I’m not a beginner anymore, but I’m much less interested in technical tinkering for its own sake than I used to be. These days I just want my computer to work properly without too much intervention from me.
I’ve been using Kubuntu for a number of years, but I’m also hearing increasing complaints about how Canonical is running things. I don’t think I’m ready to switch to a new distro yet, but it wouldn’t hurt to know what’s out there.
Is Kubuntu still a good choice for an “it just works” KDE-based distro, or has it been surpassed?
Even though I’m not a huge fan of canonical, Ubuntu and its derivatives are still pretty good.
I personally prefer Debian these days. Since Ubuntu is based on Debian, most software/support sites work just fine, but it’s not so much “in the way” as Ubuntu.
And I have to say, the installer is very easy to use, especially if you already installed an OS before. Under half an hour.
Kubuntu is fine if you don’t mind the direction that Canonicla is heading.
Moving from Ubuntu to a debian based distro makes sense - a lot of stuff is familliar. Base debian is fine, but MX is a little more friendly. They have a KDE image here: https://mxlinux.org/download-links/
I’ve been using KDE Neon for the past several months. It seems to have the best overall mix of out-of-the-box usability and customization. I haven’t found anything I can’t do with it and lots of packages are readily available. Also no “political” exclusions so it allows you to install all the portable packages like Snap, FlatPak, etc. Don’t use it if you don’t want it, but it’s there if you need it.
Have you looked at tumbleweed? I’ve been using it without major issues for a few years across different devices. Perfect integration with plasma, rolling but stable distro, built in rollback feature, it’s great
I’ve been using Fedora Kinoite and I love it. I wanted the same use case you wanted. Pretty much something that gets out of the way and keeps on working.
Too be fair, I was mostly inspired to use it because of the Steam Deck. Kinoite is an immutable OS, so it will prevent you from modifying core system files accidentally. It does have a small learning curve, such as learning flatpak permissions and using Distrobox/Toolbox to install cli applications, but I mostly use my computers as a gaming station where I chuck steam, a browser, and a few other tools in there and leave most things as default.
I always feel like my OS is “clean” despite having used it for a year, which is really cool. I’m curious what others might think of it as an easy distro though (it is for me, at least)