I want to use Plasma 6, and my requirement is a Debian (or Ubuntu) based distro. There is Tuxedo OS which I am not familiar with, and KDE Neon which I used for 2 years until the Plasma 6 update which was a complete failed attempt IMO by the KDE Neon devs and they do work hard, no faulting them.
Has Anyone used the latest Plasma 6 KDE Neon as a daily driver? I am a content creator, mainly for Youtube and freelance work.
Thanks.
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Been using neon since the User Edition came out in 2016.
Many use it daily.
The Plasma 5-to-6 upgrade WAS terrible for many. Everyone had at least some minor issues that were quickly fixed. But overall it was not pretty for a lot of people.
Tuxedo uses KDE neon/ubuntu, package-wise and OS-wise.
But imo Plasma 6 is in MUCH better state after a few months than Plasma 5 was at the same point after it’s release. It is fairly close to being on par with Plasma 5.27 in terms of stability.
Kubuntu looks like it will have Plasma 6 in its upcoming 24.10 release, so you will have another option to consider as well.
Everything you use for your work in KDE neon previously should be just fine, and maybe even better once neon moves to the more current 24.04 base (next month hopefully), and Kubuntu 24.10 comes out in October.
I do daily drive neon on both my laptop and desktop, though much of my work is web based. I have had no issue with my minor video editing forays (Openshot) and minimal work with Audacity and OBS. I am limited by my more meager hardware specs at the moment - desktop is an i5-7500t, no external GPU.
But I also had zero issues with gaming or a touch more video editing on my previous system --13th gen i5 PC with an RX6650XT. In terms of Steam, Openshot, OBS, or Kdenlive, there were zero differences between Plasma 5 and 6 for me.
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Thanks for your reply.
Is Tuxedo OS just Neon but more stable? I didn’t know about KDE Neon might move to 24.04, I wonder If I should just wait or go for it now and upgrade?
I got traumatized after the Plasma update.
If you were traumatized, then maybe wait. Distro upgrades have been fine imo, but this will only be the fourth time it has happened, though the process and tool used is identical to *buntu upgrades. YMMV.
Tuxedo being more stable? I cannot say. But they do add stuff, mainly for supporting their computers. They also iirc hold back updates so there is a buffer, if you will. I have no issue recommending it. But I can’t say if it is “better” or not.
And despite your requirements for Debian/Ubuntu, I would not rule out Fedora, or others. As a 20 year user of Kubuntu, neon, and Debian-ish systems almost exclusively, Fedora is not at all hard to use or learn. For me, it involved a different set of post-install steps than neon does, but not more. Just different. But this will be different for each person’s use case. Just something to consider, and provide other valid options.
I have been using Fedora on whatever laptop I have lately, but I moved back to neon specifically in prep for testing upgrades to 24.04.
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My understanding is that Tuxedo OS is based on Kubuntu LTS, not on Neon.
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If it were, it would only have Plasma 5, and thus actually be based on Ubuntu (just like neon is), since Kubuntu is not a separate distro.
Tux have their own mirrors for neon’s Plasma packaging.
In any case, a brief look at the package list for their current ISO clearly shows that they are using neon’s packaging for Plasma.
plasma-activities 6.1.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build15
plasma-activities-stats 6.1.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build12
plasma-browser-integration 6.1.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build62
plasma-calendar-addons 4:6.1.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build54
plasma-dataengines-addons 4:6.1.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build54
plasma-desktop 4:6.1.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build81
plasma-discover 6.1.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build72
plasma-discover-backend-flatpak 6.1.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build72
plasma-discover-common 6.1.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build72
plasma-disks 6.1.3-0xneon+22.04+jammy+release+build44
According to What are the differences between TUXEDO OS and Ubuntu/Kubuntu? it’s based on Ubuntu.
With the release of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS “Jammy Jellyfish”, TUXEDO OS received a new desktop environment with KDE Plasma, replacing Budgie as the default desktop
I have been using Neon as a daily driver for the past couple of years, and for me, the update to Plasma 6 was relatively benign. I put that down to having a well sorted system prior to the update, and waiting a week before I did the upgrade (I operate under the old adage: “fools rush in”).
As far as I am concerned, Neon has been the most stable and trouble free OS I have ever used, and that includes Windows. There are some “irritants” like odd Kwin behavior, but that has nothing to do with Neon specifically.
The 6.5 kernel was IMO problematic, and a lot of my issues these past few months have been resolved with the update to Kernel 6.8. Wayland is still a long way from being ready for prime time, and useless for games or graphics processing, so I will remain with X11 for the foreseeable future.
I also keep a running copy of the latest Kubuntu (I admin the Kubuntu group on Facebook) which is 95% similar to Neon, with the exception that 24.04 is using Plasma 5.
Would I recommend Neon to a new-to-linux user? No. I would recommend Kubuntu, as there are not as many automated tools in Neon (like the drivers app) and it does require a bit of knowledge to configure properly. As there is no compelling reason other than “its the latest” to switch to plasma 6, I suggest you install Kubuntu 24.10 with Plasma 5, learn it, and come October, upgrade it to 24.10 and Plasma 6 at that time.
I do not recommend Tuxedo as it is designed around their own hardware.
If you can use other bases I honestly would recommend open suse slowroll. You get some guis even if they look a bit dated but they work. An you get stable updates monthly an security patches as they come down asap.
Neon is good though if you want kde as kde intends then its the one to go with.
I’ve actually been using Neon for quite a few years, and before that I was using Debian (mostly sid). Not new to KDE, and definitely not new to Linux 
Yes, I saw that. Sorry. I was being more generic and should not have used “you” (I thought about editing it to “they”, but figured it was not important ).
If you (they) know the differences between the Kubuntu way and the Neon way, then I have no problem recommending Neon to anybody. I do not consider the update to P6 a failure in anyway. It was the most trouble free major release KDE has done in 25 years (I have been using it since 1999. The update from 3 to 4 was bad, and the update from 4 to 5 was far worse - it was so bad I ended up using Gnome for almost 2 years before Plasma was stable enough to use daily and I returned to KDE). No, it was not perfect, but it was not expected to be… nothing brand new ever is in anything in life.
Those who had major problems seem to all have been using modifications or customizations that broke, had improperly setup devices, or a misconfigured base system, as would be expected. I restored my KDE to default before upgrading.
It seems a lot of people appeared to be doing things the wrong way like applying old methods, or methods appropriate for Kubuntu but not Neon (like using aptitude commands when Neon is built around pkcon).
I think the Neon team got far more grief than they deserved, as IMO most of the problems lay between the chair and the desk, not the OS (this applies to myself as well).
Nobody should have been caught off guard by the update, but it seems a whole lot of people were, which means they were not paying attention, as it was well publicized. Not checking updates before applying them to know what is actually being done seems to be another common thread. To me, that is on them.
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Yeah, 4 to 5 was brutal, but I prepared myself (I thought) for 5 to 6 by waiting for over a month. That’s were I failed. By waiting for that time, I held back some updates, obviously plasma related. Somewhere there is where my failure occurred. I obviously slipped up and either updated/upgraded something that had a dependency and I broke my system. I always used pkcon, although that’s more of a failsafe for people who don’t use apt as recommended by the Neon team.
That is interesting as the first problems with P6 for me started about a month after the launch and the first couple of updates. Initially, it worked great. Things got progressively more broken after 6.1, but have now been mostly resolved with the update to the 6.8 kernel, Plasma 6.1.4, QT 6.7.2, and regressing the graphics driver down a version.
Do you have a dedicated GPU? Because I think my Nvidia GPU and multiple monitor setup (not the monitors though) played a role in the decisions of what to update and what not to hold back from going to P6 is what heavily contributed to my system failure.
As a Neon user for many years, it amazes me that Wayland still seems rather unpolished after all these years.
I am still happy to switch to Wayland as X11 has serious frame dropping issues on my device. I can overcome many of the issues with using it but I am not sure that everyone can, some of my friends simply switch Wayland back to X11 to avoid many configurations being broken.
I was using two dedicated Nvidia GPUs with 5 monitors. I simplified it down a couple of weeks ago to one GPU and 2 monitors when I decided to give Wayland a serious go as it does not support mult-gpu/monitor mosaic like Windows and X-11. It was shocking to watch Cyberpunk 2077 drop to 30fps in Wayland (Xwayland).
What is your device? X is very efficient so the issue is likely driver related.
Mesa Intel® UHD Graphics 630
I set the frame rate at 75Hz, which was good at the beginning, and gradually dropped to 25-15Hz as I used it for a longer period of time. after restarting kwin_x11 it went back to 75Hz.
I’m glad Wayland has solved at least this one problem for me.
I’ve given up on Wayland for now as there are so many programs I use (people call them apps now, in my day we use to call them programs 
) that simply don’t work. I use a lot of emulation software for 8 bit and to some degree 16 bit micros. Most just refuse to work in Wayland.
I, too, use it daily for all my current PCs (tablet PCs, Laptops, Desktop) with very various type of jobs. KDE-Neon was, for me, the only one offering at the same time Ubuntu (Debian) compatibility, full screen auto-rotate, virtual keyboard (Maliit), multi-channels digital audio support (for home cinema) and many other features and gui improvements which allowed to quit Microsoft Windows.
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