Hi there. I m changing away from windows. I already tested some stuff. I started with fedora GNOME. But GNOME wasn’t for me I felt. So I did go with Linux mint cinnamon. That felt better but not as snappy and fast as fedora. Then I did go with fedora KDE plasma and man I like KDE plasma. That’s a thing for me. Then I tried because of recommendations popos with cosmic. I don’t know why but it didn’t felt right. So another recommendation later I tried cachy is with KDE. KDE was good but catchy gave me some erros and problems so back to fedora with KDE.

Now my real question.

  1. Manjaro Linux is a European distro? Only I often see it with popos and Linux mint and fedora that these are good beginner distros? Is it stable? Customisation in KDE is the same everywhere I guess? Does many people use it? Is it really beginner friendly and snappy? Is it stable?
  2. Opensuse also has KDE but it seems that its not a beginner distro. Also online its not often spoken about. Is it harder to use? Or is it beginner friendly? Customisation KDE again. Is it stable or does it break often? Does many people use it.
  3. Fedora, manjaro, opensuse? Which off these with KDE is most beginner friendly and stable. Is used much so I can find help when something is going on. Customisable. Stable?

Or any other Good KDE Distros out there.

  • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
    4·
    5 days ago

    OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is excellent and no less beginner friendly than any other major distro, so I wouldn’t worry. It really is one of the most underrated distros out there.

    Kubuntu could be a good option for you, but I recommend doing the “Minimal” install to avoid Snaps and bloat.

    If you are mostly about gaming and flatpak, then consider Bazzite. You can’t just install packages on Bazzite, so if you need to do things that aren’t already built in then you need to use containers or, as a last resort, create a new layers with rpm-ostree.

    For the record, Arch and it’s offshoots don’t especially resonate with me, either. I want my OS to “just work”, but at the same time I want to have the ability to go wild whenever and however I feel like it.

    I’ve been spending a lot of time with Bazzite lately and I’d wholeheartedly recommend it to most Linux newbies, especially gamers who want their system to “just work.” It’s also a very interesting system for jaded old Linux users because it works so differently than we’re used to. The “everything needs to be a container” paradigm is very interesting and has a lot of security and stability benefits.

    If you want more control and freedom, then OpenSUSE is definitely the best option here. I’d only fallback to Kubuntu if there was some software you need that only ships in .deb and you have no other options. I’m not a fan of Canonical or what they’ve done to the Ubuntu ecosystem.

  • simop_jo@lemmy.world
    2·
    4 days ago

    Dont choose your distro based on looks. For example, of you liked fedora but not gnome, try fedora KDE.

  • pogodem0n@lemmy.world
    20·
    7 days ago

    Fedora KDE pretty much offers the best KDE Plasma experience, maybe right after OpenSuse.

    If you are still using Fedora, I recommend sticking with it. It doesn’t get much better than that.

    • hddsx@lemmy.ca
      104·
      7 days ago

      I wouldn’t use Fedora mainly because I object to how IBM/RedHat handled the removal of CentOS and how they hampered RockyLinux from keeping the original CentOS mission going

      I would pick a leaf off the Debian tree

      • Pumasuedeblue@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        5 days ago

        Which is why I moved to Debian/Ubuntu based and haven’t looked back. But functionally, nearly every distro has a different strength and purpose, so go with whatever piques your interest.

      • pogodem0n@lemmy.world
        95·
        7 days ago

        Fedora is not Red Hat. While they fund Fedora development, they don’t dictate how to it is ran.

        • edel@lemmy.mlEnglish
          11·
          7 days ago

          For those of us that despise Red Hat, sorry, but increasing the user base of Fedora, dramatically helps Red Hat’s marketability and profitability (and IBM’s). These companies not only make decisions bad for the FOSS community but way too happy to do business with a country massacring kids as we speak too. Now, I still recommend using Fedora since, as you say they are not straight IBM and they are at the vanguard, yet, for those with a conscience on these matters, there are as equally comparable offers out there.

        • hddsx@lemmy.ca
          81·
          7 days ago

          Fedora is upstream CentOS Steam which is upstream RHEL. It’s part of RHEL cycle/stream

  • penguin202124 (he/him)@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    5 days ago

    1. Yes, Manjaro is European. KDE is the same everywhere. IMO it is not stable, but that is just an opinion. I’m not sure how many people use it.

    2. OpenSUSE is relatively beginner friendly. Leap is the stable, non-rolling release, and Tumbleweed is the rolling, less stable but still stable release; Leap’s packages can be old, so you may not have the newest KDE. For this reason, I’d recommend Tumbleweed. A fair amount of people use it.

    3. I’d say use Fedora or switch to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Fedora is more stable and used more, but OpenSUSE is European.

    • jhdeval@lemmy.world
      3·
      5 days ago

      I use fedora kinoite atomic fedora with KDE. I have had no stability issues on a day to day usage for going on 2 years. I agree plasma is plasma regardless of distro but some distros update slower. Fedora is not bleeding edge but does do a pretty good job of staying ahead of the curve. I have been a Linux user since the 90’s and have been around the block a few times with different distros. I always fall back to redhat/fedora for my desktop day to day.

  • arch@feddit.nl
    4·
    5 days ago

    EndeavourOS KDE Plasma is my favourite! It’s really really considerate and inherits all the arch linux advantage :3

    • emmy67@lemmy.world
      2·
      5 days ago

      I have to second this. It’s been amazing across the board for so much. Lots of documentation to assist with problems and you learn so much.

  • pyssla@quokk.auEnglish
    61·
    6 days ago

    This was originally intended as a longer comment, but the previous draft unfortunately blinked out of existence… Though, I’m more than willing to shed some light on the distros discussed below if you’re interested.

    Or any other Good KDE Distros out there.

    I’m surprised that no one else has mentioned them yet. Thus, for the sake of completeness, consider Aurora and Bazzite. It’s what I would personally install/recommend for/to relatives/friends that would like to make the switch to Linux.

    • Verax@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      6 days ago

      Aurora on their website looks really promising but I guess its a rather small distro that not many people know?

      • pyssla@quokk.auEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        but I guess its a rather small distro that not many people know?

        It’s true that it’s not as well-established as many of the other distros discussed here; it probably has like 1k users or so. Which is quite literally just a small fraction of Fedora KDE’s over a 120k user base. Granted, it’s a relatively new distro built on Fedora’s latest/‘future’ tech. Usage numbers should follow eventually[1].

        Thankfully, that same tech enables Aurora (and other projects like it) to be very robust and reliable; tangibly more so than the more popular ‘traditional’ alternatives. I assume you’ll come to cherish and value this reliability, especially as stability seems to be a concern of yours.

        1. Based on Fedora’s (current) intentions to default to said latest/‘future’ tech when the time is right. ↩︎

        • domdanial@reddthat.comEnglish
          3·
          5 days ago

          I’m currently using bazzite, and I have had a couple of hiccups with it so far. One was it being immutable, meaning for any software that wasn’t in the flatpak store, I have to spin up a container running a mutable version and use that.

          The second is a weird audio thing where on install, the volume knob on my headset changed the system volume like I expected. Now, it changes like, local volume and doesn’t show up as changing in the system volume.

          Anyway, my only real point is that looking problems up on a small distro is harder, because it might be a bazzite problem, or a universal blue problem, or an atomic fedora problem, or a kde plasma problem, and it makes it difficult to search if you don’t know the specific piece that is broken.

  • tychosmoose@piefed.socialEnglish
    9·
    7 days ago

    openSUSE Tumbleweed is the rolling release, where you may have dependency decisions to make during regular updates. Updates must be done in the terminal.

    The more beginner friendly version is openSUSE Leap. That has a longer release cycle, and you use the Discover interface (or yeast, or zypper in the terminal) to update.

    Either is pretty friendly. Both have recent KDE.

  • Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
    81·
    7 days ago

    there’s:

    • KDE neon (sorta dodgy but always has the newest KDE release on top of ubuntu)
    • Kubuntu (KDE on ubuntu but a bit old)
    • Debian+KDE (KDE but a good few months old)

    I wouldn’t recommend manjaro, they’re very dodgy

    Opensuse is pretty good, iirc they have a GUI for most configuration items and you get the newest packages for everything. it’s like easier arch

    • iopq@lemmy.world
      93·
      7 days ago

      I don’t like any distros where I have to fight the system to get it to do what I want. And to install GrapheneOS I needed a normal Chromium, not snap (because of USB access). You won’t believe how much Ubuntu will fight you over this these days

      If I wanted to scour the web for a .deb I’d still be using Windows

      • OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml
        1·
        5 days ago

        I had this same issue and I was about to tweak out. I love mint and it really is the best OS out of the box with no tweaks but damn. Debian edition mint for the win. Ubuntu shit is nice but it introduces breakage every few updates and I hate debugging or fixing issues. I want shit to just work at this point. So I jumped ship to NIX and I really love it but there’s still some debugging occasionally. I guess that’s the norm with Linux. Pick your poison.

      • MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml
        9·
        7 days ago

        The distro itself is OK, and it’s fine if you switch to their “unstable” repositories so it directly mirrors Arch. Where the problems lie is in the admin. In the past they have:

        • Let their certificates expire and suggested that users put their clocks back to work around it, several times.
        • DDOSed the AUR with coding mistakes in pamac, at least twice.
        • Had controversy regarding their finances.
        • Other things that I can’t remember right now.

        They seem to have sorted themselves out as their have been no reports of mistakes recently. But trust once lost, is hard to regain.

        • PlatonicGin@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          6 days ago

          Remember when they dropped hardware acceleration a few years ago? That was what got me to move off.

          • MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml
            3·
            6 days ago

            Now that you come to mention it, I have a vague memory of a few distros doing that because of licencing issues.

      • Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
        71·
        7 days ago

        they’ve had a few SSL certificate renewal issues and the way they dealt with that was very dodgy (asking to just ignore it)

        also manjaro beginners seem to often use the AUR which isn’t really supported for manjaro and break their install in the process

        • edel@lemmy.mlEnglish
          21·
          7 days ago

          That was 3 years ago. I understand they made a mistake (twice) but ok since then. I think most of the Manjaro criticism is no longer warranted. All distros had made mistakes.

    • suoko@feddit.it
      21·
      7 days ago

      Kubuntu is not a bit old, currently is 6.3 while newest kde is 6.4 Iif you use an os for its SW and not its de, remember kubuntu let’s you access snaps, flat packs, appimagss and all tutorials for Ubuntu out there.

  • nfms@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    6 days ago

    Lot’s of great answers already. I’ll just had my thoughts and hope it helps.
    Choosing a Linux distro is fucking hard, but the good thing is that you already have a DE (Desktop Environment) that you like, KDE Plasma (KDE is the community, Plasma is the name of the DE) and it’s my favorite.

    1 - Manjaro was my first distro for daily use. I would not recommend it, i don’t think it’s stable enough to get into linux. Would not recommend any Arch based distro.
    2 - OpenSuse is an old distribution, but not beginner friendly, so maybe not a good idea to dip your toes into it.
    3 - Fedora is well established with lots of documentation, a big community and a 6 month update release model that should give you the newest features very fast while still maintaining stability. I don’t recommend the Atomic distros. If you’ve already installed and it works then stick with it for a while.

    There are also the Ubuntu based distros like Kubuntu, KDE Neon or Tuxedo OS. Ubuntu has probably the largest user base, so documentation is abound everywhere regardless of the distro you pick.

    You’re already testing out different distros, try to daily drive for a month and read up on what makes them different. In general it’s how to install software, the release model (“Long Term Support” or “Rolling Release”) and the core system. Apps are installed on top of the system and right now come in a variety of formats. I strongly recommend that you enable Flatpak on the distro you chose and use the Discovery app for software management.

    Edit: Added “Tuxedo OS”

    • Verax@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      6 days ago

      I also thought about Kubuntu and KDE neon. I think I will test these 2 and then decide between these 2 and fedora. After reading all this I don’t think opensuse and mamjaro are for me for now.

  • Eugenia@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    7 days ago

    Linux Mint is actually fast, and uses half the RAM of Fedora (see shots: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/653/604/229/121/661/original/6d60399683784c13.png and https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/761/028/826/681/916/original/32f1c276089be277.png ). With a bit of tweaking, and using the Cinnamenu menu instead of the default one, it feels really good. On Fedora KDE I got updates every couple of days to the excess of 1 GB. I’m on 50mbps internet, and that was too much for me.

    • Verax@lemmy.worldOP
      5·
      7 days ago

      Yeah mint cinnamon isn’t bad but I like KDE plasma more. And search a distro that uses that.

  • sic_semper_tyrannis@lemmy.todayEnglish
    5·
    7 days ago

    Use Fedora workstation or Fedora Kinoite if you want an atomic version. If you just want a system to work and you don’t care to tinker much I highly recommend Kinoite as it won’t break easily on you and is very stable.