[SOLVED] LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

What other apps and distros do you use to round out your studio?

Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz

jonetsu
Established Member
Posts: 2036
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 12:05 am
Has thanked: 10 times
Been thanked: 22 times

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by jonetsu »

Mostly because Bitwig supports Ubuntu. They can already make a fuss when Linux Mint is concerned as I have to tell them it's very largely based on Ubuntu so they can accept to give support. If I go to them with Debian or Arch I'm not sure what their reaction would be. I'm now at some $600 in expenses with Bitwig (initial buy + two years of updates) so I would like to have the smoother support as can be. I could go with Kubuntu of Ubuntu although I've been using LM for years and so far, apart from 18.3 these days, it's quite good.
User avatar
sysrqer
Established Member
Posts: 2519
Joined: Thu Nov 14, 2013 11:47 pm
Has thanked: 319 times
Been thanked: 148 times
Contact:

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by sysrqer »

Honestly I would say move away from mint. The things you describe like installing a low latency kernel sound very odd to me and I can only place them on mint itself. My last experience with it was installing it for someone to just browse the internet and watch videos but it refused to connect to the wifi for no apparent reason. I installed regular ubuntu and it worked fine.

I was asking for details so that I could try to reproduce the issues and make recommendations based on that. I use Neon so it is essentially a stable ubuntu base with up to date KDE, it's the best of both worlds, a (hopefully) solid base system and very stable DE because it is being improved and fixed weekly. I run KDE, have some ppas for kxstudio and a few others that I want very up to date, have installed the low latency kernel and the liquorix kernel, all without any problems. I use firefox, linvst, renoise, reaper, ardour, carla, claudia, and have tried bitwig.

So if you want a recommendation then that's it.

I still don't know what you mean about firefox menus though.
jonetsu
Established Member
Posts: 2036
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 12:05 am
Has thanked: 10 times
Been thanked: 22 times

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by jonetsu »

I wrote:
jonetsu wrote:They might had problems with 18.3, don't know. I now have LM 19.1 Xfce and will installed it over 18.3.
I tried it, booted from a USB key. The install tells me that it detected a mounted drive, do I want the install to unmount it ?

I found that strange, a drive that's mounted ? But I booted from USB key, an OS installation USB key. So I took a look. It was about the USB key itself. Duh !

Then it went sayign that if I don't mind NOT keeping access to other OS that are already installed, I can continue in UEFI mode. If not I should go back. At all costs I want to keep access to my other OS, so this is very serious. I went back, looked for options ... none.

Went forward again, asks me about the mounted drive. Duh again. Then it proceeded to grind the disks w/o asking about UEFI anymore and the risk to loose access to other installed systems.

So I stopped it there.

I very probably can make my way to my other systems if it messes up their access but the thing is, I do not want to spend time doing that. I have other things to do, one of them being creating music.

Since there's no rush for a migration from the current 18.1 KDE that works well with all the plugins installed and all their licences and wine-staging and linvst and all that, I decided to put the whole thing on the backburner. I thought that there was a possibility to upgrade and started to go along as it's always a little thrill to install a new distro and doing all the good and sane work configuring it for the wanted purpose which is musical creation, but now the odds are not in that favor.
jonetsu
Established Member
Posts: 2036
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 12:05 am
Has thanked: 10 times
Been thanked: 22 times

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by jonetsu »

Yes, Ubuntu would be right in Bitwig's support ballpark. They wouldn't be complaining about running another distro. So that's certainly an option.

BTW, which Ubuntu version are you running ?
sysrqer wrote:I still don't know what you mean about firefox menus though.
A lot of people have experienced that. Clicking on the 3-bar menu top right only grays out the icon itself and does not show a drop-down menu. Same with any extension icon (if there are any installed) right to the left of the 3-bar menu.

Hmmm.... I just wrote right to the left ... :)
User avatar
sysrqer
Established Member
Posts: 2519
Joined: Thu Nov 14, 2013 11:47 pm
Has thanked: 319 times
Been thanked: 148 times
Contact:

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by sysrqer »

I don't have that problem with firefox but there could be any number of reasons, like using nouveau driver instead of the nvidia driver, that could also explain the problem with UIs not showing and things crashing when using jack.

Not sure about the install stuff, I never used the suggested disk management and always set it up how I want it to make sure that the partitions and disks are used as I want them to be. Never used UEFI so I can't say much about that, I've never needed it.

Neon moved to 18.04 a couple of months ago so I'm using that.

Code: Select all

Operating System: KDE neon 5.14
KDE Plasma Version: 5.14.5
Qt Version: 5.11.2
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.53.0
Kernel Version: 4.15.0-20-lowlatency
OS Type: 64-bit
Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-3720QM CPU @ 2.60GHz
Memory: 11.7 GiB of RAM
jonetsu
Established Member
Posts: 2036
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 12:05 am
Has thanked: 10 times
Been thanked: 22 times

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by jonetsu »

sysrqer wrote:Not sure about the install stuff, I never used the suggested disk management and always set it up how I want it to make sure that the partitions and disks are used as I want them to be. Never used UEFI so I can't say much about that, I've never needed it.
The 19.1 install did not even went to asking where the OS should be installed yet. I have 4 drives with a lot of partitions. A few official Linux distros, many with data, and scratch partitions to build my own OSes. I have to specify where it'll get installed, very crucial. This is why the UEFI question bypass the 2nd time around along with the extensive disk grinding made me cancel the installation program right away. It did not follow the same execution path of execution twice, asking again about UEFI,and it is not a self-modifying program: possible bug. The first time around it said that if I continue in UEFI I might loose access to my other OSes, the 2nd time it did not bother to mention it.

As for UEFI itself that's the way I currently boot USB keys. Through the ASUS BIOS which will show the connected USB key as a UEFI device and boots accordingly. I never boot USB keys otherwise in regular usage. That's how I installed LM 18.3 KDE a few weeks ago and at that time it did not made any questioning putting in play my access to other already-installed OSes and just went on and installed correctly where I wanted. That's a minimum in 2019.
tavasti
Established Member
Posts: 2047
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2016 6:56 am
Location: Kangasala, Finland
Has thanked: 369 times
Been thanked: 208 times
Contact:

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by tavasti »

[quote="jonetsu"I gather that Xfce is very much on the lightweight side. I would prefer for home use a desktop that's part of a distro offering stable releases.[/quote]
Xubuntu is release where xfce is The desktop. Sure, you can get the same from any ubuntu, just install xubuntu-desktop package.

Linux veteran & Novice musician

Latest track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycVrgGtrBmM

Musicteacher
Established Member
Posts: 194
Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2017 5:54 am
Has thanked: 8 times
Been thanked: 4 times

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by Musicteacher »

I am on the lookout for a new distro myself, so I will give my 2 cents here, but please consider that all of this is highly subjective.

I am a long time SuSE + KDE user.

OpenSuSE takes quite some effort (from the user, I mean) to get a usable system, and to me it seems that this is getting worse. Also, OpenSuSe (with the background of SuSE LInux enterprise) ships old packages, partly very old.

My personal experience is that quite often there is a bug in a package that is fixed in a newer release. So, on a regular basis, I download newer packages from community repos or compile a newer version myself. It is far more often that the newer version is more stable and usable than the other way round.

The same applies to kernels. Newer kernels tend to run better on newer hardware while still supporting the old hardware.

So the "old packages are more mature and stable" - mantra is not for me. I was on the lookout for a distro with newer package, maybe rolling release.

I have tried opensuse tumbleweed (in a virtual machine, not on a regular basis). For me, this one tends to kill itself with updates from time to time. Maybe I was unlucky, but all prejudice against rolling release seem to apply to tumbleweed.

I have tried (and still have on one machine) KDE Neon, which is rolling KDE + LTS Ubuntu base. My experience with that is quite pleasant. You have the ubuntu software wealth (though not ubuntu setup-tools), so all software you get for ubuntu you will get for NEON, too. On the negative side, not all wisdom from the excellent ubuntu forums / wikis applies to neon, one must be careful here.

I had opensuse leap 42.3 installed on my music-machine. But for some reasons I really wanted to use linuxsampler. this one always crashed on me on opensuse. This was due to the fact that you can get pretty much every software for opensuse from the community-repos, but often those do not mix well.

So I tried antergos, first in a virtual machine. I saw that the pro-music meta package is packed with music software (including linuxsampler, which, for license-reasons, often is excluded). I was very pleased.

I installed it on real hardware, and had a really hard time installing it (including grub-problems, which I had to solve on the grub command line, that is really nasty). But after installation: really cool.

So it is very likely that I will keep Antergos for my working + my music machine. This wont help @jonetsu , though, because it is not ubuntu-based.

As for desktop environments, I really like KDE (the look + feel of it). But I was seriously annoyed with kde plasma at the beginning. 5.8 had regular crashes + freezing (especially when using multiple monitors, which I do frequently). But: It got better quite rapidly.

I tried xfce as an alternative. There are many points where xfce is really good: Multiple monitors, work well, it is very stable, configurable. But I do not like the app-starter (and I have tried alternatives, too, though I must admit that I did not invest many hours), and I really prefer Dolphin over xfce file manager.

On my (current, but soon to be upgraded) working machine (Leap 42.3) I have plasma 5.12, which is running stable, but it needs the occasional restart to keep it happy: plasmashell keeps using more and more cpu power after a certain time.

Both on antergos and neon kde 4.15 is running. And there are zero issues with those. I have the strong feeling that kde is on a very good (if not excellent) way at the moment. So my advice is: It is the wrong time to abandon KDE right now.

Sorry for the long post, maybe some interesting things are in it.
jonetsu
Established Member
Posts: 2036
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 12:05 am
Has thanked: 10 times
Been thanked: 22 times

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by jonetsu »

tavasti wrote:I have for long (over 10 years) used xfce. Earlier had fvwm as window manager, but on changed it to Awesome. Sure, that is not system for somebody who wants system that looks and behaves same way as MS Windows.
Well, I'm using Xfce since 1 day and already I can't switch desktop w/o freezing windows using the default shortcuts (see other thread with 'Ubuntu' in the subject line) and if I redefine my own shortcuts for switching desktops they will be 'forgotten' immediately when I open a terminal. LM 19.1 Xfce. So, how do get these serious problems fixed ?
tavasti
Established Member
Posts: 2047
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2016 6:56 am
Location: Kangasala, Finland
Has thanked: 369 times
Been thanked: 208 times
Contact:

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by tavasti »

jonetsu wrote: Well, I'm using Xfce since 1 day and already I can't switch desktop w/o freezing windows using the default shortcuts (see other thread with 'Ubuntu' in the subject line) and if I redefine my own shortcuts for switching desktops they will be 'forgotten' immediately when I open a terminal. LM 19.1 Xfce. So, how do get these serious problems fixed ?
Haven't used default xfce window manager, used fvwm or awesome, so can't tell.

Linux veteran & Novice musician

Latest track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycVrgGtrBmM

jonetsu
Established Member
Posts: 2036
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 12:05 am
Has thanked: 10 times
Been thanked: 22 times

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by jonetsu »

tavasti wrote:Haven't used default xfce window manager, used fvwm or awesome, so can't tell.
OK. Xfce IS a desktop manager, not a distro. Hence it was a bit confusing to say:
tavasti wrote:I have for long (over 10 years) used xfce.
tavasti
Established Member
Posts: 2047
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2016 6:56 am
Location: Kangasala, Finland
Has thanked: 369 times
Been thanked: 208 times
Contact:

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by tavasti »

jonetsu wrote:
tavasti wrote:Haven't used default xfce window manager, used fvwm or awesome, so can't tell.
OK. Xfce IS a desktop manager, not a distro. Hence it was a bit confusing to say:
tavasti wrote:I have for long (over 10 years) used xfce.
No, xfce is desktop environment where window manager is one component, which can be replaced with other window manager.

Linux veteran & Novice musician

Latest track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycVrgGtrBmM

jonetsu
Established Member
Posts: 2036
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 12:05 am
Has thanked: 10 times
Been thanked: 22 times

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by jonetsu »

tavasti wrote:No, xfce is desktop environment where window manager is one component, which can be replaced with other window manager.
I've seen that Metacity was an alternative offered by LM 19.1 Xfce. Not sure what the role of a DE would be though. A Linux OS with a DM such as KDE or Gnome. And then a Linux OS with a Xfce DE then a DM.... When I installed LM 19.1 the DM was set as Xfce (3 variations, one was chosen by default) with a choice of Metacity (also 3 variations). It's actually easy to consider Xfce as a DM.
jonetsu
Established Member
Posts: 2036
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 12:05 am
Has thanked: 10 times
Been thanked: 22 times

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by jonetsu »

tavasti wrote:No, xfce is desktop environment where window manager is one component, which can be replaced with other window manager.
The Ctrl-F1 problem that I described is linked by others to Xfce. So if Xfce is physically running then the problem should be there.

This said, it seems that Linux Mint are approx. 1 year behind in terms of Xfce and that the problem is fixed in Xbuntu.
tavasti
Established Member
Posts: 2047
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2016 6:56 am
Location: Kangasala, Finland
Has thanked: 369 times
Been thanked: 208 times
Contact:

Re: LM: alternatives to KDE - any good ?

Post by tavasti »

jonetsu wrote:
tavasti wrote:No, xfce is desktop environment where window manager is one component, which can be replaced with other window manager.
The Ctrl-F1 problem that I described is linked by others to Xfce. So if Xfce is physically running then the problem should be there.
Hmm, somehow I remember disabling some/all keyboard shortcuts from settings.

Linux veteran & Novice musician

Latest track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycVrgGtrBmM

Post Reply