What is the plan “b” for when ubuntu is no longer a viable/desirable/etc base for kde neon?
Is there even a plan “b”?
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I suppose Fedora as base? Their KDE experience is en par with Arch I would say
Both Arch and Fedora have been informally discussed. Personally I’m in favor of switching over now! 
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I would really love for it to switch to Arch, but is it really a good idea ?
Arch has been really great for me, but moving a from an Ubuntu-lts to bleeding edge is a big jump don’t you think ?
Yes, Fedora is still some sort of rolling release, but to a lesser degree, the transition would be smoother I think.
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I really like Arch now that it’s installed but would suggest it’s DIY installation and set-up process may not be right for neon. Also, what would be the difference between neon-based-on-Arch and just plain Arch?
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There could be an installer, like on Endeavour or Manjaro, so no DIY/terminal involve.
But I do agree with you on your last point.
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shrug Wondering if there are any plans to abandon the current semi rolling approach for plasma combined with the stable LTS base. So Debian Stable would probl. be more along that argumentation line, instead of Fedora and Arch (with the latter being really bleeding edge).
But, what do I know… whatever works best for Neon. Am happy with the way Plasma is currently supported on *BSD.
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The question is “what is the best base OS for the Developers of Plasma and KDE Applications?” Do you need a stable base, or do you need something that is up to date, such as openSUSE Tumbleweed, or possibly openSUSE SlowRoll, or Arch, or Fedora? Is a 6 month old Fedora new enough?
I know the users like to see what’s new in Plasma, but if this is a development platform, the Devs should always come first.
With IBM buying Red Hat, I am still watching very closely and so far, I don’t like what I see.
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I’m a pretty happy Neon user right now. So while I like “plan b’s” in general, the current Neon distro: Stability is quite good, kde-packages are great, and the underlying base is ok. If there were something I’d wish for, it might be even more Flatpack centrality (and less dpkg). But yeah, I haven’t seen any other distro compete well against Neon since the old Kubuntu from several years ago.
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Ubuntu is based on debian right, so keeping debian as the base might help transition easy I guess.
I love KDE any way it presents itself 
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Arch would be the best since Valve is already using it for the Steam deck. After all, the future is all about snap or flatpak for the desktop.
Right now, Debian is pretty fresh, but later, when it is two years old, who would want to use it as their development platform?
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Perhaps the critical question is, what is actually the intended use case for KDE Neon?
If it’s a general purpose distribution for “users”, then I would assume adopting a base that also targets general purpose usage with minimal “system administration” required to get going - like Ubuntu - would be most effective.
If it’s to provide a software development space and tech preview for KDE products, then “just install it and get going” abilities would seem less important than things like more timely base system package updates. Fedora seems decently well-supported in that regard, and would probably be the best point-release model.
A true rolling-release model is probably closest to what would best support KDE software, but I don’t know that either of the main rolling bases (Arch or openSUSE) would fit the “general user” use case amazingly well. openSUSE probably comes closer than Arch on the developer front?
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I think https://kaosx.us/ would be cool.
Arch Rolling Experience + Plasma Desktop + KDE Official Support + Calamares Installer
= The best distro in the world 
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The funny thing is that SteamOS’s snapshot base image approach transforms Arch in some fundamental ways:
- from Linux enthusiast requirements to easy as heck
- from developer-friendly and fully customizeable to immutable and throwing away any changes on the next update, which isn’t great for DE development
- from rolling to moderately frequent drops
I figure Neon would only consider standard Arch as a base rather than immutable snapshot Arch. A middle ground seems possible, but that’s what Manjaro is doing and Arch developers generally frown upon their approach.
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On the other hand, if the Neon team could produce an Arch-based distro with releases for both:
- a standard Arch base for developers/enthusiasts (perhaps taking a page from EndeavorOS for easier installs? or else what’s even the point over mainline Arch?)
- and immutable image snapshots for “regular users” and pure beta testers, like SteamOS but meant for actual desktops
then that could be a winning formula. Different flavors for different target audiences produced by the same underlying infrastructure.
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I thought the point of Neon is to have a stable Kubuntu with uptodate KDE packages.
I can’t see how Arch, Fedora etc… would be a good base for Neon. Debian could be an alternative.
As for immutable distros: Why not contribute to the Fedora and Opensuse immutable distros?
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Fedora and openSUSE are open source and free, but most main decisions are made and voted by designed groups from their main sponsors.
KDE has the full potential to create and maintain its own Arch distribution without being restricted or interrupted by any company.
As a user, I always thought LTS or Debian stable makes a poor base for desktop-focused distributions. Sure an up-to-date KDE overlay is nice, but I still don’t want to use a 2-year-old Inkscape, Firefox, VPN support, graphics driver or systemd.
If I think the latest KDE software is worth using, I probably also think the rest of my system is better off with non-outdated software elsewhere. Free Software generally gets better over time, “stability” promises notwithstanding. Many UI programs are available as flatpak, however the same is not true for the underlying hardware support and system-level services.
I just might not care as much about getting updates for my base system as frequently as for the software I interact with on a daily basis. But yeah, definitely get me those updates to the rest of the system at least so that no distro packages are more than a year older than the currently released version.
That’s me with my end user hat on. As a KDE developer, of course the more rolling (while still mostly stable), the better. Arch does this well and obviously I won’t recommend it to people who aren’t big into Linux. But Arch snapshots, immutable and with a bit of extra testing, have the potential to work for end users where LTS-based distros have always failed. In addition to being free from corporate meddling and GNOME-centric decision-making.
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