For my next build, I'm looking for a distribution that comes with KDE and is as bug free as possible. My idea is to make sure the system works as reliably as possible within reason, and if I need newer libraries, then I'll just use chroots or manually link libraries without touching my core system. I've used various flavors of Ubuntu for a while including Kubuntu and Xubuntu, and I'm ready to move onto something a bit less glitchy.

The two distributions I've narrowed it down to are Debian Stable and OpenSUSE. Debian Stable is supposedly one of the most stable distros out there, while OpenSUSE supposedly has more natural integration with KDE. So it's a question of the intrinsic stability of the distro, versus how much it meshes with the particular desktop environment I'll be using. At first I thought I should go with Debian Stable, but then I asked on #kde on Freenode, and I was told that OpenSUSE is what I'm looking for.

What is the opinion of the forum? Is either of those two choices more solid, or should I possibly go with something else like Mageia or CentOS? As much as I'd like to be able to "try it and see", booting up a live USB won't tell me enough about the long-term reliability of either distro when used with KDE, so I am asking for opinions here.


Thank you very much!

openSUSE offers you the choice of three levels of involvement: Evergreen which keeps everything the same apart from security updates for three years, Tumbleweed which gives you bleeding edge updates and the eight monthly distros which offer security and stable updates for 18 months. You can choose the level of stability you want.

openSUSE also has support for KDE3 packages; so if there is the occasional KDE3 package like Extcalc that you need, you can run it happily alongside KDE4.

KaOS