Wanting to switch.

[vinnywright]

Funny thing is Mint now includes "Timeshift" as a default app, and Mint devs recommend users get in the habit of making restore points. Yet Timeshift reaches it's maximal potential in btrfs setups, not using ext4!

FWIW my Ryzen system has 16gbs of RAM, and I still create a 2gb swap partition just to be safe.

maybe IT dose ,,,but it seems limited to the default Ubuntu style naming of the subvolums IE: @ & @home ,,,,,,so it's not so good for someone like me (and others) that have multiple installs in a single BTRFS file system as it will only work with the last (default named) subvolume .

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:/media/vinny/ff5d66d4-35b6-4c9c-a64e-8dfbe2aa1e31$ ls
@  @17.04  @17.04_171204-202339  @_171204-203229  @home  @home17.04  @home17.04_171204-203017  @home_171204-203128  ubiquity-apt-clone  var

I easly make snapshots of the 2 systems hear with @oshunluvr's Dolphin service menu for BTRFS snapshots.



and can send a read only snapshot to an external drive or diferent internal one for safe keeping , which timeshift dose not do

VINNY

[GreyGeek]

As a rule, never create more than a dozen snapshots. Having more than 250 snapshots can corrupt the file system.
https://wiki.debian.org/Btrfs

More explicitly, address the dangers of going snapshot crazy, or using a loose and easy snapper config, because performance crashes somewhere between at 250 and 300 snapshots per subvolume, and also sometimes wedges the volume into an unmountable state. (More recently I've read more conservative estimates of no more than a dozen snapshots per subvolume, with a limit of 250 subvolumes--including snapshots)

When I first installed Snapper, using its default config, it was creating/maintaining 70+ snapshots per day with normal activity. The snapshots consumed so much disk space I was eaten out of house and @home. Also, it stored the snapshots inside of / and /home, where they could be easily accessed. I deleted all of snapper's snapshots and started doing things manually. It was so easy I've stopped looking for snapper replacements, GUI or otherwise.

[oshunluvr]

I didn't like the stacking of snapshots that snapper and some other utilities do. Seems untidy to me. I prefer my snapshots to all reside in the root filesystem. Make them easier to manage IMO. I just mount my root filesystem as /subvol with fstab so I never have to hunt around for subvolumes or manually mount the root filesystem.

As far as subvolume/snapshot count I have six installs each with home, so 12 subvolumes, and by design, 3 snapshots each of my main install and home at all times. Occasionally when activity warrants it, I have 4-6 other snapshots. I usually clean up once a week or more. 70 snapshots seems silly. I could see 4-5 a day but I would clean up daily if I did that.

[GreyGeek]

Wanting to switch.

When I notice an update is going to bring down a KDE or kernel update I cancel and do a @ and @home snapshot.
If it doesn't boot or run properly I do a 3 minute roll back. After a week if it is still running good I keep the most recent snapshots, move them to my 3rd drive, and delete the previous pair.
I rarely keep more than 3 pairs of snapshots on my Btrfs pool, but I fill my backup drive. I've experienced a failure to boot from a backup because of my mental mistake in naming a @home2017mmdd as @2017mmdd. [emoji20]
I always mount /dev/sda1 as /mnt.
I created my snapshots directory as /mnt/snapshots
A vdir of /mnt shows
@
@home
snapshots

A vdir of /mnt/snapshot shows
@_2017mmdd
@home_2017mmdd
etc... for two more pairs.

For those not familiar with Btrfs even as I am running the system (@ mounted as / and @home mounted as /home) those same @ and @home subvolumes are setting on /mnt and I can work with them without having to shut down the system.

PS-
I got curious after the OP claimed that Mint wasn't offering KDE after 18.2 today. I went out to Mint's website and noticed that they are offering Mint KDE 18.3, released today, the 15th. I burned it to a 16Gb USB stick and it is what I am running right now. Can't tell the difference between it and my KDE Neon User Edition, based on looks alone, but it is Plasma 5.8.5 I'm at 5.11.2.

EDIT: Typo - I typed 18.2 when I meant 18.3 as being released.

[kevin3331]

Not to be harsh on the Mint Team But I Think there Baby's are Cinnamon, Mate.
I think the decision to stop KDE was made long before 18.2 came out. In my opinion But that is just me.
But i can see also maintaining 4 different types of mint with a limited budget and limited staff . Probly was not ideal for them. So now they can focus to make the others better.
Me I am just a huge KDE Fan . So the logical step was to come here. Or NEON but I prefer the LTS so NEON is out for me. At least for now. Maybe i will explore and try on a laptop.
later.

I got almost 2.5 years on linux now but as for knowege . i am still lacking so i manually use programs like snapshot. i really don't do alot that messes up my
system to where i can't recover on my own. but have used oviously for updated kernels and plasma from time to time.
never had a system crash so not sure if i even done it correctly hehehe. but best to have. and always saved in a external drive. so not even sure if that is correct.
but figured i would cross that bridge when i had to .

I do have to say from reading the forums I have gotten a lot of info just from this one post and this is a great and friendly forum.

P.S. I was not at all trying to put down the Mint Team I am sure they have there reasons for dropping KDE as a distro for Mint. And they
are the ones doing the work so they have every right what they chose to work on or not. I have just gotten used to Mint KDE and hate to
see it go. and distro's like Cinnamon, and Mate are not for me. I have to have my KDE LOL.

Thanks everyone for the Valued Information I have gotten so far.

[mr_raider]

Not to be harsh on the Mint Team But I Think there Baby's are Cinnamon, Mate.

I agree. I think XFCE is next on the chopping block. WHich would be sad, because Xubuntu is just fugly. I just switched my mom's PC from Mint KDE 17 to Mint XFCE 18.3. It's a simple no nonsense desktop, aesthetically pleasing enough yet functional. Really designed for the senior citizen.

[dequire]

I used Mint briefly, around 2012-2013 for about six months. Of course, I used the KDE-spin. However, that didn't last long. KDE in the Mint community was even more of a red-headed stepchild than what Kubuntu was to Ubuntu back around that time. It was somewhat disheartening; all the KDE folks asking questions on their forums and getting the obligatory..."I don't run KDE, but have you tried [Brassero, Transmission, Thunar, Thunderbird, insert and stock GTK app's name here in order to not actually answer the question]". Not to mention that it's always been obvious to those who followed Mint, that Clem and Team never really cared about KDE - and it clearly was never going to be a focus for them. The nail in the coffin was when Clem started writing all the Mint Apps, specifically with Cinnamon and Matte in mind.

IMHO, Plasma is so different from other DE's, that to not run a distro with a healthy team dedicated to Plasma is only asking for eventual heartbreak. Thanks to the Kubuntu and Neon devs, we, fortunately, are not in that boat.

[mastablasta]

IMHO, Plasma is so different from other DE's, that to not run a distro with a healthy team dedicated to Plasma is only asking for eventual heartbreak. Thanks to the Kubuntu and Neon devs, we, fortunately, are not in that boat.

yes, there was only one guy doing most of the KDE work. and when he left or didn't have time for it anymore development for it went the way of the Dodo.

in any case i think they made a good decision with Cinnamon as well as with focus on PC desktop. I think both cinnamon and mate are good for beginners as well as for those that liked the old Gnome.
i also hope that this will make former users move to Kubuntu to increase it's userbase as well as all the bug reports, testing and possibly even development.

[TWPonKubuntu]

Kevin, I went the other direction, from Kubuntu to Mint, because Kubuntu will no longer install on my old 32 bit system. I now have exchangeable laptop hard drives, one with XFCE and one with KDE, plus a desktop running XFCE. All are current at ver. 18.3

It is sad to see KDE being dropped (in the future) by Linux Mint. Even worse to hear the rumor that XFCE might be next in line...

When I ran Kubuntu, up through 14.04, it was excellent and I would still be using it, if it would install on my systems...

I tried Mint's Cinnamon and Mate DEs, but did not like either when compared to KDE and XFCE. Yes, they work, but the DE just didn't feel right to me. Guess I'm too old for change...

If you can get it to install on your system(s) (64 bit?) then by all means use Kubuntu and also look at Neon. There are ample threads here about Neon, but it is strictly 64 bit.

[vinnywright]

When I ran Kubuntu, up through 14.04, it was excellent and I would still be using it, if it would install on my systems...

why will it not install on your systems ?

it dose come in 32bit you know !

as do all of them .

VINNY

[TWPonKubuntu]

Vinny, I've hashed this out in another thread, months ago. I've moved on to a Linux (mint) which will install without any problems.

Yes, I'm aware of the many flavors which offer 32 bit, but Kubuntu's version simply will no longer install. It's not a significant problem since I can still do website dev using Mint's KDE or XFCE Desktop distro's.

Since 32 bit is going the way of all older architecture, I'll be forced, someday, to get a 64 bit system and then I'll reconsider Kubuntu because it really does work well. The question, at that time, will be whether KDE is even an option. We'll see when that time arrives.

Thanks anyway for asking.

[dequire]

well ,,,I have no AMD hardware so I have no way to form an opinion on this ,,,,I have 1 Nvidia box and am happy so far with it .

VINNY

Long-term, this may be worth a pause...

What is the future of Nvidia users on KDE Plasma?

[oshunluvr]

Personally, I think with all the advances in Intel built-in video I might just go that route.

[mr_raider]

Long-term, this may be worth a pause...

What is the future of Nvidia users on KDE Plasma?

Help a dumb guy here. What is the issue with plasma and Nvidia? My understanding is that KDE staying on xorg for now.

[mastablasta]

it is well explained in the second post:

I would say the same as the future for nvidia in linux in general...it all depends on how nvidia goes on with their driver and wayland support. If they keep their current direction with a special nvidia way and not supporting xwayland I really don't see how nvidia hardware can be useful in the long term outside of special cases or pure xorg legacy systems or number crunching/AI racks.