Is there a stable KDE Neon?

[tpt30]

Good evening,

After reading a lot of good things about KDE Neon I wanted to give it a try.
I installed the user version from 2024/03/03, or at least I tried to install it, because the installation failed due to a problem in calamares network configuration. (pretty well known issue).
Apparently this issue was fixed with the current version. I downloaded the new version and the installation completed this time.

Then I was about to install the famous "Utterly Sweet" Theme from the KDE Settings. And it gave me an dependency error. (also well known issue and no solution).
I manually installed the theme now but What The Hell? Did the developers even test the os before releasing it? Not convinced at all about KDE Neon being a "very stable distro that's perfect for everyday use", which they claimed on their website..

I tried to submit a bug report and immediately got this:

------------------------------------------------------------------------O--O--X-----

KIOExec

Unable to create KIO worker: Unknown protocol 'appstream'

--------------------------------------------------------------------OK---------------

I'm done with KDE Neon fs ^^

[Schwarzer Kater]

Welcome.

Define "stable" - there is a "user edition", but…


From the current KDE neon website:

"Ideal for adventurous KDE enthusiasts."

" […], using the latest [KDE] software the moment it's released will inevitably result in a less stable experience compared to distros that delay software by days, weeks, or months.
As such, the ideal KDE neon user is someone excited to use the latest and greatest KDE software who can tolerate some bumps in the road from time to time, not someone with mission-critical reliability needs."


And from Nate Graham (KDE developer) in an online discussion:

"[…] Then I think Neon isn’t the right distro for you, because these [Flatpaks and Snaps] are the only supported methods for downloading user software.
Using apt for it is not supported. - […] only for KDE software, I believe. […]"


If you want to be a bit more on the "safe side" I would suggest a distribution where using other software from the repositories beyond KDE applications is supported like TUXEDO OS 2 or the latest Kubuntu release plus Kubuntu Backports, see
Overview: Kubuntu, its parent and some of its siblings

Or something else entirely like openSUSE Tumbleweed or Fedora KDE Spin.


That said: third-party themes are never that reliable, in no distribution that ships KDE Plasma.
And you should always check first if they are compatible with your Plasma version and system setup.

[z_mikowski]

Tuxedo OS has a lot of positives.

One big benefit of Kubuntu is that it is an official Ubuntu flavor, which means it uses all the official Ubuntu repositories and has many channels of support like Ask Ubuntu or https://kfocus.org/wf. It also benefits from Ubuntu infrastructure, governance, and technical requirements. So it's a good choice.

If you want all that plus lots of integration, tools, testing, and curation that paying customers require, I advocate the Kubuntu Focus Suite found at https://kfocus.org/try. KFS is curated Kubuntu LTS, so it is more conservative than Tuxedo OS, and much closer to the upstream. We also help equip and fund Kubuntu development.

Hi Schwarzer Kater! I see you everywhere

[rossdv8]

Good evening,

After reading a lot of good things about KDE Neon I wanted to give it a try.
I installed the user version from 2024/03/03, or at least I tried to install it, because the installation failed due to a problem in calamares network configuration. (pretty well known issue).
Apparently this issue was fixed with the current version. I downloaded the new version and the installation completed this time.

Then I was about to install the famous "Utterly Sweet" Theme from the KDE Settings. And it gave me an dependency error. (also well known issue and no solution).
I manually installed the theme now but What The Hell? Did the developers even test the os before releasing it? Not convinced at all about KDE Neon being a "very stable distro that's perfect for everyday use", which they claimed on their website..

I tried to submit a bug report and immediately got this:

------------------------------------------------------------------------O--O--X-----

KIOExec

Unable to create KIO worker: Unknown protocol 'appstream'

--------------------------------------------------------------------OK---------------

I'm done with KDE Neon fs ^^

There is in fact a Stable Neon. The new Neon 6 'User' iso with Plasma 6 is Stable, but, it is NOT 'Kubuntu. stable'.

I've been a KDE user since Mandrake first hit the scene sonewhere around the turn of the century, and I was actively involved in PCLinuxOS, Mepis and some other distros. I also used Knoppis etc, and when Ubuntu came out I tried Kubuntu. Eventually I moved to Mint, for a few reasons, and since I've had some machines on Mint, some on Kubuntu and some on whatever flavour I felt like on a given day. But mostly, Mint and Kubutu, (and Neon occasionally).

In my opinion, if you want a 'Really Stable' KDE experience - stay with Kubuntu and once the Kubuntu team massage all the new bits of plasma 6 into place, do a system Upgrade.

If you like taking risks with some Apps and quite a lot of Plasma Themes not quite being ported to Plasma 6 yet - then yes, Neon 6 'User Edition' is 'Stable' except that new bits are still being ported.
I've been testing the betas since the first couple of days they were released. I also had some input (Auto-rotation of the screen for Tablets) accepted and implemented.
Also, Neon defaults to Wayland - and there are far too many things that still do NOT Work under Wayland.
Luckily, like Kubuntu - you do have the choice to run X11.

Yesterday I decided to reinstall Kubuntu because of the things Kubuntu still does 'Better' (for my porpoises at least)than Neon, and because there are still some bits of Plasma 6 not quite finished.

But Stable - in a can you use it as your Daily Driver? Yep, Neon for most people is probably Stable enough.
Does Plasma 6 have all the rough edges filed off it yet? Nope.
And there were still 'System Upgrades' being added every day at the end of last week, although not as many as in the first week after it went public.

Here's a bit of an idea what I've been doing since late 2023:


I installed and tested every variation of Neon as it came out for Beta:


And eventually I installed the final when it hit the streets:


Then I decided to have a look at Kubuntu 23.10 when that arrived - Just to comapre it with Neon 6.

And now that Kubuntu 23.10 is here and the Kubuntu team is already working on prepping for Plasma 6 (although I read that it will not be in Kubuntu 24) I decided to run with Kubuuntu again.
My experience with Neon 6 suggests that there is a very good reason why Kubuntu 24 won't have Plasma 6 :-)
Most of the new stuff in Plasma 6 is already in Plasma 5.27 in Kubuntu. And a lot of the Plasma 6 stuff that is not ready yet (the missing Qt 6 bits) is already in some of Kubuntu's repos.

However, I am still running Neon 6 / Plasma 6 on my MS Surface Pro Tablets - and it is excellent there! (So far)

[oshunluvr]

The desktop file bug that caused that issue was resolved Feb, 28th so likely an up-to-date KDEneon wouldn't have had that happened. Also, Discover isn't the only way to install things. Additionally, themes are often poorly packaged or incomplete because they're rarely done by professional developers so one should have low expectations when trying new themes.

KDEneon, as you would well know if you went to the download page, comes in Stable as well as Unstable, Tester, and Developer editions.

As far as KDEneon, If by "stable" you mean "never ever has a bug" then you're out of luck. There's no such operating system. KDEneon is more cutting edge with Plasma releases than other distros so if you don't care about having Plasma 6 then install something else. Debian, for example is well known to be one of the slowest, if not the slowest, to adopt new changes. They haven't even released the latest Plasma 5 version yet.

In the Linux world "Stable" means "previously tested." With 10,000s of files and 1000s of different PCs and configurations, it seems unrealistic to expect to never run into a bug once in a while.

I cannot help but remind everyone that Linux is FREE and no one is under any obligation to do things your way or be concerned if one chooses some other distro.

The way Linux is better than other OSs is that it's a community effort rather a corporation dictating development for profit. The best way to insure a "stable" operating system is to learn to trouble-shoot and report bugs when encountered.

[claydoh]

We are replying to a One-Shot-Wonder-poster, who we will never see again, so who cares, in the end?

The OP saw some issues that mostly were unrelated to Neon itself, while some were ---exactly where IS Plasma 6.0.1?

[rossdv8]

The desktop file bug that caused that issue was resolved Feb, 28th so likely an up-to-date KDEneon wouldn't have had that happened. Also, Discover isn't the only way to install things. Additionally, themes are often poorly packaged or incomplete because they're rarely done by professional developers so one should have low expectations when trying new themes.

KDEneon, as you would well know if you went to the download page, comes in Stable as well as Unstable, Tester, and Developer editions.

As far as KDEneon, If by "stable" you mean "never ever has a bug" then you're out of luck. There's no such operating system. KDEneon is more cutting edge with Plasma releases than other distros so if you don't care about having Plasma 6 then install something else. Debian, for example is well known to be one of the slowest, if not the slowest, to adopt new changes. They haven't even released the latest Plasma 5 version yet.

In the Linux world "Stable" means "previously tested." With 10,000s of files and 1000s of different PCs and configurations, it seems unrealistic to expect to never run into a bug once in a while.

I cannot help but remind everyone that Linux is FREE and no one is under any obligation to do things your way or be concerned if one chooses some other distro.

The way Linux is better than other OSs is that it's a community effort rather a corporation dictating development for profit. The best way to insure a "stable" operating system is to learn to trouble-shoot and report bugs when encountered.

That's just what too many people seem to forget:
1) . . . Linux is FREE and no one is under any obligation to do things your way or be concerned if one chooses some other distro
2) . . . it's a community effort rather a corporation dictating development for profit
3) . . . The best way to insure a "stable" operating system is to learn to trouble-shoot and report bugs when encountered

As an example, I suggested a fix for Neon 6 / Plasma 6 not having a setting to allow rotation of the screen on Tablet devices - even though people like me running Linux Tablet are probably the oddballs - they added it to the beta stream, and within days (maybe a week) they not only implemented the fix, but improved on it.
That is one of the great things about Linux. There is always someone in the Dev pool watching for little things that can make Linux better, regardless of the distro.

Which reminds me, I must test Kubuntu 23.10 on the tablet and see if Kubuntu can still do the screen rotatey thingy . .

[claydoh]

As an example, I suggested a fix for Neon 6 / Plasma 6 not having a setting to allow rotation of the screen on Tablet devices - even though people like me running Linux Tablet are probably the oddballs - they added it to the beta stream, and within days (maybe a week) they not only implemented the fix, but improved on it.

Awesome!!

1) . . . Linux is FREE and no one is under any obligation to do things your way or be concerned if one chooses some other distro
2) . . . it's a community effort rather a corporation dictating development for profit

While I totally agree, after more than 2 decades, I realize that this actually means little to new and less experienced users, and that people will always gripe and complain, especially when they are frustrated and annoyed and see other people having normal, stable systems.
Most do learn these facts, some take as bit longer, and a few never shut up.

[Beerislife]

I think I'm down to about three niggles with Neon right now, apart from there still being few non Windows or Mac like window decoration themes!

1. Still no right-click Open Terminal
2. kio-gdrive is borked
3. Sometimes the places Panel in Dolphin just disappears

[Schwarzer Kater]

Slightly OT:

[…]
Also, Neon defaults to Wayland - and there are far too many things that still do NOT Work under Wayland.
Luckily, like Kubuntu - you do have the choice to run X11.
[…]

Word!

I think it was a really unfortunate decision to make Wayland officially the default session for Plasma 6.0.
From a user's perspective they should have mainly concentrated on the transition to Plasma 6 in X11 (and kept living with some of the known downsides for a little while) and made the switch to default Wayland later on in a separate effort when some more of the missing things in Wayland could have worked/been implemented better. And when the transition from Plasma 5 to 6 already had been overcome. Like perhaps with Plasma 6.3 or at least with 6.2 at the earliest…

What was the damn rush? "New and shiny"- or an "us too"-syndrom? Fedora (well, f**k them)?
It is not that X11 will suddenly stop working in 7.263 months time…

[rossdv8]

I think I'm down to about three niggles with Neon right now, apart from there still being few non Windows or Mac like window decoration themes!

1. Still no right-click Open Terminal
2. kio-gdrive is borked
3. Sometimes the places Panel in Dolphin just disappears

1 and 3 were the current annoyances that pushed me to try Kubuntu 23.10 and see if it had similar problems. Obviously it doesn't so my best guess is it is simply a transition thing with some of the other small Neon - Qt 6 fails that will be jumped on pretty quickly . .
And I guess things like that cropping up are just another reason Kubuntu decided not to make 24 a Plasma 6 release.

[Schwarzer Kater]

Beerislife

… and your left floating panel will cover the top panel when you open "too many" applications - due to
1. not being in the middle between the (additional vertical) top panel and the bottom screen margin and
2. buggy settings
(things that could easily be avoided with Latte Dock in Plasma 5.27.x - and hopefully still can with Kubuntu 24.04 LTS and Latte Dock).

This becomes the more relevant the wider the panel/larger the icons get (for example I prefer to make the vertical "dock" panel wider than you do - about 56-60 px).

Also see A medley of (non-critical) bugs in Plasma 6 that I have encountered

[Schwarzer Kater]

OT:

[…]
If you want all that plus lots of integration, tools, testing, and curation that paying customers require, I advocate the Kubuntu Focus Suite found at https://kfocus.org/try. KFS is curated Kubuntu LTS, so it is more conservative than Tuxedo OS, and much closer to the upstream. We also help equip and fund Kubuntu development.

Hi Schwarzer Kater! I see you everywhere

Hi to you, too.

At present it is mostly just because of the Plasma 6 release that I am "more active"…
This will certainly become less - my other half will see to it, I'm sure.

By the way: I wonder why Kubuntu Focus is not represented a bit more in this forum (by the one or another posting) - some of the tools are quite good, and the concept is too IMHO!

[cookiemuncher]

My issue with KDE Neon is this:

A fresh install of KDE Neon was installed 3 or 4 days ago from the neon-user-20240307 release and all went well. My grub menu showed, in order, Neon, Ubuntu Budgie 24.04, and windows 11.

This morning I did an update of the Ubuntu Budgie install and after rebooting, my Neon grub menu is no longer usable as it immediately reboots my PC and enters cmos setup.

Using rEFInd lets me boot into Neon directly.

Booting into the Neon grub menu gives me:
'error: no such device: ---> uuid appears here <---
'error: file '/boot/vmlinuz-6.5.0-25-generic' not found
'error: you need to load the kernel first'

Super grub disk gives me similar error.

I will check on what was updated by the Ubuntu Budgie 24.04

EDIT: this was updated, amoungst others:

2024-03-11 09:25:44 upgrade grub-common:amd64 2.12-1ubuntu3 2.12-1ubuntu4
2024-03-11 09:25:44 upgrade grub2-common:amd64 2.12-1ubuntu3 2.12-1ubuntu4

Is it worth trying to get the Neon grub menu working again?

[oshunluvr]

Is it worth trying to get the Neon grub menu working again?

Depends on what you have invested in your install. If you're just playing about than wipe away.

So you said you booted into Neon with refind but did you attempt to reinstall GRUB once in?

The error message when you boot Neon GRUB seems very clear. Have you tried to manually boot GRUB once that error drops you into the grub console?