What is Neon and Should I Care?

[acheron]

If, after doing #3, you decide that Neon is not for you, then your only option would be to use the Kubuntu 16.04.1 ISO and reinstall Kubuntu, reformatting the partition that it was originally installed on. This would be about a 15 minute process, and then a couple more hours adding the additional packages you wanted and adjusting your configurations and settings to suit yourself.

With a little apt pinning magic, you can downgrade from Neon.

Not recommending it per se, but it can be done.

[GreyGeek]

GreyGeek, a question: do you also have Kubuntu 16.04 installed, just in case Neon doesn't work? Another question: do you use the users version, or the developer's version? Where do most of the problems in the Neon discussions come from--the user's or the developer's versions? I'm still deciding whether or not to take the plunge on Friday, when I come back from the jungle.

I installed 16.04 on its release day. It is the only OS on my HD. A month later I added the Neon user version repository to my sources.list file and updated. So, since updates only involve later version numbers and not downgrades, my system is essentially a Neon User system, with updates from Kubuntu as well. It is very fast and stable. A couple weeks ago a 500+ pkg update arrived, and after the requested reboot things ran just fine. I just had a 230 pkg update come down the pipe earlier this afternoon and it didn't even require a reboot. So far, all problems have been trivial and negligible.

I should add that when I installed I selected the btrfs system, not EXT4. IMHO, Btrfs is fantastic. It's subvolumes and snapshot system makes backing up and restoring a trivial matter. I have a script that I wrote which employs the snapper program. It allows me to make a snapshot before and update and one after an update for both root (@ or /) and home @home or /home). A simple "undo" command between the PRE and POST snapshots allow me to roll a POST condition back to a PRE condition. There are several posts here on the forum by oshunluver and myself on our Btrfs experiences which can be searched for.

Examples: the FireFox container-plugin hangs FireFox after a random length of time, due entirely to flashplayer. I used to open KSysmonitor and use "End Process" to kill it, but I got tire of that so I googled a little and discovered a FireFoxadd-on allowing me to active flashplayer on demand, momentarily for specific website videos. Now FF is running fine, and I can watch videos when ever I want (a popup asks me if I want to allow flashplayer for the website "just now" or "All the time") without all the flashplayer applets eating up memory and making FF lag.

I needed to re-install my WinXP.vdi in VirutalBox for an old client who wanted me to do some work on a WIndows only PLC system I wrote for him 10-12 years ago. It turned out that my attempts to register my licensed copy of XP failed because the immediate registration feature in XP failed. Following the link online I discovered that the XP registration HTML pages were empty. Nothing on them. So, I installed PlayOnLinux and WineTricks. Then I ran the setup exe for the IQAN Designer and the graphical tool installed beautifully and runs well. Ufw and the firewall run well. All the icons in my system tray are displaying nicely. KMail is working great, and KGpg integrates perfectly into it. I usually installed the QT API programming tools, and qtcreator, but I haven't this time, and probably won't, buut I have not doubt that they will work as intended.

Stellarium, my graphical display canary, runs well. I am using the OpenGL 3.1 compositor against my Intel Integrated Graphical Controller chip, a medium level GPU which gives Minecraft a 20-30 FPS or 50-60 FPS with Optifine installed. Steam's Universe Sandbox^2 runs more than twice as fast in 16.04 than it did in 14.04 on this Acer 7739-6830 17" laptop, which is six years old.

In short, I haven't found a single app in the repository that I wanted to use which did not install and run well. Even GoogleEarth installed following some updates.


Neon is the best AND Fastest Linux distro I have ever used since I started using Linux with RH 5.0 in 1998. Updates reach Neon faster than Kubuntu. I am currently running Plasma 5.7.3.

[GreyGeek]

With a little apt pinning magic, you can downgrade from Neon.

Not recommending it per se, but it can be done.

True, but I'd reserve pinning when it is needed for a few packages, like kernels, headers, a video driver or a few specific apps, BUT NOT 500+ packages!

[acheron]

True, but I'd reserve pinning when it is needed for a few packages, like kernels, headers, a video driver or a few specific apps, BUT NOT 500+ packages!

If you know what you are doing, number of packages is not problem.

Have tested it on Neon.

If you don't, leave well alone from the start.

[oldgeek]

I still don't know if the usr version of Neon is preferable to the dev version.

[Snowhog]

User Edition64-bit
Featuring the latest officially released KDE software on a stable base. Ideal for everyday users.

Developer Edition64-bit
Featuring pre-release KDE software built the same day developer repositories are updated.

[oldgeek]

Seems like the user version is the one to go for. It's what I am looking at on the VM. I suppose if I had more technical skills I might go for the dev version, but since I'm still deciding whether to install Neon on top of Kubuntu, like GreyGeek did, I should definitely stick with user. Thanks for all the advice.

[woodsmoke]

lol
I've run both, of course I do clean installs on decades old hard drives that stand vertically beside the machines with a multi-colour fan blowing on them, one of them pushing a widesdcreen t.v. as a multimedia centre..but... i have had absolutely no problems. they are both fine on both machines.

woodalwaysluckysmoke

[oldgeek]

Well, I did what Vinny suggested--added the repository by copying and pasting the line he provided, and then did the Sudo Apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade business, and got the following error messages:

W: The repository 'http://archive.neon.kde.org/usr xenial Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Data from such a repository can't be authenticated and is therefore potentially dangerous to use.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
W: GPG error: http://archive.neon.kde.org/stable xenial InRelease: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY E6D4736255751E5D
W: The repository 'http://archive.neon.kde.org/stable xenial InRelease' is not signed.
N: Data from such a repository can't be authenticated and is therefore potentially dangerous to use.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
E: Failed to fetch http://archive.neon.kde.org/usr/dist...amd64/Packages 404 Not Found
E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

What happened?

[oldgeek]

Wait--I just got a notification for 431 packages to update. That should do it. But what were the error messages?

[acheron]

wget -qO - 'http://archive.neon.kde.org/public.key' | sudo apt-key add -

and the user edition is /user not /usr

[woodsmoke]

431 packages?

small stuff! wait for the BIG stuff! and....it WILL be worth it!

woodjustsainsmoke

[vinnywright]

Well, I did what Vinny suggested--added the repository by copying and pasting the line he provided, and then did the Sudo Apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade business, and got the following error messages:

W: The repository 'http://archive.neon.kde.org/usr xenial Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Data from such a repository can't be authenticated and is therefore potentially dangerous to use.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
W: GPG error: http://archive.neon.kde.org/stable xenial InRelease: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY E6D4736255751E5D
W: The repository 'http://archive.neon.kde.org/stable xenial InRelease' is not signed.
N: Data from such a repository can't be authenticated and is therefore potentially dangerous to use.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
E: Failed to fetch http://archive.neon.kde.org/usr/dist...amd64/Packages 404 Not Found
E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

What happened?

that is NOT a line I gave you !

and I sead to replace /stable with /user ,,,,not /usr if you wanted the user repo instead of the development stable one ,,,,,,,,NOT to add both!!

VINNY

[oldgeek]

Sorry, my mistake. How can I get rid of the dev repository? So used to seeing usr instead of user that I just didn't see it correctly. When it didn't seem to be correct, I tried to dev repo. It hasn't affected the running of the program as far as I can see. Before I do anything else, should I also get rid of the 'usr repo' or can I just type it correctly this time? Or is the dev repo working fine as it is? I'm really not sure what to do here, but as I said, it doesn't appear to be broken--I just keep getting the error messages I posted when I try to update using the terminal.

[vinnywright]

Sorry, my mistake. How can I get rid of the dev repository? So used to seeing usr instead of user that I just didn't see it correctly. When it didn't seem to be correct, I tried to dev repo. It hasn't affected the running of the program as far as I can see. Before I do anything else, should I also get rid of the 'usr repo' or can I just type it correctly this time? Or is the dev repo working fine as it is? I'm really not sure what to do here, but as I said, it doesn't appear to be broken--I just keep getting the error messages I posted when I try to update using the terminal.

at this point (you are neon /dev/stable now) I would just comment out or remove the deb http://archive.neon.kde.org/usr xenial main from your /ext/apt/sources.list

and go with what you have

O and do add the key as discribed in post #41 by @acheron

VINNY