I'm more interested in hearing perspectives from the KDE staff specifically, since they probably have a better idea than anyone else what the difference is between the two distro's. Regardless, all users are welcome to share their thoughts here obviously.

I was wondering which is better, or I guess another way to put it, is which one is more stable generally? KDE Neon or Kubuntu? I already have Kubuntu, but it has a few annoying bugs, and I'm tempted to install KDE Neon, but I have before in the past and didn't notice much difference between the two, other than light vs dark themed task manager. Everything else seems identical. I can't remember if Neon has those bugs.

Which of the two would you recommend? Should I stick with Kubuntu? Or should I switch to KDE Neon?

The KDE staff run a wide variety of distros, as do the developers, so I imagine there are plenty who may not have much experience with *both* Kubuntu and Neon.
I am not staff, but I probably have more experience than most with using both, long term.

I have used Kubuntu as my main OS since it was first released, in 2005, and I am currently running 19.04 on my PC, and have also run Neon since the user edition was released in 2016. It is the main OS on my laptop, which is my main daily-driver computer.

Which one is *best* is up to you, and your needs. Mine may not be yours.

If you like getting updates more often, and have a small bit of Linux experience, Neon is a good choice.
If the semi-constant updating is bothersome, and getting things done is your thing - you are not terribly worried about updates as your system works very well for you, and perhaps may have less Linux experience, Kubuntu may be a good choice.

Kubuntu is pure Ubuntu, so most issues not related to Plasma are the exact same in Ubuntu. Kubuntu is an official 'Flavour' of Ubuntu.

Neon has just enough differences that a tiny bit of Linux experience is helpful, but not required of course, but the vast majority of issues will be the same or very similar to Ubuntu/Kubuntu Neon is not an official flavour, somewhat akin to distros like Mint, Elementary, or PopOS.

I probably will switch to KDE Neon once my PC dies in some way, and I have to either replace a drive or motherboard.
Or at least I keep telling myself that. I have been giving Kubuntu support and other things for nearly 15 years, so I am not sure I could just figuratively walk away from the OS too easily.
I think I will, though, next time.

I am with Clay here, this depends entirely on your use case, which might be very different from ours.

I use both, but on the same machine, in dual boot. One is Kubuntu 19.04 which is my daily work version, and I recently installed the Neon developer version which is bleeding edge and every now and then I want to see the new stuff ASAP. I have not had very often the occasion to boot in the other one yet, so every time I launch Neon I spend updating a lot and then just browse the Plasma novelties. The idea is to do some testing and report bugs I run across, but I haven't really found time to do this yet.

I have no use of the Neon User version, as I get Plasma updates fairly regularly on Kubuntu with the backports PPA.

As you see, this really depends a lot on what each person does on their machines.

but it has a few annoying bugs

You didn't tell which exact Kubuntu version you run, did you report these bugs? Bugs in Plasma or in an application?

Thank you everyone for the insight. I think I'll install KDE Neon and make the decision for myself.

@Mamarok

Where's the recommended place I report bugs? It might be resolved already, actually, as I'm using 18.04 LTS which is not the latest major version anymore.

The issue is with the desktop icons not refreshing. The trash and home icons will be duplicated if i put anything on my desktop. The duplicates can't be deleted, nor can they be interacted with, and they always move with beside specific icons when I move those icons. The trash also occasionally stays red instead of going blue when i empty it from the desktop configuration file. All these things are easily corrected by rebooting or by logging out and back in, though.

Hm, yes you use a rather old version, so how about upgrading first? LTS is something for corporate, private users should update their systems more regularly.
To report a bug about Plasma https://bugs.kde.org is the place, but for that you would need at least a recent version of it.

FWIW: to state the obvious: every use case is different, I don't have any application icons on my desktop but a few plasma widgets (e.g. clock), and see no problem for refreshing, but my desktop is not using the Folder View. Did you try the various settings in "Configure Desktop"?

kubuntu hands down.

Best KDE neon I use. Kde neon have rolling only KDE all apps updates!!! Oh my god really great!!! You try KDE neon 💙💙💙


My photo screen KDE neon look Latte dock beautiful


https://imgur.com/a/DHM8pHJ

been testing both kubuntu and kde neon, in VMs. and kde neon seems way more stable....


-ghostzshell

Mamarok wrote:Hm, yes you use a rather old version, so how about upgrading first? "?

Not to nit-pick, but I believe KDE Neon User Edition 5.17 is based on LTS Kubuntu 18.04. I may be wrong.

I have not found KDE Neon nor Kubuntu to be unstable. Either should work for you. I chose KDE Neon over Kubuntu over a year ago reasoning I would prefer to get more recent Plasma updates staying with LTS rather than staying with more current Kubuntu versions with fewer Plasma updates. Updates are provided almost daily and are trivial to apply.

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rob@sigma:~$ inxi -F
System:    Host: sigma Kernel: 4.15.0-76-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.17.5
           Distro: KDE neon User Edition 5.17
Machine:   Device: laptop System: ASUSTeK product: Strix 17 GL703GE v: 1.0 serial: N/A
           Mobo: ASUSTeK model: GL703GE v: 1.0 serial: N/A
           UEFI: American Megatrends v: GL703GE.318 date: 07/19/2019
Battery    BAT1: charge: 55.1 Wh 100.0% condition: 55.1/64.4 Wh (86%)
CPU:       6 core Intel Core i7-8750H (-MT-MCP-) cache: 9216 KB
           clock speeds: max: 4100 MHz 1: 900 MHz 2: 900 MHz 3: 900 MHz 4: 899 MHz 5: 899 MHz 6: 900 MHz
           7: 899 MHz 8: 899 MHz 9: 898 MHz 10: 900 MHz 11: 899 MHz 12: 900 MHz
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel Device 3e9b
           Card-2: NVIDIA GP107M [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile]
           Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.6 ) drivers: modesetting (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1920x1080@120.00hz
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel UHD Graphics 630 (Coffeelake 3x8 GT2) version: 4.5 Mesa 19.2.8
Audio:     Card Intel Cannon Lake PCH cAVS driver: snd_hda_intel Sound: ALSA v: k4.15.0-76-generic
Network:   Card-1: Intel Wireless-AC 9560 [Jefferson Peak] driver: iwlwifi
           IF: wlo1 state: up mac: 3a:70:47:d0:12:5d
           Card-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller driver: r8169
           IF: enp2s0 state: down mac: 18:31:bf:97:1b:fd
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 1256.3GB (8.0% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: Micron_1100_MTFD size: 256.1GB
           ID-2: /dev/sdb model: ST1000LM035 size: 1000.2GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 55G used: 18G (35%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda5
           ID-2: /home size: 119G used: 63G (56%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdb2
           ID-3: swap-1 size: 15.00GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sdb3
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 74.0C mobo: 27.8C
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: 0
Info:      Processes: 396 Uptime: 1 day Memory: 7275.0/15894.0MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.56
rob@sigma:~$






I personally prefer KDE neon over Ubuntu.
Reasoning is, I heard and experienced some instability issues in Kubuntu. I'd say KDE neon is the more bleeding edge/stable distro.

My personal reason for choosing Neon is because it's like a clean install of Windows 7 to me. There's nothing on it except for the base desktop and the standard applications like Firefox. Sure you can select the option in the Kubuntu install to not install any extra software, but I tend to like having an install of Plasma that has a small foot print right out of the box. Besides, you don't have to update Neon all the time. I basically just turned off those notifications and update when there are big releases, or if I am looking for a fix to something. But if it works for me, there is no need to fix it. But still, the updates are no where near as dreadful as Windows 10.

I came over to Neon after Mint KDE was going to be discontinued. From that day on, KDE Neon has been like crack is to drug addicts for me.

I'd say KDE Neon is great if you want to up to date KDE apps, and bugs to be fixed faster on the KDE side of things. The same goes for if you're looking to setup a more minimal type of install. From my perspective, I don't care if I'm not using bleeding edge software (Given that Ubuntu is on 19.04 and I'm on 18.04). I care about the fact that things work properly, and that I can use it in my day to day tasks.

Neon has been very stable that I don't even realize that I am using it anymore.

KDE in general has really saved my sanity after leaving Windows 7 as my full-time OS 4 years ago, and allowed me to skip Microsoft's train wreaks known as Windows 8 & 10.

Kubuntu + backports PPA repository to receive rolling KDE updates.

I'd love to go with KDE neon to have the latest and greatest stable KDE, but I'm not fond to the idea of having to stick with old versions of everything else -- from kernel and userland tools to graphical applications not packaged (or not working well) with Snap or Flatpak.

Right now I'm running Kubuntu 19.10 with KDE 5.18.3 (from the backports repository) while waiting for 20.04 LTS to be ready for the upgrade path, and so far everything is working almost too good, with the exception of the Activities sidebar widget shortcut not working at all -- a nuisance, but luckily not a show stopper as cycling through activities work as expected.

erm, you can upgrade to 20.04 since the day it came out

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FocalUpgrades/Kubuntu

Make sure you have the package ubuntu-release-upgrader-qt installed (which you should have since the last upgrade anyway) then:

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sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo do-release-upgrade -m desktop

cigo wrote:Kubuntu + backports PPA repository to receive rolling KDE updates.

I'd love to go with KDE neon to have the latest and greatest stable KDE, but I'm not fond to the idea of having to stick with old versions of everything else -- from kernel and userland tools to graphical applications not packaged (or not working well) with Snap or Flatpak.

Right now I'm running Kubuntu 19.10 with KDE 5.18.3 (from the backports repository) while waiting for 20.04 LTS to be ready for the upgrade path, and so far everything is working almost too good, with the exception of the Activities sidebar widget shortcut not working at all -- a nuisance, but luckily not a show stopper as cycling through activities work as expected.

neon is using Ubuntu's HWE, like most LTS users, and currently has the 5.3 kernel and driver stack, etc. 19.10's stuff. Many of the things that are old in neon/Kubuntu 18.04 are also still old in 19.10, and possibly even 20.04 - mainly those things from Universe that are packages imported directly from Debian - not touched by Ubuntu directly, and not officially 'supported'. Well, community supported, rather

Sure it is a tradeoff somewhat. After 15 years I do get tired of doing whole OS upgrades every 6 months, and still needing to add PPAs or use snaps/flatpaks to get up to date versions of the KDE and non-KDE things I use.

Of course it is like a glove. What fits your hand well not be so comfortable on mine.

kde neon is the best ; for three years i am using it daily , very stable and constant updates.
heavy duty for work for movies for games ; i deleted windows from three years and because of kde neon i am not going back.