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Arch Linux is the best distro for KDE enjoyers. I recommend going all in on KDE, especially with its companion app "KDE Connect" on your smartphone

jraph 2y ago
openSUSE is quite good as well, any specific reason Arch would be better for KDE than openSUSE?
- saidinesh5 2y ago
  Dunno about the opensuse variant of rolling release distro (tumbleweed?), but usually You'd want Arch to avoid the 6 month "upgrade to the new version of the distro and find the ppa/user repos for the software i couldn't find in official repos" headaches. Also Arch KDE is more or less upstream, while i remember Suse polishing the theme etc .. Back when i tried it 15 years ago
  - MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
    Tumbleweed is really close to upstream and doesn't need extra repos to stay on the latest versions. They do ship their own theme, but vanilla breeze is only a few clicks away. Tumbleweed is mostly tied with Arch in my book for favorite distro. They both have papercuts and things that work better than the other in different areas, but on the whole are very close.
bigstrat2003 2y ago
Unfortunately KDE is currently broken on Arch. The screen locker freezes when you wake the screen back up (see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=483094 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=483094). Hopefully they fix the bug soon but it's been almost a year so I don't have a ton of hope.
- gh02t 2y ago
  Not using Arch anymore, but I did have this issue recently on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I switched KDE to Wayland (defaulted to X11 for some reason) and the issue went away. Worth a try if you haven't already.
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    Thank you for the tip! Unfortunately I can't use Wayland because it breaks the AFK detection in Discord. I would actually prefer to use Wayland, but Discord Linux support is real bad. That said I'll have to take a look because maybe there's a solution that didn't exist last time I tried. And worst case scenario, I can at least decide which bug is less bad.
    - MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
      While I can't personally understand why you'd want to give Discord and its advertisers free information about your application usage habits, issues like these are endemic to rather a large number of Electron apps whose developers refuse to keep the framework up-to-date. Supposedly the issues will go away when they upgrade to modern Electron, and then I'll know for sure just how good the Flatpak jails are at blocking that nonsense.
    - gh02t 2y ago
      An off the wall solution might be to bridge Discord to Matrix with https://docs.mau.fi/bridges/go/discord/index.html https://docs.mau.fi/bridges/go/discord/index.html and then use a Matrix client, but no idea how well the bridge supports AFK detection as I haven't used the Discord one. Generally the other bridges to Matrix I have used support status and presence pretty seamlessly, though. Don't think any of the bridges support voice chat, however, so depends on what you use Discord for. Also perhaps try Discord in the browser instead of the desktop app? Just some random thoughts to try.
eklavya 2y ago
In my opinion the best KDE experience would be KDE neon by the KDE developers. https://neon.kde.org/ https://neon.kde.org/
- MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
  They don't want you to use the full Ubuntu package repos nor any PPAs, though. They expect you to be content with just KDE apps and Flatpak. Flatpak in no way covers my needs on its own, and I got tired of fighting with 3rd-party repos on it. If I have to run Ubuntu and want up-to-date KDE, I run Tuxedo OS. That's what my work laptop is on, and has been pretty great overall. The rest of my machines are on one rolling release or another (Debian Testing, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, or Arch).
bb88 2y ago
No need to use KDE to use KDE Connect. Gsconnect works well on ubuntu/gnome and integrates like you'd expect it to. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1319/gsconnect/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1319/gsconnect/

jraph 2y ago

openSUSE is quite good as well, any specific reason Arch would be better for KDE than openSUSE?

saidinesh5 2y ago
Dunno about the opensuse variant of rolling release distro (tumbleweed?), but usually You'd want Arch to avoid the 6 month "upgrade to the new version of the distro and find the ppa/user repos for the software i couldn't find in official repos" headaches. Also Arch KDE is more or less upstream, while i remember Suse polishing the theme etc .. Back when i tried it 15 years ago
- MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
  Tumbleweed is really close to upstream and doesn't need extra repos to stay on the latest versions. They do ship their own theme, but vanilla breeze is only a few clicks away. Tumbleweed is mostly tied with Arch in my book for favorite distro. They both have papercuts and things that work better than the other in different areas, but on the whole are very close.

bigstrat2003 2y ago

Unfortunately KDE is currently broken on Arch. The screen locker freezes when you wake the screen back up (see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=483094 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=483094). Hopefully they fix the bug soon but it's been almost a year so I don't have a ton of hope.

gh02t 2y ago
Not using Arch anymore, but I did have this issue recently on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I switched KDE to Wayland (defaulted to X11 for some reason) and the issue went away. Worth a try if you haven't already.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Thank you for the tip! Unfortunately I can't use Wayland because it breaks the AFK detection in Discord. I would actually prefer to use Wayland, but Discord Linux support is real bad. That said I'll have to take a look because maybe there's a solution that didn't exist last time I tried. And worst case scenario, I can at least decide which bug is less bad.
  - MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
    While I can't personally understand why you'd want to give Discord and its advertisers free information about your application usage habits, issues like these are endemic to rather a large number of Electron apps whose developers refuse to keep the framework up-to-date. Supposedly the issues will go away when they upgrade to modern Electron, and then I'll know for sure just how good the Flatpak jails are at blocking that nonsense.
  - gh02t 2y ago
    An off the wall solution might be to bridge Discord to Matrix with https://docs.mau.fi/bridges/go/discord/index.html https://docs.mau.fi/bridges/go/discord/index.html and then use a Matrix client, but no idea how well the bridge supports AFK detection as I haven't used the Discord one. Generally the other bridges to Matrix I have used support status and presence pretty seamlessly, though. Don't think any of the bridges support voice chat, however, so depends on what you use Discord for. Also perhaps try Discord in the browser instead of the desktop app? Just some random thoughts to try.

eklavya 2y ago

In my opinion the best KDE experience would be KDE neon by the KDE developers. https://neon.kde.org/ https://neon.kde.org/

MrDrMcCoy 2y ago
They don't want you to use the full Ubuntu package repos nor any PPAs, though. They expect you to be content with just KDE apps and Flatpak. Flatpak in no way covers my needs on its own, and I got tired of fighting with 3rd-party repos on it. If I have to run Ubuntu and want up-to-date KDE, I run Tuxedo OS. That's what my work laptop is on, and has been pretty great overall. The rest of my machines are on one rolling release or another (Debian Testing, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, or Arch).

bb88 2y ago

No need to use KDE to use KDE Connect. Gsconnect works well on ubuntu/gnome and integrates like you'd expect it to. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1319/gsconnect/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1319/gsconnect/