After 14 years of kubuntu, I've moved to Manjaro KDE for my main desktop.
Why? I'm not happy with the direction of travel for desktop Ubuntu. I don't think it's a priority for Canonical, who don't make money from it, and I don't think they care if they make a technical decision that breaks something in the spins like kubuntu e.g. snap firefox breaking plasma integration. I know there are work-arounds for firefox, but I expect we will see more core desktop apps like libreoffice and thunderbird getting the snap treatment in due course.
The good news is I'm entitled to a full refund of every penny I paid for it
In case anyone is interested, carry on reading about my manjaro experience:
I downloaded the recent iso and booted it in live mode just to check all hardware was recognised, which it was. I then did a trial install with the / partition on a spare sata ssd, but mounting my existing separate kubuntu /home partition (without formatting, but after doing a backup). Booting and logging it worked flawlessly, and all my data and settings including plasma desktop settings just worked out of the box. I'm apparently one of the last people left on this earth still using kontact/kmail and have a lot of old emails in there, as well as calendar and contact data synced via caldav. Like kubuntu, the default manjaro kde install gives you thunderbird rather than kontact, but it was easy to install from the software centre, and once I did it worked immediately with all the data, accounts and settings carried over from kubuntu.
I ran it that way for a few days to check for problems, then re-installed with the / partition on my main nvme hard drive.
I have been very impressed with the manjaro experience. It is quick and responsive, and boots to the login screen noticeably faster than kubuntu. Firefox of course starts much quicker than the snap version in the latest kubuntu, and plasma integration works. Kontact/kmail also starts up to a functional state quicker than the kubuntu version (although I can't see why that should be). I've learned the 'yay' helper for the Arch User Repository (AUR), and have found all of the more obscure, proprietary or niche programmes there that would require a manual install or adding a ppa on kubuntu.
The rolling release means frequent updates, but fortunately I'm blessed with fast fibre broadband. My install onto an existing home partition requires a good understanding of partitioning and how your hard drives are identified, and if you are tempted to try it then make sure you take a backup first to avoid data loss.
Of course some future update might break my manjaro, and I could be back, but I'm finding it a pleasant experience so far.
Why? I'm not happy with the direction of travel for desktop Ubuntu. I don't think it's a priority for Canonical, who don't make money from it, and I don't think they care if they make a technical decision that breaks something in the spins like kubuntu e.g. snap firefox breaking plasma integration. I know there are work-arounds for firefox, but I expect we will see more core desktop apps like libreoffice and thunderbird getting the snap treatment in due course.
The good news is I'm entitled to a full refund of every penny I paid for it
In case anyone is interested, carry on reading about my manjaro experience:
I downloaded the recent iso and booted it in live mode just to check all hardware was recognised, which it was. I then did a trial install with the / partition on a spare sata ssd, but mounting my existing separate kubuntu /home partition (without formatting, but after doing a backup). Booting and logging it worked flawlessly, and all my data and settings including plasma desktop settings just worked out of the box. I'm apparently one of the last people left on this earth still using kontact/kmail and have a lot of old emails in there, as well as calendar and contact data synced via caldav. Like kubuntu, the default manjaro kde install gives you thunderbird rather than kontact, but it was easy to install from the software centre, and once I did it worked immediately with all the data, accounts and settings carried over from kubuntu.
I ran it that way for a few days to check for problems, then re-installed with the / partition on my main nvme hard drive.
I have been very impressed with the manjaro experience. It is quick and responsive, and boots to the login screen noticeably faster than kubuntu. Firefox of course starts much quicker than the snap version in the latest kubuntu, and plasma integration works. Kontact/kmail also starts up to a functional state quicker than the kubuntu version (although I can't see why that should be). I've learned the 'yay' helper for the Arch User Repository (AUR), and have found all of the more obscure, proprietary or niche programmes there that would require a manual install or adding a ppa on kubuntu.
The rolling release means frequent updates, but fortunately I'm blessed with fast fibre broadband. My install onto an existing home partition requires a good understanding of partitioning and how your hard drives are identified, and if you are tempted to try it then make sure you take a backup first to avoid data loss.
Of course some future update might break my manjaro, and I could be back, but I'm finding it a pleasant experience so far.
Comment