I've learned from Brodie's video that Ubuntu upload schedule is basically slightly different gnome's schedule. So, KDE with rolling releases is what I think is best.
Though IIRC the scheduling of plasma 6 onward will follow gnome's 6 month period to synchronize with bimonthly releases of distros that does it.
You're going to get a million answers, mostly people saying to use which distro they're currently using. In my experience, KDE works just fine on any distro that allows you to install it out of the box, so I would choose based on other attributes of the distro, such as:
Package manager: which are you used to?
Update cycle: KDE 6 is out soon, so you want something which updates often enough to get it fairly quickly (at least semiannual).
Stability: unless you want to have to manually maintain your system and learn how it works, avoid arch and arch-based distros. I have run it, its fine, but it's not "normie", and unless you really know what you're doing, daily driving it can be stressful. Manjaro has the same issues, but takes away some ability of the user to fix them.
For instance, I personally like Debian and apt, but I would not recommend base Debian right now, since KDE 6 is about to come out and Debian will take a loooong time to get it.
I have not personally used Kubuntu, but if it gets rid of any the bloat canonical has been adding to Ubuntu lately, it sounds pretty good to me.
Yeah, Kubuntu's fine. It has some of the Snap stuff, but the "minimal install" greatly strips down unnecessary bullshit to the point where I even find vanilla Debian Plasma to be more bloated in comparison.
I used Kubuntu for most of my time on Linux before switching to Debian. Still fully recommend it as a basically "plug and play" distro with a quick installer that works OOTB.
There's also a KDE-specific backports PPA which gets you new Plasma and Qt stuff fairly quickly, but that works best on regular releases rather than LTS releases. (The only issue is that, because it uses Launchpad, the Plasma updates can be super fucking slow to download, regardless of your network speed).
Then again, if someone's going to be using LTS versions only, there's not really that much of a difference between it and Debian Stable in terms of DE updates.
Do you really have to reinstall from scratch or is it sufficient to update the sources.list to the new Debian release and perform dist-upgrade like for Debian?
I read their documentation yesterday, and it strongly advised a complete reinstall. While they do have a tool that eases the process of storing your setup and then recovering it on top of a new install, it's still significantly more complicated than just 'sudo apt upgrade'.
Fedora Kinoite, specifically the version from universal-blue.org.
It comes with all codecs (and even baked in Nvidia-driver if you want!).
Why that and not the normal (mutable) Fedora Workstation KDE spin?
Very simple by default. You basically only "own" your home directory, the rest is indestructible and taken care of.
Has less bugs due to better reproducibility, and if something major should break, you can easily roll back without any waiting time (as opposed to Tumbleweed)
And you can even rebase to Bazzite, a gaming distro, that's based on the uBlue KDE version, or any other spin it you want cleanly
Its a hardened Variant of ublue kinoitr, but I tested it and especially using the "userns" variants, a lot works
flatpak
virtual machines
fingerprint sensor
"userns" means user namespaces, a technology used by browsers, flatpak and Podman/Docker/Toolbox/Distrobox to create Sandboxes, isolating processes. It is used by default on Fedora, so these variants are pretty much like regular Fedora.
Dont think a secure Distro is user-unfriendly. It works pretty normal, but is simply way more secure.
If you want to use Firefox or Torbrowser, install their binaries.
Fedora Kinoite is the first time that I felt at home (besides Arch). It feels so stable and I never have to mess with it. KDE is also at the point now where it feels genuinely better than Windows or Mac
I'm using Manjaro because SuSE Tubleweed didn't want to install that day. People like to hate on Manjaro but I honestly don't know why - the defaults are fine and I very rarely have issues despite using software from the AUR
It has been 442d 15h 07m 53s since Manjaro !$%&?*# up.
So a year and a half? That's not all that bad really. And that time it was a (admittedly bloody stupid) cock up involving the SSL certificate of their website not of the distro itself
Well, you've heard about it now so I fully expect you to take up the crusade like you have against manjaro, unless you're biased/tribalist.
Also pretty disingenuous to compare a single incident of being hacked with a pattern of sloppiness and negligence.
No it's not, lol. Being infected with malware is worse than anything the Manjaro team has done. If you disagree, then you're just not worth taking seriously.
Let's be honest though, you're not worth taking seriously because you just do what you think will make you look good in front of your peers.
One is significantly worse than the other. Getting hacked is significantly worse than anything the Manjaro team did. My point is that what happened to Linux Mint was worse than anything that happened to Manjaro, but people like you never get up in arms about it.
You might want to brush up on your reading comprehension if this is difficult for you to understand.
Why? Because after a series of negligent incidents spanning multiple years, a couple of which impacted the AUR for everyone they've gone a year and a bit without another major incident?
Again, EndeavourOS exists -- all Manjaro does for you is hold back packages making things unstable.
I'm using it as a linux distro, which I then use to do things on my computer that I actually want to do like work and play games and browse the internet! I used the installer once and I seem to recall it was fine (though I'm not keen on the tepid green they chose as a colour scheme).
I'm obviously not asking what you do on a computer.
Did Manjaro magically install itself on your computer one day? Or did you choose it from a selection of dozens of other distributions that can do everything you described above?
I chose it because, as I said, Manjaro and SuSE Tumbleweed were the two KDE-focused rolling release distros of which I was aware (not KDE as an afterthought like Fedora or Kubuntu) , and SuSE didn't want to install that day. I'm honestly not sure why we're even still having this argument!
Not really, no. You've told me why you think Manjaro is bad, but all you've told me about Endeavour is that it's a) better than Manajro for unspecified reasons, and b) it;s Arch with a nicer installer yet somehow doesn't have any of the problems you accuse Manjaro of, despite you claiming (for again unspecified reasons) that is the prime reason for choosing Manjaro as well
I actually have mentioned all that, but let me summarize it for you:
Both are Arch-based, but have an easy to use graphical installer.
Manjaro holds back packages for 2 weeks from the Arch repos. That causes stability and security issues. The maintainers have also demonstrated a clear pattern of negligence that impacts the whole Arch ecosystem.
EndeavourOS does not hold back packages. They also haven't broken the AUR twice.
That's it. Should be pretty clear why EndeavourOS is the better recommendation.
Again you seem to think the only point of Manajro or Endeavour are to make it easier to install Arch. Plus you have offered no reason to use Endeavour over Arch
Please note I have not noticed stability or security issues to a greater degree than I have on any other distro that isn't ultra-stable (e.g. Debian Stable)
Again you seem to think the only point of Manajro or Endeavour are to make it easier to install Arch.
It is.
Plus you have offered no reason to use Endeavour over Arch
Yes I did -- it has a GUI installer. That's the only reason.
Please note I have not noticed stability or security issues to a greater degree than I have on any other distro that isn't ultra-stable (e.g. Debian Stable)
Again you seem to think the only point of Manajro or Endeavour are to make it easier to install Arch.
It is.
Right, I'm done. I can't be bothered to argue with this level of absolute mind-numbing stupidity any more. Please never say anything to anyone ever again.
Also I've just actually looked at EndeavourOS' website and it says very clearly front and centre that it's focused on the terminal, which is entirely not what OP was even asking for. It might be a fine distro, I don't know, I've never used it or checked how many years it is since they cocked up, but it doesn't present itself as a KDE focused distro which is what OP (and I) want!