Hi all!

I have a laptop running Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS and I want to switch to KDE Plasma 6.

How should I change over and why?

Option 1: Install KDE Plasma 6 alongside GNOME

Option 2: Backup and fresh install KDE Neon.

  • Irkiosan @lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Honestly, if I couldn’t wait, I’d go with Neon. There aren’t many other options anyway. Other considerations could be Arch or KaOS. I don’t know the timeframe for openSUSE Tumbleweed, however, they are usually super fast. It could be a matter of weeks when Plasma 6 will be offered if it’s isn’t already. If I could wait, Kubuntu 24.10 seems to be a reasonable choice (or any other distros you would consider that will ship Plasma 6 this year).

    I wouldn’t go with option 1. As far as I know, thy don’t offer Plasma 6 yet and I don’t know whether backporting Neon repos will work.

    • youmaynotknow@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      Fedora 40 KDE is pretty solid as it is already. I actually moved away because Gnome completely fucked it up by banning any 3rd party screen shot app based on the Apple mentality of “its for your protection”, which is total bullshit.

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I’ve managed to switch from GNOME to KDE, removing GNOME afterwards, and it was quite painless.

    KDE 6 isn’t available yet, though. The first one to get the new KDE is the distro it’s made for, so Arch, I think. Everyone else gotta wait, and it could be a while.

    • PerogiBoi@lemmy.caOP
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      8 months ago

      Ya that was a concern of mine. Even switching from x11 to Wayland causes scaling and some other features to reset for me.

      Have you tried Plasma 6?

      • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        Not yet. I’m a GNOME user and I also use Plasma 5 for customization (idk if 6 is compatible with old themes and stuff). Though I want to try it and see if there are any performance improvements

        • PerogiBoi@lemmy.caOP
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          8 months ago

          I’ve tried running KDE Neon in a VM and it seems that all Plasma 5 widgets and themes aren’t compatible so they don’t show up in search. Kind of a bummer.

          • Pantherina@feddit.de
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            8 months ago

            Thats just how it is. There are tons of extensions that also dont work in Plasma5 but its not sorted. There are porting guides for extension developers in the KDE lemmy

  • catloaf@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Install KDE. If shit breaks, install fresh.

    You can certainly have multiple DEs installed and run happily in parallel.

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    I’d install it alongside and buff the edges. If there’s no sources to install it from, or there are problems, I’d kill it and wait till it’s better.

  • terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 months ago

    What’s your hardware? Is Ubuntu your only option? Are you wanting to just drive KDE to see what it’s about? Are virtual machines an option?

    • PerogiBoi@lemmy.caOP
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      8 months ago

      Framework laptop with an AMD chip. I’ve tried Arch, Fedora, and some Debian based distros. Was trying out Neon in a VM but I noticed a lot of things (like theming) wasn’t compatible with the latest KDE version.

  • carzian@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    KDE Neon is going to be better supported than installing plasma on Ubuntu. Option 2 will be less of a headache long term I think.

  • Lantern@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I’m under the impression that you currently can’t install plasma 6 on Ubuntu, as the repos aren’t available yet. That would make option 2 the only possible option.

    • PerogiBoi@lemmy.caOP
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      8 months ago

      You’re right. Upon further research I found that Plasma 6 is only available on specific distros but apparently it’s still quite buggy.