Install of new KDE Plasma 5.21?

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 12:53:02 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
>On Tue, 9 Mar 2021 at 08:17, Hund <lists_ubuntu at linuxkompis.se> wrote:
>>
>> Canonical release model is point based (or whatever the correct term
>> is). They dont push new major versions in a current release of
>> Ubuntu, only security and stability updates.  
>
>This *was* completely true in the early releases. However, after
>Mozilla switched to a rapid release cycle for Firefox, Ubuntu was
>pretty much forced to change to adapt to its default browser getting a
>new major release 3-4 times per interim Ubuntu release.
>
>
>So now, *some* components, notably Firefox, do get major-version
>updates, in both short-term and long-term Ubuntu releases. However,
>most of the OS does not, and components which would have major roll-on
>effects on other parts of the system, such as the desktop environment,
>do not get major-version updates.
>
>So KDE will not get updated until the next Ubuntu release.
>
>But that is only a month or so away, so I would strongly advise the OP
>to just wait.
>
>> If you want the latest and greatest and can't wait for the next
>> version of Ubuntu, you probably want an operating system with a
>> rolling release model.  
>
>I agree. I have tried Gentoo, Arch, and openSUSE Tumbleweed, and of
>the three, I'd recommend Tumbleweed. Breaking changes are extremely
>rare and mostly it is just a daily update followed by a reboot to
>always have the latest versions of everything.
>
>Disclaimer: I work for SUSE, but I have nothing to do with the
>openSUSE Project, and there is no rolling-release version of SUSE
>Enterprise Linux.
>
>Saying that, I do run Tumbleweed on my work desktop in the office.
>
>Which due to the pandemic, I have visited about 3 times in the last
>year, meaning a 3-4 hour Tumbleweed update each time, and I am getting
>very worried that something is going to break soon.
>
>But in normal times, with daily updates, it works very well. KDE is
>also the default desktop in openSUSE, although personally I use Xfce.
>(openSUSE also offers first-class support for GNOME 3 and Xfce.) KDE's
>integration in openSUSE is very good and if you want a rolling-release
>distro with KDE I personally would recommend it as the best candidate,
>quite aside from any work affiliation.
>
>I just don't personally like KDE much. :-)

The browser Firefox is an exception. However, I neither like KDE nor
the RPM package management. To me the 'R' in RPM is for 'rocket
science' (Raketenwissenschaft).

I've got no idea into what issues a power user like Liam should/could
run when using Arch Linux. I'm a power user myself and my 'main' distro
is Arch Linux. Anyway, I strongly recommend against Arch Linux to
anybody who is not really an experienced Linux user.

The pro of a release model distro such as Ubuntu (and it's flavours) is
that something with such an endless dependency chain such as KDE
is freeze within a release cycle. I'm in favour of openbox, a simple
window manager and I'm using it without a desktop environment, so it's
way easier to handle than the bloated KDE.

Arch Linux is close to upstream releases with all the pros and cons.
Actually I'm building a package for electron. Compiling started at
around 9 o'clock in the morning and it still continues now at around 20
o'clock. While it's easier to build latest software for Arch Linux that
isn't provided by the official repositories, than doing so for Ubuntu,
it's not necessarily economic to do so.

Building something such as Firefox takes already way longer than
building a kernel (excepted of a minimal configured kernels that just
fits to a minimum of used hardware). Something such as KDE likely takes
way, way longer, let alone that a lot of dependencies of a release
cycle distro probably won't allow to do this at all. Here comes snap
into play. I doubt that snaps do provide the full KDE environment, but
probably snaps provide parts that are interesting to the OP. IMO snap
isn't a good approach, but maybe it's something the OP does like.

https://snapcraft.io/search?q=kde

My apologies for not reading the complete thread. I'm might have missed
a lot. I just want to point out that 'outdated' software not
necessarily is bad and that a default Ubuntu does provide the snap
workaround, even while I dislike it, other do like it.