Tracking Down KDE Neon

[buster]

Getting Neon is not as easy as you might think for an Ubuntu spinoff. Their home page directs you to a download that proved to be about 7 hours, which I refused to do. Tried over two days.

Remembered that Distrowatch runs a Torrent Corner once a week, and looked and there it was! About 1 minute to get the full distro.

The install is a typical Ubuntu install - dead easy. Because I'm in VMWare, needed an open-vm- etc download and a reboot. Got Qbittorrent, Kpat, Extremetuxracer, Clementine. Downloaded a theme.

So far seems pretty good. Maybe more later. Anyway here is a picture. Questions welcome.

[Jason]

Noticing any bugs or signs of instability? Neon uses the latest Plasma Desktop so I wondered how that effects the user experience.

Have you noticed any new features or changes in Neon compared to Kubuntu?

[buster]

Too early in the game I suspect Jason, but nothing so far.

Because it's still based on the Ubuntu 18 long term, it had still had one of the soon to die Amaroks, and it is spectacular. Must be the final build with all the bells and whistles.

It does have one flaw though - it wont play music. Other than that it's great! Clementine is flawless.

Quite nice distro which feels a lot like Kubuntu. Not sure I've spotted many differences when comparing the two distros. Maybe that will show with time. No negatives with either that have come to my attention.

[Jason]

It does have one flaw though - it wont play music. Other than that it's great! Clementine is flawless.

Wait, what? Clementine if flawless without music, huh?

Thanks for the feedback. I understand that Neon is supposed to just be Ubuntu with the latest cutting edge version of Plasma. But since Kubuntu 20.04 was just released, the Plasma versions are probably very close anyway.

Somewhere on their website they dispute that Neon is a distro. They only created it to show off the latest Plasma version. To respect their wishes, when in their company I will nod and agree. But when I walk away, I'll say behind their back that it is a distro.

[fox]

For what it's worth, DistroWatch lists KDE Neon as a distro.

[buster]

Poor writing on my part. Here is the whole quote altered slightly:

"Because it's still based on the Ubuntu 18 long term, it had still had one of the soon to die Amaroks, and it is spectacular. Must be the final build with all the bells and whistles. It does have one flaw though - it wont play music. Other than that it's great!

Clementine HOWEVER is flawless."

That should be better.

[buster]

Fox noted:
For what it's worth, DistroWatch lists KDE Neon as a distro.

Seems very much like Kubuntu in day to day use. I kind of like it. But then I have it as a vm in vmware, so it's easy to throw out and get something different if it develops a scary pathology.

So if it isn't a distro, it is disguising this flaw very cleverly.

[Jason]

Thanks for the correction, Buster. Makes sense now.

Here's KDE Neon's official FAQ on the subject with two Q&As that explain their reasoning:

What is KDE neon?
Is it a distro?

Neon still seems like a distro in my mind because I think their answers would also apply to the Ubuntu flavours except that they're not necessarily using the latest desktop packages and associated software. Kubuntu is similar but it doesn't use the cutting-edge Plasma packages. They mention in the FAQ that you can set up Kubuntu to use the Neon repository but things might break and might break really badly since there are many overlapping packages. I think that Neon is kind of like a cross between a stable distro and a cutting-edge distro.

Now that I think of it, don't most distros get their packages from one source (by default)? I'm talking about a vanilla install, not other repos or PPAs that you may have added since. Neon is drawing from Ubuntu for the core packages and the KDE team for Plasma packages while Kubuntu gets all its packages from Ubuntu. Can you confirm this in your Neon settings, Buster?

[buster]

Check pics. By the way, pictures don't show when in 'latest posts'. You must go to the original thread.

[Jason]

Yep, that's what I figured. Ubuntu core from Ubuntu. Plasma from the KDE repo. I checked with my Kubuntu distro and it all comes from Ubuntu than the additional repos that were added for some additional programs.

Check pics. By the way, pictures don't show when in 'latest posts'. You must go to the original thread.

I don't use 'latest posts'. I use the 'Show unread posts since last visit' link at the top so I don't miss posts.

[ssfc72]

I believe if you don't login to the Forums, then you don't have "show unread posts" showing at the top.  I usually don't login, if I only want to check for new posts to the Forums.

Yep, that's what I figured. Ubuntu core from Ubuntu. Plasma from the KDE repo. I checked with my Kubuntu distro and it all comes from Ubuntu than the additional repos that were added for some additional programs.


I don't use 'latest posts'. I use the 'Show unread posts since last visit' link at the top so I don't miss posts.

[Jason]

I believe if you don't login to the Forums, then you don't have "show unread posts" showing at the top.  I usually don't login, if I only want to check for new posts to the Forums.

That's correct. I keep forgetting you have it set to delete cookies every time you close your browser.

[buster]

Neon still running well. Updates flawlessly so far.

It does run on a Ubuntu 18 rather than a 20. Not sure that affects much unless you have a wonky kernel problem like some.

Any questions? i'll probably remove it tomorrow if there aren't any.

[Jason]

It does run on a Ubuntu 18 rather than a 20. Not sure that affects much unless you have a wonky kernel problem like some.

That seems odd but maybe it's just taking longer than they thought to integrate it. It's also important to note that it will only use the most recent LTS version of Ubuntu underneath. No upgrades to 20.10, 21.04, 21.10. Not sure what that means for software being updated but generally LTS versions fall back over time as they're generally doing bugfixes and security updates with stable (LTS) versions.

[buster]

Not sure they care about the base. They want to test the latest Plasma stuff, and the base may not matter  that much.