If I run KDE Linux, what is minimal useful contribution? (Telemetry, bug reports)

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1

In current KDE Linux dev stage, if we can minimally help, is it useful to devs if we run it as daily driver? Specifically:

  • are number of active users counted and helpful?
  • Do you get useful telemetry if enabled in system preferences? (For example user with CPU A and GPU B is able to run KDE Linux)
  • Occasional bug reports

I am beyond excited about KDE Linux! Weighing switching to daily driver in this early stage.

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It’s really useful to run KDE Linux as a daily driver since the goal is for KDE Linux to be “The best Linux-based operating system you’ve ever used”. Using it as a daily driver and reporting issues is the best way to help reach that goal.

I find KDE Linux to be really stable. I’m using it since about a year and never had any groundbreaking issues, and in case you get one, you can still rollback to the previous version easily.

  1. There’s between 57k and 24h users of KDE Plasma (Not KDE Linux) who have enabled telemetry. There’s no data about users without telemetry. I don’t think it is helpful but it’s just good to know.
  2. I’ve heard that telemetry currently isn’t that useful. There’s a new version in the works tho Metrics (take 2) (#249) · Issues · Plasma / Plasma Desktop · GitLab
  3. This is the most impactful as it helps developers know about issues they may not have and fix them.
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thank you, really helpful!

I’ve just installed KDE linux with your encouragement, and there are tons of little touches that I really appreciate (user setup experience post install, etc)

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To expand very slightly on what Maledict mentioned, using KDE Linux and reporting issues is very helpful. KDE Linux is kind of weird operating system that departs quite heavily from the Linux-based OSs most of us are used to. As such there’s probably a lot that doesn’t work well, or at all.

Some of this we’re aware of (e.g. what’s mentioned at https://community.kde.org/KDE_Linux#Current_state) and some of this we’re not. For the things we’re not aware of, reporting issues is super duper helpful.

Turning on telemetry is fine, but unfortunately not very helpful indeed as the current system isn’t very useful. We’re hoping to replace it with an all new one later this year or early next year which will be more like the Steam hardware survey. Submitting your data for that once it’s rolled out will be very very helpful!

There is no active user count. We have no idea if the number of people using KDE Linux is closer to 10 or 10,000.

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Can’t that variation be reduced from the update-download stats?

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Possibly. I’m not much of a server admin type person, but we could probably know the number of downloads of the .raw images and the number of people updating their systems. The true number would lie somewhere in between those.