times. The idea is to identify which distributions attract most attention and to rank them accordingly. Admittedly, the page clicks by themselves may not always reflect the popularity correctly, but they should, over time, provide an indication about what is hot among the readers frequenting this website.
These rules have been implemented to prevent various counter reloading schemes:
Repeated page and counter reloads in short or regular intervals are not permitted.
All suspicious page hit counts will be investigated and any regularly reloaded counts will be deducted from the total count.
The repeat offender's IP address might be banned from accessing all areas of DistroWatch.
45 • Perhaps it's time to quit being part of the herd... (by R. Cain on 2019-03-21 16:18:54 GMT from United States)
@44, 41, 38, and all the rest--
We all know about the massive 'irregularities' of Google, and yet most people won't expend the effort to make an objective, conscientious, well-informed decision to change.
At the VERY least, check out DuckDuckGo's blog site at
https://spreadprivacy.com/
********************************************************
Here are just a *very* few of the information-packed articles masquerading as "blogs" there...
“DuckDuckGo Testimony Before the United States Senate”
"The "Do Not Track" Setting Doesn't Stop You from Being Tracked”
"Measuring the "Filter Bubble": How Google is influencing what you click”
“Protecting Your Personal Data Has Never Been This Easy”
"How to Protect Your Privacy on Linux”
"What Does Google Know About Me?”
“How Anonymous Is DuckDuckGo?”
"How to Set Up Your Devices for Privacy Protection"
**************************************************************
Maybe you'd like privacy along with objectivity. The 'Manjaro' search was not biased.
46 • Ubuntu & security (by Jessica on 2019-03-21 18:14:53 GMT from United States)
Am I not interesting enought to qutote? Yes I have a big ego and a god complex and I am not afreaid to admit it. At least I don't post my face on a flag like Rodney (I dought many people will get that joke as most just watch Star Trech/Star Wars these days). I don't have any Caprica references at the moment.
Does Distrowatch hate AROS? IT is a fair question as they have only covered FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux. I don't think they ever Covered AROS, FreeDOS, Haiku, or any of the illumose family? I mean has any of them tried OI Hippster? I tried Solaris 11 and it was bloated. The new version does not even come with a GUI and even with an Orical account you can't get the version with Gnome 2 any more (11.3). I don't care if you can install it from the cmd on Solaris 11.4 I want it by defualt even if I have to upgrade to 11.4 from 11.3. What do they think of debian Illmose distros like Dyson and Dillos (not to be consused with the browser)? The only time they did is when it includes some thing with ZFS.
@41 Yah Ubuntu is old news. Who cares about the server stuff. Just install it and set it up. Ubuntu could change there color and logo to match Gnome 3 instead of Unity Red. Ubuntu is not interesting any more. They are not doing much work right now so they could at least put in some effort to the universe and multiverse repos. For example why is PaleMoon not in the repos of Ubu tu? It is not like it is some little browser...even then you guys have stuff like dilo so there is no excuse and yes I know none of them other then Popy from LAS even reads DW comments. So if any of the Ubuntu Podcast read distrowatch...WHY ARE YOU NOT DOING YOUR JOBS!. I means realy is it just lazy or is it because they just don't care about the desktop. For example no one has ported the conkey manger from Chatle OS or its awesome themes. That means I have to use there source are ripe them out of the ISO.
Ubuntu does not want you to use PPA's...yet they don't do any thing to make it better so you don't use PPA's! I mean realy...At least on Solus and FreeBSD if there is enough demand they will do it. FreeBSD does not even need a damand. You can just ask politely and some one will port it over if it is not much work. Now that is comitment from the community. They also help end users learn how to compile...when was the last time Chanonicle had done any thing like that or Debian? They are even will to take it further if your show promiss. Yet Ubuntu just sits on its thumbs and does not inovate on the Desktop. Ubuntu is done.
@45. Yah unless it gets in the way of getting a job most people don't care about privacy and unless I get paid I don't care if they get infected from using Winblows...now if you are willing to pay me I will change my toon real quick otherwise I will just keep going on about how Windows 10 sucks and you should just install linux on a DNS server and run Windows 7. It is not like they are going to move to Linux anyway. At the verry least we should help them stay off that OS known as FBI 10 and stay on Windows 7. If we get lucky we could get some converts once they learn the cross platform tools. Also if you hate google that much you could just use Tor and stop using there services. Insetead of using Youtube you could use Bitchute and Dailymotion. Instead of Google Search you could use Duck Duck Go or StartPage, hell even Bing. Hey Bing has not been hacked 3 times this year like Yahoo has. Avoid Yahoo unless you want SJW's doxing you. It has happened to me three times. If your going to dox some one at least do it in the day so they are not woken up. If you don't want to be doxed don't use Yahoo.
Also for Email you could ether A pay for it or B set up your own. You need to have emalil though in this day of age so you can't just not solve the issue. For video there are many options out there and it is not like people realy use Google Hang outs any more. For the texting part there are way to many options. For me I agrea with Lunduke and say just set up a local BBS or a IRC server and c all it a day. Twiter who cares about that. There is also Mansterdone and Gabe is you need "modern" social meida. I don't know any serverices for Translation that are free but there might be some thing in the repo. For Chromium just use PaleMoon. It is old enough that you dont have to deal with all this modern web stuff and you don't have DRM built in and it supports 32bit in rebuilds.
47 • Reviews (by Jesse on 2019-03-21 19:36:07 GMT from Canada)
>> "Does Distrowatch hate AROS? IT is a fair question as they have only covered FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux. I don't think they ever Covered AROS, FreeDOS, Haiku, or any of the illumose family? I mean has any of them tried OI Hippster?"
I have reviewed FreeDOS, Haiku multiple times, and OpenSolis/OpenIndiana multiple times. Those reviews are all available in our archives through the corresponding project's page on DistroWatch, or in our list of past articles in the sidebar of this page. I haven't covered AROS before, simply because I'd never heard of it before.
48 • Security (by EdCoolio on 2019-03-21 20:18:11 GMT from United States)
Since we are on the subject of security, I haven't really heard much about current or future protection for this Intel vulnerability "Spoiler".
Maybe I missed the updates. Any thoughts or new news?
(Intel only issue)
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/intel-procs-again-hit-by-massive-vulnerability-called-spoler.html
49 • GUI? (by Andy Figueroa on 2019-03-22 04:01:49 GMT from United States)
@40 FriarTux, somebody has to actually know how to run a computer. That's how you got a GUI, and everything else.
50 • Page Hit Rank (by Andy Figueroa on 2019-03-22 04:04:43 GMT from United States)
I'm still trying to figure out how elementary got ranked so high. That just about invalidates the whole show.
51 • @46 Ubuntu...hmm... (by Ostrol on 2019-03-22 09:16:29 GMT from Poland)
>> Ubuntu does not want you to use PPA's...yet they don't do any thing to make it better so you don't use PPA's!
Well, looks like Ubuntu doesn't want us to use Ubuntu any more. Cannonical took the most unpopular Ubuntu-Gnome and made it the default, and dropped its interest on the desktop. Never trust a business, for it is only interested in profit.
52 • *buntus (by Jordan on 2019-03-22 17:54:38 GMT from United States)
@51 .. It used to be that Ubuntu had its kids and they were mostly *buntus. Kubuntu/Lubuntu, blah..
Now there are a number of very popular distros out there which are based on Ubuntu but call themselves everything from Elementary to Mint to Zorin.
So, if Ubuntu "doesn't want us to use Ubuntu anymore," perhaps they need to talk to a high percentage of other distro developers and users, because Ubuntu drives linux, big time.
53 • ubuntu (by Tim Dowd on 2019-03-22 19:49:26 GMT from United States)
@46 @51
Part of the reason nothing "exciting" is happening right now with Ubuntu is that nothing "exciting" is happening with the desktop computer. It's a mature technology that most people want to behave predictably and like it always has.
All this talk of Ubuntu being dead is somewhat laughable for those of us using a Ubuntu based system. Ubuntu MATE 18.10 is the single best OS I've used in my 14 years of playing with Linux. All the software is cutting edge and all of it is stable.
54 • @53: (by dragonmouth on 2019-03-22 21:13:44 GMT from United States)
"Ubuntu MATE 18.10 is the single best OS I've used in my 14 years of playing with Linux. "
I guess you're entitled to your opinion.
55 • @ 53 Ubuntu 18.10 (by OstroL on 2019-03-22 22:13:24 GMT from Poland)
Ubuntu Mate 18.10 is EOL or about to be dead. Try 19.04 daily.
Anyway, until those few one-man developers around, such as Wimpress with Mate, David with Ubuntu Budgie. Former Lubuntu developers have gone. A young chap is there with Lubuntu-Qt, but for how long? Who really cares for Ubuntu with featureless gnome shell?
No, Ubuntu is on regression, going EOL.
56 • Summary of comments: All dead, dying or very sick. (by Angel on 2019-03-24 01:16:59 GMT from Philippines)
So I want to be the oracle with the mostest soonest. Ubuntu is dead, Debian is dead, Arch is dead, Suse is dead, Red Hat is dead. Linux is dead. Log live AROS, whatever that is.
57 • @56 (by Angel on 2019-03-24 01:19:53 GMT from Philippines)
Sorry! Meant "Long live AROS." My typing skills are dead.
58 • Mind-share Vs Market-share (by M.Z. on 2019-03-24 04:48:14 GMT from United States)
@51 & @52
There is a difference between mind-share & market-share, at least in terms of the leading edge. I think Ubuntu has long had a strong market-share among Linux Desktops & the biggest place where it's coming up short is the ability to impress those searching for something new on DW. That's nothing new, but Ubuntu still has a big lead in general name recognition & almost certainly in installs. That is of course in spite of the fact that the Ubuntu team keep shooting their desktop in the foot with bad DE decisions like running modified Gnome rather than a more user friendly UI.
Google may not be a tool that has good privacy, but it is more widely used & comprehensive than most others I can think of. At any rate, I think plugging big Linux names into Google Trends is far more reveling about market share than DW HPR is, and on that count Ubuntu is like 12 times more popular than Linux Mint, which is itself 3 times more popular than Manjaro, which has a lead according to DW HPR. Also Debian is apparently searched twice as often as Linux Mint on Google search, regardless of being harder to install.
You can also play with regions & time frames & on that count DW seems to line up a bit with Google, in as much as searches for Ubuntu seem to have declined over the past five years. On the up side generic searches for Linux seem to far outpace searches for any specific distro, & Linux seems twice as popular as Ubuntu in terms of searches.
I don't think you can create too much of a detailed picture out of that info beyond this: don't read too much into DW HPR, as the page about it on DW mentions. There may be a decline in Ubuntu, but nothing else seems particularly accident either. There are a 100 other ways you could slice searches like throwing in the generic word 'mint', but regardless Linux is far bigger than Ubuntu & the trends from Google seem to reflect that.
59 • eol (by Tim on 2019-03-24 14:00:21 GMT from United States)
@55
18.10 is halfway through its supported life and has 4 months to go. 19.04 hasn't even released a beta yet, and isn't due to be released for another month. Why on earth would I switch?
I have switched into the development branch exactly twice in my 5 years of primarily using Ubuntu. I started with 15.04 a month early because I really wanted Ubuntu-MATE, and I started with my current 18.10 a month early because I found 18.04 to be buggy with my wifi driver. But in the world of Linux distros, having 6 month old desktop software is completely fine as long as you've got a stable happy kernel that doesn't crash and manages hardware well. Most distros aren't that up to date, and the peace of mind that I'm not going to get a major crash with some reconfiguration of the system is well worth it.
@54
I am entitled to my opinion, which is based on the excellent performance of the 4.18 kernel branch, the enormous number of packages available (none of which seem to have critical bugs,) and the high quality of recent updates to desktop apps like LibreOffice. Do you have any counterpoint to any of that?
60 • Ubuntu (by Vern on 2019-03-24 15:48:20 GMT from United States)
@58, @59 ! Thanks, finally some intelligent comments.
I have been using Ubuntu since its inception. The problems I have had are hardware related mostly. I had a 10 year old computer and the legacy nvidia chip no longer supported current linux OS's.
At the time, Xubuntu and Lubuntu came to the rescue. I've tried several and almost all the current crop of distributions, but keep coming back to Ubuntu. One things that stands out is the ability to upgrade the new Ubuntu ISO's using 'zsync'.
I am currently running deepOS, Ubuntu 19.04, Kubuntu 19.04. The 'disco' is still in process.
Number of Comments: 60
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