MountainX wrote:

Kryten2X4B wrote: I have to wonder which distro would be best if one wants the most upstream-pure version of KDE? Arch? LFS...

From what I hear, the best two distros would be:
sidux
Chakra (or Arch + KDEmod)

KDEmod has some patches. The official KDE packages in Arch would be better if you want vanilla KDE.
Slackware also tends to provide (close to) vanilla packages.

According to LinuxFormat 126 openSUSE with Kubuntu a close second.

The best Linux distro?
Linux distros are nearer and nearer to look like MS Windows. Put a CD in the drive, click click and installation is done just a few clicks. OS is secure, safe, nobody need to read anything and voila...happy surfing. Soon we expected tons of viruses and everyone will be happy as now are happy Windows users.

I think KDE4 is actually more like a XeroX DandeLion or DandeTiger; you didn't have the desktop metaphor which Digital Research introduced and MS copied in the 1980s. You had a window within which you could open other windows of varying sizes to accomplish tasks; you could leave a task running in a window and you could move the windows around the screen if you wanted to make room for another window without upsetting what they were doing.

So I think KDE4 is a long-overdue move away from a rather limited view of what a computer interface should be.

PCLINUXOS

still think openSuse - most current release delivered timely (plus earlier and beta's are available if you're interested), large community and large 3rd party repositories (especially Packman).

Mandriva 2010, no doubt what-so-ever.

I'm still not having any luck with OpenSUSE, I keep getting kernal errors on this laptop, my netbook and my old desktop...

Dante Ashton wrote:I'm still not having any luck with OpenSUSE, I keep getting kernal errors on this laptop, my netbook and my old desktop...

Which version of openSUSE? I'm running 11.2 RC and it installed on my Thinkpad T61p better and easier than any other OS/distro ever has. However, over at the openSUSE forums, they are still advising most people to use 11.1 and wait until 11.2 has been released for a month or two to get all the bugs out.

Personally, I have not experienced a single glitch with it and this is by far the best KDE distro I have ever tried.

Why don't you post your problems over at http://forums.opensuse.org/ and see what they say? Good luck.

For me it's sidux, as up to date as Debian Sid can be and runs good on my older laptop.

I find openSUSE 11.2 to be far more seemless than 11.1 ( less memory usage by system services, my Logitech mouse worked fully OOTB )

I have compared, Sabayon, Kubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, sidux and Chakra. OpenSuse 11.2 KDE is the most problem free and properly configured of all I have tested on my hardware.

Fedora seemed to work well but it was not as complete a system out of the box as OpenSuse was. Sabayon never detects my monitor properly and always has more remaining bugs than the rest. Kubuntu has underlying issues remaining with Intel graphics. Mandriva did not integrate Firefox into KDE properly but other than that it was pretty nice. Chakra is still an alpha, it is coming along but not quite finished yet. sidux requires a lot of work to stay maintained and updating the system is a risky process.

OpenSuse 11.2 KDE has ran error free for me, Intel graphics are working right, the appearance is professional and even the tools seem native to the system. The system tools really stand out to me because the system is easy to administer once you find your way around. I see a lot of attention to detail and I do tend to look at everything! I consider OpenSuse to be the best KDE release right now. Your mileage may vary with the other distributions I mentioned but if you want your system to just work then OpenSuse is the distro to try first.

exploder wrote:I have compared, Sabayon, Kubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, sidux and Chakra. OpenSuse 11.2 KDE is the most problem free and properly configured of all I have tested on my hardware.

Fedora seemed to work well but it was not as complete a system out of the box as OpenSuse was. Sabayon never detects my monitor properly and always has more remaining bugs than the rest. Kubuntu has underlying issues remaining with Intel graphics. Mandriva did not integrate Firefox into KDE properly but other than that it was pretty nice. Chakra is still an alpha, it is coming along but not quite finished yet. sidux requires a lot of work to stay maintained and updating the system is a risky process.

OpenSuse 11.2 KDE has ran error free for me, Intel graphics are working right, the appearance is professional and even the tools seem native to the system. The system tools really stand out to me because the system is easy to administer once you find your way around. I see a lot of attention to detail and I do tend to look at everything! I consider OpenSuse to be the best KDE release right now. Your mileage may vary with the other distributions I mentioned but if you want your system to just work then OpenSuse is the distro to try first.

Wow, you compared a lot of distros. Thanks for sharing. Personally, I tried Kubuntu, sidux, openSUSE and Chakra (so not as many as you). My positive experiences with openSUSE, however, were exactly the same as yours.

exploder wrote:OpenSuse 11.2 KDE has ran error free for me, Intel graphics are working right,

Mostly...or it may be just my machine. Anyway, for me Suse refused to recognize the proper resolution for my combination of graphics adapter and monitor. Easily fixed by using Sax2 though - and not exclusive to Suse. I had the same problem using the latest kubuntu.

KWin works great with it (it being intel graphics, which in my experience was quite a lot more sluggish in 11.1 although there may have been some residual nvidia-files left-over from when I transfered my system-hd from one computer to the next that caused a conflict somewhere) though, but some programs (mostly games) refuses to "give back" the display to the WM when quit though - regardless of DE/WM so it's not a KDE issue. I'm not sure if it's a driver issue, bugs in those programs, or a configuration problem yet (or something else entirely for that matter).

Otherwise I agree with you!

I'm liking KDE in Mandriva. I also love sidux, very fast.