From install to daily driver: my KDE neon setup & impressions

Brainstorm
1

Hi everyone,

I just joined the forums and wanted to introduce myself as a new KDE neon user. I’ve hopped around different Linux distros before, but KDE neon has really impressed me so far. The installation was smooth, the desktop feels polished, and Plasma strikes me as the most complete and customizable environment I’ve used.

Right after install, I set up the basics: I pulled all the office fonts out of an old Office 2007 ISO so documents look right, then installed the NVIDIA drivers via Ubuntu’s driver manager. That part was painless — no errors, no black screens, just working drivers straight away. After that, I added Steam, Heroic Launcher, and Ultimaker Cura. Everything launched without dependency issues, gaming has been stable.

Plasma itself has been the biggest highlight. It’s fast, responsive, and highly customizable without feeling bloated. KDE neon really nails the balance of having the latest Plasma updates on top of the reliable Ubuntu LTS base. Compared to other distros, I’ve spent far less time troubleshooting and more time actually using my system.

I’ve also made a few tweaks for my workflow:

  • I increased the swap file from the default ~500 MB to 15 GB (I’ve got 16 GB RAM, ~13 GB usable with the NVIDIA GPU). This gives me some extra headroom for heavier tasks.

  • In Cura, I disabled USB printing — models load noticeably faster that way, and exporting gcode to SD card suits my 3D printing workflow.

  • When I disabled IPv6 on my Wi-Fi, Samba broke completely until I re-enabled it. Not a big deal now that I know, but definitely unexpected.

Quirks aside, KDE neon has been one of the smoothest Linux experiences I’ve had. It feels modern, efficient, and reliable as a daily driver.

3 Likes
2

Been my daily driver for years now (the same installation, simply updated). I can count the serious hiccups on one hand. It has been an exceptional experience and every problem I have had has been either the fault of the user (me) or hardware. It is incredibly fast, even on older systems. I have become a recent convert to Wayland even though I use Nvidia, and so far, I am in love with it. Wayland is smooth as silk. Makes X11 feel like a clunky dinosaur. Gaming has been flawless. 100% of the games I play work out of the box, both via Wine and Steam, from Wing Commander (1990), to Wukon (2024).

I do video editing with Resolve, 3D rendering with Blender, run DAWs with hardware recording interfaces, scan and print high quality photos, and shunt entertainment data out to my home entertainment system and have created a 6 monitor video wall. I have no problem recommending Neon to anybody for any use, and regularly do. It is, IMO the best KDE implementation among the major distros I have tried, and I have tried them all.