Firstly I recommend Debian, I think the person above forgot to mention Debian and Ubuntu LTS update every 2 years and provide support for 5 years (if you don’t want to update).
Kubuntu like Ubuntu also has 2 releases a year (April/October).
That said snaps can have 5-10 second startup times and Ubuntu is trying to switch everyone to them so KDE Neon/Kubuntu will suddenly be really slow to start because a Snap got installed and your in a constant war to purge them from your box. It’s really annoying, I don’t recommend.
A few years back I switched to KDE Neon for the improved wayland support but the constant updates got annoying. It was stuff like config being lost, buttons moving around, etc… I was on Neon for less than 2 years (Debian updated to a version with fixed Wayland support). This is one of the reasons I don’t recommend a rolling release to people.
My issue with Fedora is Red Hat are incredibly poor at packaging. They’ll bump versions to bring in fixes and half ass dependency management as a result I have never had a Fedora installation that remained functional if I forgot to update it for a fortnight.
The 2 year update is nice because you get a fixed desktop for 2 years and Debian aims for LTS releases of everything.
The advantage here is KDE tends to focus on polish for the LTS., 5.21 was great (used in Debian release), 5.22 and 5.23 were a bit of a nightmare (KDE was rewriting a lot of screen stuff so you had issues). 5.27 is rock solid, etc…
So I accept having to add ‘non-free’ and ‘non-free-firmware’ to your repo list isn’t ‘normie’ froendly but its a one off effort for something that just works.
Of course, 5 years is the support window of Debian and Ubuntu without Ubuntu Pro (with it it’s 10 years). Kubuntu LTS is only 3 years though, so just keep that in mind.
Debian is pretty great if you’re fine with older versions of system software. User-facing software can be just as up-to-date using Flatpaks. I wouldn’t recommend it for certain tasks like gaming though, as an up-to-date kernel and up-to-date DE is beneficial.
Firstly I recommend Debian, I think the person above forgot to mention Debian and Ubuntu LTS update every 2 years and provide support for 5 years (if you don’t want to update).
Kubuntu like Ubuntu also has 2 releases a year (April/October).
That said snaps can have 5-10 second startup times and Ubuntu is trying to switch everyone to them so KDE Neon/Kubuntu will suddenly be really slow to start because a Snap got installed and your in a constant war to purge them from your box. It’s really annoying, I don’t recommend.
A few years back I switched to KDE Neon for the improved wayland support but the constant updates got annoying. It was stuff like config being lost, buttons moving around, etc… I was on Neon for less than 2 years (Debian updated to a version with fixed Wayland support). This is one of the reasons I don’t recommend a rolling release to people.
My issue with Fedora is Red Hat are incredibly poor at packaging. They’ll bump versions to bring in fixes and half ass dependency management as a result I have never had a Fedora installation that remained functional if I forgot to update it for a fortnight.
The 2 year update is nice because you get a fixed desktop for 2 years and Debian aims for LTS releases of everything.
The advantage here is KDE tends to focus on polish for the LTS., 5.21 was great (used in Debian release), 5.22 and 5.23 were a bit of a nightmare (KDE was rewriting a lot of screen stuff so you had issues). 5.27 is rock solid, etc…
So I accept having to add ‘non-free’ and ‘non-free-firmware’ to your repo list isn’t ‘normie’ froendly but its a one off effort for something that just works.
Of course, 5 years is the support window of Debian and Ubuntu without Ubuntu Pro (with it it’s 10 years). Kubuntu LTS is only 3 years though, so just keep that in mind.
Debian is pretty great if you’re fine with older versions of system software. User-facing software can be just as up-to-date using Flatpaks. I wouldn’t recommend it for certain tasks like gaming though, as an up-to-date kernel and up-to-date DE is beneficial.