What is KDE Neon?

[GreyGeek]

I believe you. However, when I tried the shiny new Neon yesterday, it booted with zero art - no icons, no dressing,... just text on an empty desktop background. It seems the vaunted new plasma 26 is a tad borked. I booted up the live version of 22.04... its fine. Booted up the windows install... its fine... seems to me the tool did indeed arrive broken in the box. Probably thanks to UPS not being gentle during shipping.

Oh, you booted a CD. Did it calculate a checksum at the beginning of the boot up? The problems you mention are indicative of a bad CD burn or a bad ISO. Did you run the CD as a LiveCD or did you install it and then run it?

Can you download the ISO, check it, and burn it to a CD or USB stick yourself?

[ShadYoung]

Hardly. I even did my first distro version upgrade, instead of doing my usual clean install, and it went perfectly, with two minor issues.

So, all is well in the garden. And Neon is NOT broken.
It is a poor craftsman that blames his tools.

I believe you. However, when I tried the shiny new Neon yesterday, it booted with zero art - no icons, no dressing,... just text on an empty desktop background. It seems the vaunted new plasma 26 is a tad borked. I booted up the live version of 22.04... its fine. Booted up the windows install... its fine... seems to me the tool did indeed arrive broken in the box. Probably thanks to UPS not being gentle during shipping.

[GreyGeek]

Q: What is KDE Neon?
A: Broken

Hardly. I even did my first distro version upgrade, instead of doing my usual clean install, and it went perfectly, with two minor issues.

First issue: I have an IP address and I had Apache2 installed. I planned to create a web page for it when I get around to it. When I rebooted Apache failed to mount. libphp7.so was missing from the repository. That was because in 22.04 Apache uses libphp8.so.

Second issue: wine32 was uninstalled and the new version wasn't installed. As a result my 14 year old 32 bit EKG.exe app wouldn't run. I could have installed wine32 but it would take 1/2 Gb of space. Since I hadn't used the app since 2019 I decided to remove it instead of installing wine32.

Over the years I heard lots of horror stories about folks having miserable success in doing a version upgrade instead of a clean install. But, since I use BTRFS snapshots as a backup, I decided to give it a try. The worst case mode would be spending 3 minutes to restore my system to 20.04.

Had I done my usual method I would have started with the fresh install, then opened a drive containing a snapshot of my previous install and used mc to copy all my home stuff over that I wanted to keep. The email client with emails would be critical. Ditto for Steam and Minecraft. Total time: 15 minutes for a fresh install. About 10 hours to copy stuff over and make sure it all linked up properly, with touch ups over the next several days. This time: 1 1/2 hours to do the upgrade. Ran steam and minecraft to check them. Worked perfectly. So does everything else.

So, all is well in the garden. And Neon is NOT broken.
It is a poor craftsman that blames his tools.

[ShadYoung]

For you maybe, but for the vast; and I mean VAST; majority of KDE neon users, that just isn't true. I use KDE neon User Edition as my primary OS, using it daily, and keep it fully updated. I've had either zero issues since day one, or very minor ones that were easily fixed.

Using it daily for what? OCL or cuda intensive apps using multiple GPUs? Low latency audio applications via external interfaces? Camera tethering or wifi remote control?

Maybe you do use your actual computer as a computer, and not simply as a toy, but the vast, and I mean vast majority (ok, many ) of Linux users in general do not appear to be using their computers very hard at all. It seems to me that a lot of people spend their time distro hopping and checking out the latest and greatest (cuz linux makes em look cool). I just need it to work. Properly. Reliably. Every day.

KDE's direction in general seems a bit odd. I want better configuration tools, not a different Kmenu. I need fan control. I need memory control, I need voltage control. I need access to the hardware from my desktop in a far more robust fashion. After 20+ years we still do not have those basic tools. We have nice eye candy though.

[Snowhog]

Q: What is KDE Neon?
A: Broken

For you maybe, but for the vast; and I mean VAST; majority of KDE neon users, that just isn't true. I use KDE neon User Edition as my primary OS, using it daily, and keep it fully updated. I've had either zero issues since day one, or very minor ones that were easily fixed.

[ShadYoung]

Q: What is KDE Neon?
A: Broken

[GreyGeek]