3 ms·

Yeah, KDE Neon is very distinct from Kubuntu 16.04. Kubuntu 16.04 comes with a really outdated version of Qt and with KDE Plasma 5.5, which was essentially sti

by Sylos 9y ago

Yeah, KDE Neon is very distinct from Kubuntu 16.04. Kubuntu 16.04 comes with a really outdated version of Qt and with KDE Plasma 5.5, which was essentially still a development version of the 5.x series. KDE Neon pretty much just exists to fix that hot mess.

nnq 9y ago
...then why TF don't people promote like even a little bit?! I didn't event know this KDE Neon existed. Really, WTF, it's not event on the page listing Ubuntu flavors https://www.ubuntu.com/download/flavours https://www.ubuntu.com/download/flavours and being a KDE project it's not even on the kde.org homepage. Do some people still live by "build it and they will come" nonsense? I mean, nobody expects dedicated marketing campaigns for an open source project, but at lest some links in the places where people could see. Event on the neon.kde.org page I see the crucial information that this is based on Ubuntu LTS burried in a big wall of text I wouldn't have ever bothered to read if I wasn't actively digging for details. I'll wait for a version based on Ubuntu 18 LTS when that comes, and definitely try it, but boy, it's like whoever works on this took great effort to keep it stealth or something...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Sylos 9y ago
  Well, there is reasons for it not being promoted by KDE itself that much. 1) They don't want to run a distro. KDE is distro-agnostic. Maintaining their own distribution would imply that this is the KDE distro, where you want to be to get the best KDE experience. (Hint: It's actually not.) 2) They don't consider it a distro. "Distribution" implies that someone spent some time to put together a collection of software which works reasonably well with one another. So, it would mean that they do integration testing. KDE does not do that with Neon. It's just Ubuntu with KDE smacked on top. The Ubuntu-part is tested, the KDE-part is somewhat tested, but the combination of those happens to function most of the time out of pure luck. 3) Many people looking for Ubuntu with KDE on it are (reasonably) new to Linux. If you're more skilled, you'll probably go for openSUSE or Manjaro. There's of course reasons why you might prefer Ubuntu even as an experienced user, but it is still the case that many noobs look into KDE Neon. And KDE Neon is not for noobs. The Ubuntu-part is stable, but the KDE-part is not, it's bleeding edge software. Often not really tested, so things might potentially explode there. The lack of integration testing adds to that. And then as the grand-grandparent comment hinted, KDE Neon does not come with a whole load of software. It misses lots of software that you'd expect in a full-featured operating system, which is also in particular bad for new Linux users. As for waiting for a version that's going to be based on Ubuntu 18.04, I'm not sure, if that makes so much sense. Presumable, or hopefully, Ubuntu will fix that hot mess themselves with 18.04. The most recent version of KDE is an LTS release, so they'd be hard-pressed to choose wrongly there, and they previously had such an outdated version of Qt, because they used that outdated version in Unity 8, which they've stopped developing, so they should not fuck up there either. So, unless you actually continuously want to see the latest development in KDE, using KDE Neon won't make that much sense anymore after Ubuntu 18.04 is released. Also, Ubuntu 18.04 is released in 2018 in April, hence 18.04, it's <year>.<month>. And they usually release in April and October which is why you usually XX.04 and XX.10, with every second year in April being an LTS, so 18.04 is going to be the version number of the LTS. For smaller fixes, they add a number behind that: e.g. 16.04.5.

by Sylos 9y ago

nnq 9y ago

...then why TF don't people promote like even a little bit?! I didn't event know this KDE Neon existed. Really, WTF, it's not event on the page listing Ubuntu flavors https://www.ubuntu.com/download/flavours https://www.ubuntu.com/download/flavours and being a KDE project it's not even on the kde.org homepage. Do some people still live by "build it and they will come" nonsense? I mean, nobody expects dedicated marketing campaigns for an open source project, but at lest some links in the places where people could see. Event on the neon.kde.org page I see the crucial information that this is based on Ubuntu LTS burried in a big wall of text I wouldn't have ever bothered to read if I wasn't actively digging for details. I'll wait for a version based on Ubuntu 18 LTS when that comes, and definitely try it, but boy, it's like whoever works on this took great effort to keep it stealth or something...

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Sylos 9y ago
Well, there is reasons for it not being promoted by KDE itself that much. 1) They don't want to run a distro. KDE is distro-agnostic. Maintaining their own distribution would imply that this is the KDE distro, where you want to be to get the best KDE experience. (Hint: It's actually not.) 2) They don't consider it a distro. "Distribution" implies that someone spent some time to put together a collection of software which works reasonably well with one another. So, it would mean that they do integration testing. KDE does not do that with Neon. It's just Ubuntu with KDE smacked on top. The Ubuntu-part is tested, the KDE-part is somewhat tested, but the combination of those happens to function most of the time out of pure luck. 3) Many people looking for Ubuntu with KDE on it are (reasonably) new to Linux. If you're more skilled, you'll probably go for openSUSE or Manjaro. There's of course reasons why you might prefer Ubuntu even as an experienced user, but it is still the case that many noobs look into KDE Neon. And KDE Neon is not for noobs. The Ubuntu-part is stable, but the KDE-part is not, it's bleeding edge software. Often not really tested, so things might potentially explode there. The lack of integration testing adds to that. And then as the grand-grandparent comment hinted, KDE Neon does not come with a whole load of software. It misses lots of software that you'd expect in a full-featured operating system, which is also in particular bad for new Linux users. As for waiting for a version that's going to be based on Ubuntu 18.04, I'm not sure, if that makes so much sense. Presumable, or hopefully, Ubuntu will fix that hot mess themselves with 18.04. The most recent version of KDE is an LTS release, so they'd be hard-pressed to choose wrongly there, and they previously had such an outdated version of Qt, because they used that outdated version in Unity 8, which they've stopped developing, so they should not fuck up there either. So, unless you actually continuously want to see the latest development in KDE, using KDE Neon won't make that much sense anymore after Ubuntu 18.04 is released. Also, Ubuntu 18.04 is released in 2018 in April, hence 18.04, it's <year>.<month>. And they usually release in April and October which is why you usually XX.04 and XX.10, with every second year in April being an LTS, so 18.04 is going to be the version number of the LTS. For smaller fixes, they add a number behind that: e.g. 16.04.5.