KDE Neon
Entering the KDE/Qt environment after 10 years of GTK applications
I’ve spent the last two years with Fedora, being totally satisfied by the stability it offers and the vast library of up-to-date packages. I’ve tweaked Gnome and XFCE to the bone, added a tiling WM session (i3 then Wayland) to keep on exploring new workflows. And then I wondered: what if I tried something new? How can I continue to enhance my Linux experience?
What about… leaving the GTK universe I was so familiar with, to give an extensive shot at the KDE/Qt desktops? Of course, I’ve installed a few KDE desktops images during the last years, and I was monitoring the LXQt desktop development out of curiosity, but without being convinced by the simplicity/homogeneity of their implementation: Kvantum hacks, tray bar inconsistencies and such are deal breakers for me. I need my desktop to be pixel-perfect and avoid any Qt/GTK apps mixing.
Then I came accross KDE Neon.
KDE Neon
A package archive with the latest KDE software on top of a stable base. While we have installable images, unlike full Linux distributions we’re only interested in KDE software.
KDE Neon is developped by the KDE team and focused on creating a full KDE/Qt experience using Ubuntu to provides a stable LTS base.
The KDE implementation is flawless, the softwares choice is limited but coherent, and just waiting to be enhanced by the user. Everything works out of the box and doesn’t require much customization to be perfect.
Customization
I chose to deactivate two KDE Neon native tools: Snap and Plasma-discover. This a personal choice as I do not want to install Snap packages and only use terminal commands to install and upgrade packages.
I keep track of each customization in my Gitlab. Have a look at the dotfiles if you’re ever interested by my packages selection.
KDE neon is now my daily drive. And I can’t see any reason to change.
Until next time!
