Using Linux Mint right now, but planning to re-setup my laptop with a fresh install just to give it a new life. I can wait for sometime, but after some research, I found out Neon will be one of the trailblazers to adopt the new Ubuntu 26.04 (coming in two months) base. So I was just wondering if I am right, and what’s the typical lag between a new LTS Ubuntu release and corresponding Neon release.
Further, as someone who never used Neon before but looking forward to explore, should I go in with the expectation of a stable distro (Mint like) or more bleeding edge (Manjaro like)?
I don’t know how neon is a ‘trailblazer’ in this sense; it is just one of many third-party things based on Ubuntu LTS (Like Mint) that are available.
There is no timeline for the upgrade to the next LTS base, but historically, it has been roughly October, near the time Ubuntu releases the first point release ISO image. This is when Ubuntu officially enables LTS upgrades.
Neon will be a bit more current in terms of Plasma than Manjaro. It is “bleeding edge” if you consider the current official releases to be “bleeding”.
The underlying OS bits underneath will be the same as Mint - Ubuntu LTS.
So in a sense it is a little like both, leaning more toward Manjaro since the desktop is updated very often.
I have been using KDE Neon for years, because I want the latest KDE Plasma.
It is ups and downs, but mostly it runs great.
Actually I just made a video with some grand piano music, and suddenly I notices some pops/cracks in the audio. A bit disappointed I thought that it was the 10+ year old recording, but played it on my old iPhone, and no cracks, then on Apple iTV from YouTube with no cracks.
Today I upgraded my Ubuntu emergency partition to 26.04, and played my video with no cracks. During the upgrade I caught something with “realtek”, so something was upgraded.
So an rebased KDE Neon on Ubuntu 26.04 will be great.
Btw, I created a partition and installed KDE Linux, rebooted and created my user account, but am unable to login. KDE Neon is the best non-linux-distro out there.