Which Linux distro has a first-class KDE desktop experience and is stable and simple?

Question

I am using Ubuntu 12.04 currently and I love it for: It just works for all hardware Wide selection of packaged applications that are configured by dpkg scripts Painless configuration for what matters (Wifi and wired connections, extra screens, power saving) Very easy to install proprietary software

I want to switch to a KDE-based distros. But most choices seem to fall among:

1. second-rate KDE experience(not tweaked for anything, no native configuration tools)
2. Against proprietary software, very difficult to configure, brittle to many use cases, unstable (Mageia 2 was one)

I considered:

Debian: Its stable, but a bit untweaked and not satisfy my need of cutting edge

Kubuntu: Unstable, consumes too much CPU

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I shortlisted Mint which is based on Ubuntu. And Maybe Aptosid. Are there better choices?

Answer 1

openSUSE is a quite KDE centric Linux distribution. See more in this wiki entry: http://en.opensuse.org/KDE

Answer 2

If you want to live on the bleeding edge, try Fedora's KDE spin. I've been using this ever since the GNOME 3 nightmare and it's been pretty close to flawless.

Answer 3

If you don't like openSuse definitely try Mandriva Linux. It's really good.

Answer 4

You could try Chakra-OS, though it's not dpkg based as it branched off Arch Linux but it's currently under heavy development and completely KDE centric.

Answer 5

Back in the old days Kubuntu 8.04 was by far the best. It was stable, simple, highly configurable and fast. The downsides were that copying in the gui failed on occasion, wireless support was poor and getting the latest Libre office was a pain.

Nowadays its Lubuntu 11.04. The wireless works flawlessly, it comes with a recent LibreOffice and I haven´t noticed any bugs in it. It is also, unlike Ubuntu, not bloated and slow but fast and simple. I tried Lubuntu 12.04 recently, it seemed to be the same as 11.04 just slower and with a few bugs introduced.

Answer 6

Siduction. It should even satisfy your need for bleeding edge, since it's basically Debian sid. Not exactly a fork - for example, you still use Debian repositories and just get a few additions including a siduction kernel and they try to quickly repair some things when it comes to that (well, it's sid, isn't it), even before fixes naturally propagate to Debian's repositories so is generally much more enjoyable experience than simply plain Debian sid).

I know your questions has "and is stable" condition but you also want bleeding edge which is usually a contradiciton, but if you know what you're doing and you check the forums for upgrade warnings before dist-upgrade, things are amazingly stable - I'd even say as stable as pretty much any other distro (with the notable exception of it's older brother, Debian stable ;)).

Answer 7

If you want a brilliant KDE experience - openSUSE, Chakra, Fedora. Fedora, I must say, is simply the forerunner of all new implementations, adoptions.

Answer 8

No mention yet of Sabayon, an excellent Debian-based distro using KDE by default.