I’m currently on Kubuntu 24.04 and I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of new features, especially with KDE Plasma where I’m still on v5 instead of v6. Missing on things like HDR capability for gaming for example.

With 26.04 coming in a few months, is it worth it to upgrade right now to 25.10? Will I face any problems?

Or should I just go ahead and wipe it with the latest Debian stable which seems to already be more up to date? Or should I switch to Fedora or OpenSUSE or something else? For Arch, Endeavour OS and Catchy OS seem like the best options, but I don’t know if I want to move to a rolling bleeding-edge distro that could break at any time. They seem more like an enthusiast distro than anything else to me. But, that’s just the impression I get.

Here’s what I’m looking for in a distro:

  • Non-commercial preferably and especially not from the U.S.
  • Good for gaming, NVidia graphics card compatibility and gaming device support.
  • Stability and robustness (I don’t have time to mess around fixing things. I’d rather have slightly older software that works, than bleeding edge software that breaks.)
  • Also trying to move away from Snap.
  • Not interested in immutable distros.
  • Ease of installing 3rd party drivers and codecs (This is something Ubuntu does quite well actually)
  • Must have KDE Plasma as desktop.

Any suggestions?

UPDATE:

I’ve decided to upgrade to 25.10 and I’m blown away! My system is BLAZING fast. Like what is even going on??? Games perform way better now. KDE 6 has loads of really good new features. It’s so polished.

I did run into a problem enabling HDR in KDE settings though. Will have to check that out.

Also some themes don’t work anymore. Will have to look into that as well but that’s no big deal

I’ll give this thing a try for a while. At least until 26.04.

UPDATE 2:

Now I’ve done it. My PC freezes completely when I log into my wayland session after I enabled HDR in KDE’s System Settings. I got no way to set it back to off from the command line.

I’m gonna have to recover from a snapshot.

  • dgdft@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    17 hours ago

    I run Debian stable for all the reasons you describe.

    My experience is that you occasionally have to peek at the wiki to get things set up right initially, but after that, you’re set for many years.

    My daily driver is a bookworm install from 2021, and I’ll be running it until EOL. Zero issues with gaming; shit just works.

  • Die4Ever@retrolemmy.comEnglish
    7·
    1 day ago

    I don’t like LTS, doesn’t make much sense for home desktops. I say upgrade your Kubuntu to 25.10, much easier than switching distros.

    And then maybe enable the backports ppa if you want even faster updates.

    $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
$ sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y

    Or you can just do faster point releases, slightly more stable than backports

    $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/ppa
$ sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y

    https://community.kde.org/Kubuntu/PPAs

  • rescue_toaster@lemmy.zip
    8·
    1 day ago

    I doubt debian is what you want if you want to stay up to date. It’s newish now, but won’t get updates for another 2 years.

    I’ve never run into issues updating to all short term Ubuntu releases between LTS versions when I used Ubuntu. Though I’ve now switched to Debian as I don’t care about latest updates and some snaps consistently gave me issues.

    Maybe Fedora is what you would prefer though?

    KDE is available on any distro. Just need to install it if it’s not the default desktop.

    • ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.caOPEnglish
      6·
      1 day ago

      Yeah, but Debian is newer now than Ubuntu. It doesn’t have snaps, is stable as hell, and honestly I don’t think it’s a major problem if it’s not updated in 2 years considering it would have what I’m looking forward to. (I think) Like HDR support for example.

    • hallettj@leminal.spaceEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      For Debian on desktop it’s common to run Debian Testing, or Unstable. In that case it’s a rolling release that is always ahead of Ubuntu.

  • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip
    3·
    1 day ago

    What update frequency you want has nothing to do with the distro itself and everything to do with who you are as a person. I stuck to LTS when I was on Ubuntu because I don’t want to spend my life managing and studying my operating system on one of my several computers and OSs I use. A lot of people on Lemmy use things that require a lot of maintenance because maintaining the OS is the real hobby. If you’re gonna keep up with all the changes in 25.10, sounds like you’re the kind of person who should just go for it.

    • ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.caOPEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      Yeah. I don’t want to keep up with changes and shit. I want something stable and hassle free. I don’t have time to tinker with my OS anymore.

      So you think I shouldn’t upgrade to 25.10 then?

      • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip
        4·
        1 day ago

        If you want stable and hassle-free, that necessarily means you should stop keeping up with the minor version release notes. It’s just healthier to get an update every two years with lots of features.

        It’s the same desire for hassle-free that drove me away from Ubuntu. There just wasn’t (and probably still isn’t) a hassle-fee way of avoiding snaps.

        • ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.caOPEnglish
          3·
          1 day ago

          Yeah, that was my philosophy. But there’s been some really great advancements since 24.04. Especially with KDE Plasma. I kinda want to have some of those latest features from version 6.

          What distro did you end up moving to from Ubuntu?

          • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip
            4·
            1 day ago

            Fedora, which has similar update frequency options, but no snaps. Almost all distros push major changes right after their big release so they have as much time to test it among their enthusiast user-base before it hits everyone. Ubuntu probably has a major redesign staged for the 26.10 release too, and LTS users won’t see it until 28.04.

    • ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.caOPEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      True. As I mentioned to someone else, I can always take a snapshot with TimeShift with my BTRFS partitions, upgrade, test it out, and roll back if it breaks.

      Or, like you suggest, create an image, install another distro, try it, and revert with the image if I don’t like it. But that just takes a lot of time I don’t necessarily have though.

      • ruuster13@lemmy.zip
        21·
        1 day ago

        I like btrfs snapshots but they do not at all ease my mind like a full backup does. Amen to the not enough time argument, though modern clonezilla has gotten much faster and takes advantage of modern storage medium speeds.