I've tried the iso. Sadly it doesn't have an "advanced mode".
For example, in debian there's an option "advanced mode" installation, and in the advanced mode you can set raid 0 as an example. You get more control.

Do we know if there's a parameter or anything to more advanced options?

As posted elsewhere Neon is moving to a Ubuntu 'Focal' 20.04 base and an ISO snapshot preview is now available at:

https://files.kde.org/neon/images/focal-preview/user/

I had a go yesterday and it is very impressive. The install now uses Calamares, which is very slick, straightforward to use and much quicker than the previous installer.

Only two issues I had was no Amarok in the repos (sad face) and an odd issue with Lightdm. I typically add the xfce packages to kde/plasma which I did. With the focal base, Lightdm dislodges sddm from being the system dm. I did a forced reinstall of sddm and uninstalled Lightdm. Uninstalling Lightdm uninstalled a number of core plasma packages (which seemed strange). Anyway I reinstalled the core plasma packages which had been uninstalled, rebooted and everything was fine.

Amarok is gone because KDE 4 stuff is long gone from distro repos everywhere.

The lightdm takeover is normal, actually. Or installing any DM for that matter. It is not a Neon specific thing.

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg-reconfigure sddm

or

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

should allow you to select the default one to use.


It is also possible to install xfce without also pulling in things like a DM, assuming you get your xfce via xubuntu-desktop. Just install xfce4, though this will be a very barebones desktop.

Thanks very much for posting. I do install by installing:

xfce4

That is a really useful command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure sddm

Thanks, I will make a note of this for the future. I am still getting used to the atp/deb world - having been used to the rpm world.

Can anyone tell me why Calamares created a swap partition double the size of RAM installed? I have 4gb (3.8 ) RAM and the swap partition it created was 8.3gb.

kdeoldster wrote:Can anyone tell me why Calamares created a swap partition double the size of RAM installed? I have 4gb (3.8 ) RAM and the swap partition it created was 8.3gb.

Probably because the old, longstanding standard estimated swap size is 1.5x to 2x the amount of ram, to allow for hibernation.
*buntu long ago disabled hibernation, so Ubiquity was changed to make the swap partition size smaller (actually, a swap file these days).
I believe that it used to set the swap to the 2x ram figure before hibernation was disabled.

Being a preview, they probably have not deviated from some of Calamares' default options at this time.

I'am very happy to read this. Thank you very much for the great work you all do!