My observations after using Neon since it first came out. For me, Ive had very few issues. The issues I have had, thank goodness I was able to resolve on my own. In saying that, I have all but lost my love for this OS. When considering an OS/Distro, you have to also consider support. It makes me very sad to be able to feel users frustration over that fact there is no-one to help. Some users so frustrated they are moving on to another OS. No one knows what to do, or even where to post. Need help? Good luck. Users asking for staff to chime in, to get answers, and get nothing back. Ive tried to address this in PM to a Mod. No reply. I was being respectful, with no intention to belittle anyone here, realizing everyone here is a volunteer. I visit Distrowatch daily. If you want to know how good an OS is, visit the forum or IRC before going full in and doing an install. If you see constant complaints, questions never being addressed, Mods and Admin never present, you most likely should move on to "something else". There is nothing more disappointing then feeling like "hey we want you to download and use our Distro, but you aren't appreciated enough that we will even give you the time of day". Some users here just go on rants and seem to post constantly on much ado about nothing. When I was a SysOp we used to call them "karma whores". Forums are for questions and to receive help. Since the Neon forum does not have cats like the main KDE forum, no one has any way to post constructively. When questions arise, and all the users are confused or have posts left unanswered. At what point should a Mod, or Admin jump in. In my opinion, by volunteering here on staff, it is your duty to jump in within a reasonable amount of time. Even the Devs. KDE-Neon is not being represented in a positive way. In closing I will say I will be spending less and less time here. I have removed Neon from my RSS Feed. I cant shake the feeling of "use our OS, but otherwise f-ck-off". This hit me hard a few days ago when I saw yet another user beg for help, and finally said he was wiping Neon. And still, not one word from a Mod, Admin, or the Dev. This leads me to believe Neon perhaps wont last. I am very disappointed.

Ubulindy wrote:My observations after using Neon since it first came out. For me, Ive had very few issues. The issues I have had, thank goodness I was able to resolve on my own. In saying that, I have all but lost my love for this OS. When considering an OS/Distro, you have to also consider support. It makes me very sad to be able to feel users frustration over that fact there is no-one to help. Some users so frustrated they are moving on to another OS. No one knows what to do, or even where to post. Need help? Good luck. Users asking for staff to chime in, to get answers, and get nothing back. Ive tried to address this in PM to a Mod. No reply. I was being respectful, with no intention to belittle anyone here, realizing everyone here is a volunteer. I visit Distrowatch daily. If you want to know how good an OS is, visit the forum or IRC before going full in and doing an install. If you see constant complaints, questions never being addressed, Mods and Admin never present, you most likely should move on to "something else". There is nothing more disappointing then feeling like "hey we want you to download and use our Distro, but you aren't appreciated enough that we will even give you the time of day". Some users here just go on rants and seem to post constantly on much ado about nothing. When I was a SysOp we used to call them "karma whores". Forums are for questions and to receive help. Since the Neon forum does not have cats like the main KDE forum, no one has any way to post constructively. When questions arise, and all the users are confused or have posts left unanswered. At what point should a Mod, or Admin jump in. In my opinion, by volunteering here on staff, it is your duty to jump in within a reasonable amount of time. Even the Devs. KDE-Neon is not being represented in a positive way. In closing I will say I will be spending less and less time here. I have removed Neon from my RSS Feed. I cant shake the feeling of "use our OS, but otherwise f-ck-off". This hit me hard a few days ago when I saw yet another user beg for help, and finally said he was wiping Neon. And still, not one word from a Mod, Admin, or the Dev. This leads me to believe Neon perhaps wont last. I am very disappointed.

Well said.

You may wish to adjust the subject of this post as per the policy

There are so many things going on in these ramblings I find it hard to comment on it as a whole. So instead let's look at this step by step.

Ubulindy wrote:My observations after using Neon since it first came out. For me, Ive had very few issues. The issues I have had, thank goodness I was able to resolve on my own. In saying that, I have all but lost my love for this OS.

Sounds to me like you are well off with neon then.

Ubulindy wrote:When considering an OS/Distro, you have to also consider support.

Absolutely.

Ubulindy wrote:It makes me very sad to be able to feel users frustration over that fact there is no-one to help.

Sad as that may be. There is no one to help because no one wants to do it on the fourms. It's literally a matter of someone just sitting down and doing it. KDE is not a for-profit company, we do not have a support staff, nor would our donors be all that happy we started spending the donations we get on hiring support staff.

Ubulindy wrote:Some users so frustrated they are moving on to another OS.

That is the way of life. People's perception of things changes over time and sometimes they find themselves discontent. Neon is striving for a very specific thing, it targets a very specific audience, and I am sorry to say that not everyone is going to be happy with it.

Ubulindy wrote:No one knows what to do, or even where to post. Need help? Good luck.

Juding by the amount of people helping each other in the Neon Telegram group, I'd say that figuring out where the cool kids hang out is not an insurmountable task.

Ubulindy wrote:Users asking for staff to chime in, to get answers, and get nothing back. Ive tried to address this in PM to a Mod. No reply. I was being respectful, with no intention to belittle anyone here, realizing everyone here is a volunteer.

The forum staff is here to moderate and manage the forums. They are not here to play free support staff, nor can you expect them to have the technical expertise to do so.

Ubulindy wrote:I visit Distrowatch daily.

Ah well, to each their own.

Ubulindy wrote:If you want to know how good an OS is, visit the forum or IRC before going full in and doing an install. If you see constant complaints, questions never being addressed, Mods and Admin never present, you most likely should move on to "something else".

The OS in our case is Ubuntu/Debian/Linux.

Ubulindy wrote:There is nothing more disappointing then feeling like "hey we want you to download and use our Distro, but you aren't appreciated enough that we will even give you the time of day".

That is a curious thing to say. Me spending thousands of hours of my life on a piece of software, then giving it to you for free with no strings attached is a disappointment? What kind of self-entitled sort of way of looking at things is that? Should I also come by your place and install the software for you and vacuum the house and clean out the rain gutters while I am there?

I will also point out that if anyone wants to talk to a dev they need only hop on IRC. A fact you yourself pointed out as mentioned on the website viewtopic.php?f=309&t=140944&p=378223#p378223 After which I haven't seen the questions raised on IRC, so I am assuming it is more of an unwillingness to get answers than anything else.

Ubulindy wrote:Some users here just go on rants and seem to post constantly on much ado about nothing.

So I've noticed.

Ubulindy wrote:When I was a SysOp we used to call them "karma whores". Forums are for questions and to receive help. Since the Neon forum does not have cats like the main KDE forum, no one has any way to post constructively.

I do not see how categories would solve the problem of people getting their balls in a twist over nothing, they'd just do it in multiple categories instead.

Ubulindy wrote:When questions arise, and all the users are confused or have posts left unanswered. At what point should a Mod, or Admin jump in. In my opinion, by volunteering here on staff, it is your duty to jump in within a reasonable amount of time. Even the Devs.

As pointed out, the forum staff is not a free support staff, and the developers are busy making the software. Your thinking that it is any volunteer's duty to do anything is rooted in self-entitlement and nothing more.

But let me be very clear about this. A developer could spend 45 minutes replying to a forum post, as I am doing now, which is *maybe* going to help a handful of people. That same developer could also spend these 45 minutes implementing a bug fix benefiting the thousands of users of the software.
Me writing this reply is costing every neon user, 99.9% of them will never know that I wrote it let alone care. The majority of them would care about a bugfix in a KDE framework though.

The fact that you found it necesary to write a sensationalist forum post is right now costing everyone. I sure hope the warm feeling of attention was worth it.

Ubulindy wrote:KDE-Neon is not being represented in a positive way. In closing I will say I will be spending less and less time here. I have removed Neon from my RSS Feed. I cant shake the feeling of "use our OS, but otherwise f-ck-off". This hit me hard a few days ago when I saw yet another user beg for help, and finally said he was wiping Neon. And still, not one word from a Mod, Admin, or the Dev. This leads me to believe Neon perhaps wont last. I am very disappointed.

As neon leaves you disappointed because developers are spending their time developing I fear it best if you look for another system to use, where developers are spending their days musing on forums, blogs or what have you.
Alternatively, we can work out an arrangement where people can hire me to reply to their forum posts so they feel more loved (this is going to cost a bit).

HS

@Harald Your clarifications are more than welcome. Thank you.

@Ubulindy

What we (or at least I) have consciously chosen to ignore is that KDE Neon is not an a Distro proper. While it's wonderful, it might not be suitable for the everyday user as I understand the meaning of "an everyday user". So nope, Neon is not KDE's distro and they never claimed it was, although they spelled a convenient "not quite".

All that said, I still have nothing but the deepest appreciation and respect for the Neon Team and their work.

My definition of every day user would be a home user.

Printing? Check!
Audio/Video? Check!
Playing Steam-Games? Check!
Writing/Calculating? Check!
eMail? Check!
Web-Browsing? Check!
Virtual Machines? Check!
Microsoft/Apple compatible filesharing? Check!
Filesystem-Snapshots? Check! (Install it on BtrFs)

And all of this on the newest KDE Plasma? ChekkityCheck!

What's missing at home? For me and my entertainment and
my computing experience? Nothing.

And You can always install it in parallel to
Windows/MacOS/Debian/BSD/Solaris/…
either on bare metal or in a Virtual Machine
or as live-CD/USB.

I do all this on one and the same machine
with internal and external harddrives.
And all of it works. Beforehand, You have to read and think.
But Reading and Thinking is fun.

If Youwant to have only one OS-variant on Your Hardware,
it could very well be "KDE neon" only. Then:
Don't read. Don't think. Just install.

Of course, if You never used a Unix-like OS
before there will be unexpected questions.

But most often those won't be 'KDE Plasma'-questions.

And the Ubuntu and Debian Forums are available
for help on all levels of preexisting knowledge.

I'm not pretending to have much previous knowledge about Unix-like OSs but I sure won't shy away from formulating questions when I don't understand something. KDE Neon is indeed suitable for all you've checked but it's not a distro. It's a showcase on top of Ubuntu featuring the latest KDE technology. The only convenient way for me to manage it is Apt. But Apt, although straightforward, will scare the heck out of a new user coming over from that corporate OS. While Neon is suitable for me, it might not be suitable for what they call a "wider audience".

Edit: At least I have some sort of confirmation that I haven't dreamed those things in Discover. Which is good.

For me missing in-house and complete GUI ppa and package manager is pain...

Neon may not be for you, but I’ve tried many many Linux distros in the past 10 years, including Ubuntu, Mint, OpenSuse, Zorin, Fedora, Netrunner, Maui, KaOs, Manjaro just to name a few. I’ve finally have found a rock solid distro, or what ever you want to call it, and have installed on 2 dozen machines at work, and home for over a year now. I must say that KDE neon is the BEST Linux OS in my opinion bar none!

I echo fredhoud's comments above.
I'm a distro hopper, but Neon has stayed on my machine longer than any other. IMO it is the best KDE implementation that there is. I particularly like the minimalistic aspect of it, meaning everything I install is what I personally use.
However I would like an answer to the original question. Is KDE-Neon just a side project, or is it here for the long-term?
The reason I ask is that I've recommended it to a number of people, who are more than satisfied, & it would be a shame if this project doesn't last.
I know no-one has a crystal ball, but are there any long-term aims here?

ps. Thanks for all your hardwork, & producing a wonderful Distro.

Is KDE-Neon just a side project?

@Ubulindy No, it is the main project. For the most part it works okay. Closure anytime soon?

I miss the fatherly guidance too ... but it is what it is.

However I would like an answer to the original question. Is KDE-Neon just a side project, or is it here for the long-term?

@waynes I think it's here for the long term. 5.8.7 is quite enjoyable and looking forward to 5.12. Oh, I also like that it's not bloated with anything unnecessary.

Eneen wrote:For me missing in-house and complete GUI ppa and package manager is pain...

@Eneen Yeah, I can understand what you mean. Used to feel the same until I got comfy with Konsole. It's a nice, clean, honest tool.

Several months ago I looked very seriously at Neon as my distro of choice. It was everything I needed. It had the basic programs I needed but no extra bloat I don't. Yet it had access to all of the Ubuntu repos for any missing programs. But the fact that its was very confusing as to whether or not its a distro left a bad taste in my mouth. All their marketing and the fact they are working with manufacturers to produce a KDENeon based notebook, screams that its a distro. But all the info on the website says its just a project to showcase the latest KDE software. Since I wanted a distro with an active forum and a maintainer to help with questions I moved on to Maui.

Maui is based on Neon. So its very similar. But unlike Neon, Maui is a distro and has a forum and community like you would expect. If you like Neon but want something a little more full featured with a forum and active maintainer look into Maui. As solid as Neon is, I really think Neon is best used as a base for distros and not a distro in itself. Unfortunately, Maui is the only distro so far that is based on Neon. Its a great distro, but I do hope to see others take its lead and build on top of Neon.

Couple of points. Maui may be more suitable for a beginner, as it offer a better support, but does not offer encryption, which is a must for me. Second, it is based on Neon indeed, so without Neon no Maui!