It seems the hesitancy was fear it might be considered the de facto way to install KDE.
It's been clarified to be primarily for testing due to it's bleeding-edgeness.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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It's interesting they're changing the pitch from "everyday user" to "KDE enthusiast."
I definitely daily drove it for several years, and we even used it as our defacto developer distro at a previous job. It didn't seem to be too bad for that purpose.
Maybe not, but it sure feels bait-and-switch-esque. I suppose if that's really what KDE Neon has morphed into/is targeting now, it's better to be honest.
Nate's blog has been really encouraging people to submit bug reports. So I think the goal of Neon is to have the bleeding edge KDE with a stable base, to rule out confounding factors as much as possible. I don't think it's a bait-and-switch since the product hasn't changed. They'd probably just really rather it be used for people willing to submit bug reports.
iirc Neon started by Kubuntu developers as a way to install the latest Plasma on top of current Ubuntu release. And if this is the case then it's not really started as a distro the way Linux Mint or Bodhi Linux mesnt to be.
But as time progress, if Neon started contributing fixes to upstream in this case Ubuntu, and as well as implemeting changes such as using deb version of Firefox instead of Snap then Neon project is so much more than just an effort to package the latest KDE for Ubuntu, hence a distro terms suits them better in my opinion.
Regarding Plasma 6. I tried Neon live session and was surprised by the smoothness that made possible probably because of the Wayland transition, animation feels smooth and laptop fan did not even kicked in, but what i really like so far is the window scaling, i can set it to 125% or 150% and it does not seems like a hack. About the instability issues, its probably that i did not play with the live session long enough but my session is without a crash.
iirc Neon started by Kubuntu developers as a way to install the latest Plasma on top of current Ubuntu release.
Just for clarification: It was started by Kubuntu developers who were ousted by Canonical after Canonical in all seriousness stated that their license on top of the existing FOSS licenses somehow trumps those FOSS licenses, mot notable the GPL. Canonical's license says that binaries compiled by Canonical can only be redistributed after getting permission by them which is nothing but a GPL violation. The Kubuntu developers said publicly that Kubuntu respects the GPL and obviously that part of the Canonical license is void.
Canonical kicked them out and replaced them with more subservient people. Canonical later changed their license to say that the original FOSS license takes precedence, that means everyone creating an Ubuntu derivative must still get permission by Canonical to redistribute binaries compiled from MIT-/BSD-licensed sources.
The former Kubuntu people then did their own thing. It is and never has been clear why upstream KDE had to be the new home for them. IMO it's wrong that upstream KDE gives special treatment to Ubuntu, even moreso with Canonical‘s shenanigans around pushing Snap.
Beats Kubuntu I guess, although I never really understood Neon's appeal besides being a testbed. As far as "rolling" distros go, I think there are many alternatives that are more rolling and less rocky - as evidenced by the almost flawless transition from Plasma 5 to 6.0.1 on Arch. I also want to point to Sparky Linux's "semi-rolling" release as a fantastic alternative based on Debian's testing repos.
Maybe I'm a bit anal but it really does just sound like what we already knew.
I've used KDE Neon for a while as a typical end user and it works solidly. You get the nice upgrade cadence for the kernel and software, but rolling release for the one thing I care about in my distro - the desktop!
I will say, that if they don't want to encourage people using KDE Neon as end users (I think it's just a disclaimer but whatever) I wouldn't ship it as the default distro for the KDE Slimbook; which is marketed at end users!
Yep, definitely what we already knew. I'm surprised to hear it's the default on the Slimbooks actually; that sounds like exactly what they were trying to avoid with the way they pitched Neon.
I agree on Neon being great, I love KDE's pace of updates. I read Nate's blog every week religiously. I'm spoiled to the AUR these days, though. Just for that I can't go back to non-arch based distro. Been rocking Manjaro and have the least headaches out of anything I've tried.
I've been daily driving it for years now. There have been a couple of issues during the Wayland transition which were fixed by unplugging and replugging a monitor but it's just been really good.