Thinking of hopping from Neon to Kubuntu

[kenj70]

Wow, what a difference a forum makes. Love it here.

-=Ken=-

[Snowhog]

LOL...

...BORGbuntu coming your way soon!

BORGubuntu. When only collective computing will do.

[Flavio R. Cavalcanti]

I have been using Kubuntu since 2009 (from 8.04 to 16.04), and also KDE Neon since 2016 (16.04 based), dualbooting.

Kubuntu 16.04 was also more "stable" ─ its KDE remained 5.5.5 ─ while KDE Neon was like a "semi-rolling" distro, in what refers to KDE evolution, even if its base was still 16.04. Just KDE were always newer and newer.

Many times, KDE Neon presented some issues, but they were not a big problem, and were corrected after new updates.

I had no problem with notifications, because I had removed Packagekit (and Discover), and also Unattended-upgrades. Just run "apt update" daily, at morning, to see what is new, what is repositories responsivity and what is my connection speed. Then, used Synaptic to apply upgrades, and get no warning while working.

But new KDE always brings new features, and I like them, and after some time I cannot be happy with "old" KDE anymore...

[kenj70]

Hi Flavio! Thanks for your contribution - all the way from Brazil.

BTW, speaking of upgrades, my Discover look and feel has changed considerably on Neon. The left side information panel is now hidden and you have to click on a "hamburger" menu in the bottom-left side to make it pop out. I liked the old interface better.
-=Ken=-

[Flavio R. Cavalcanti]

Hi Flavio! Thanks for your contribution - all the way from Brazil.

BTW, speaking of upgrades, my Discover look and feel has changed considerably on Neon. The left side information panel is now hidden and you have to click on a "hamburger" menu in the bottom-left side to make it pop out. I liked the old interface better.
-=Ken=-

I didn't see Plasma Discover any more, since I have removed it from Kubuntu 16.04, from KDE Neon (now 18.04 Bionic); and also from Kubuntu 19.10 (development branch).

Back in April 2016, Plasma Discover caused high CPU usage and general slowliness, almost freezing, as my hardware is very old and low.

I have been using Synaptic since 2007 and it works fine, both for updates and package management.

Now I see I have reinstalled PackageKit-Tools, so I may command "pkcon refresh" and "pkcon update", ─ as recommended by KDE Neon, ─ just to confirm that Synaptic has done all right.

[kenj70]

OK, I will get along with the reconfigured Discover. I like KDE Neon so what I do now is ignore the updates unless they contain a security (red) notification. I wait until I shut off the PC for the night and update just before shutdown. That is working well for me.
-=Ken=-

[jglen490]

I didn't see Plasma Discover any more, since I have removed it from Kubuntu 16.04, from KDE Neon (now 18.04 Bionic); and also from Kubuntu 19.10 (development branch).

Back in April 2016, Plasma Discover caused high CPU usage and general slowliness, almost freezing, as my hardware is very old and low.

I have been using Synaptic since 2007 and it works fine, both for updates and package management.

Now I see I have reinstalled PackageKit-Tools, so I may command "pkcon refresh" and "pkcon update", ─ as recommended by KDE Neon, ─ just to confirm that Synaptic has done all right.

I've seen the references to PackageKit from time to time here, but never paid much attention to it. So your last statement caught my attention. I looked the description for PackageKit, and this is what it says:

PackageKit allows performing simple software management tasks over a DBus
interface e.g. refreshing the cache, updating, installing and removing
software packages or searching for multimedia codecs and file handlers.

The work is done by backends which make use of the package manager shipped by
the corresponding distribution. PackageKit is not meant to replace
advanced tools like Synaptic.

So I guess it's just another toolset.

[oshunluvr]

One thing I find odd about pkcon from the CLI is when you "update" it pops up a GUI password window. I guess it detects you have a X display and uses it. Kind of annoying IMO tho...

[Flavio R. Cavalcanti]

I've seen the references to PackageKit from time to time here, but never paid much attention to it. So your last statement caught my attention. I looked the description for PackageKit, and this is what it says:

...
So I guess it's just another toolset.

Yes, PackageKit uses package managers of different distros to do some tasks.

I use to remove PackageKit in order to manually control in which moment I want to refresh (reload) infos from repositories.

In openSUSE, I prefer to manually command zypper up or zypper dup.

In Mageia, I didn't remove PackageKit, because mgaapplet offers a simple box to unmark and disable it. So, it was easy and quick to do it. Now, I manually run urpmi --auto-update.

Also mintUpdate may be easily turned off.

For other distros things don't seem so simple. Never found how to disable Discover. Allowing the user to take control is not its mission.

In Arch, there is not such automation. You always have to manually run pacman Syyu or some variation you prefer. However, I have found PackageKit and Discover there, too, after some time. Maybe, things of "Revenge installer" (no, I didn't manually build Arch).

In debian-based distros, I manually run apt update just to "see" what's new, how is my network speed and if repos are ok ─ but then I prefer Synaptic to apply updates, find, install and remove packages.

Synaptic is a nice and powerfull tool. I don't know any other GUI tool with the same capabilities.

Curiously, Synaptic was developed by an .rpm distro, Conectiva, as a GUI to its apt-rpm CLI tool.

Conectiva was that enterprise that Mandrake came to buy and then call itself Mandriva.

Synaptic is still used by PCLinuxOS, a derivative from old Mandrake.