What problems i could face in the future?

I am currently running EOS KDE, i saw a post in the live media thread saying i could face issues using kde as a relatively new user to desktop linux. What sort of issues could i face in the future when running kde with arch?

For additional context, i am quite informed in command line having experience running my own set of rhel based servers for my business sites. Any tips and suggestions of what i could expect going down the road running EOS KDE will be much appreciated.

Some things to consider:

  • For reasons unknown, some people are very passionate about their DE of choice going so far as to endlessly throw shade on other DEs
  • Some people try something, have a problem, quickly give up and switch to something else
  • All of the major DEs(kde,gnome,xfce,mate,cinnamon,budgie) generally work fine
  • All the same major DEs have issues from time to time
  • plasma is highly customizable, some people get paralyzed by too many options
  • Sometimes plasma configuration gets lost or corrupt on major updates
  • Arch-based distros get new plasma upgrades as soon as they are released, it is common for there to minor bugs for a period of time
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I don’t think KDE itself is particularly more problematic than other desktop environments, but even if you do run into something problematic you can rollback with Timeshift. Arch is a rolling base and sometimes it will break, mind you, it does not happen as often as people who do not use it make it out to, but once more - if something does break, you can rollback to a previous state with Timeshift.

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More often than not, it won’t be KDE that you could face problems, but more than likely it’ll be problems related to updated kernels, new systemd upgrades, new nvidia drivers, or other system critical packages that tend to break maybe* once a year, but these issues are always resolved very quickly (hours to maybe a day or so typically). With KDE, you will rarely come across any system breaking issues, but you will for sure come across bugs here or there. But in my experience when using Solus Plasma for a year and reading updates each week from https://pointieststick.com (bookmark this site if you haven’t already, it’s one of the best), the Plasma experience is solid and issues get reported and solved in very quick turnaround.

When you love a DE enough, sometimes you’re willing to live with a bug or two for a bit knowing it’ll get fixed in a future patch or on the next upgrade. At least that’s been my experience over the years, hope this helps maybe give you a little bit of peace of mind!

As with any system, backups, backups, backups :wink:

*(not all systems may experience breakages)

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I think you received good answers to your question.
I just want to add another thing that is often overlooked.

When an upstream package coming from the Arch repo is causing issues, the solution will follow literally a couple of hours at the most. So, often it is a matter of patience or when you see updates, visit the forum to see if there are any issues.
There are a lot of community members who update hourly or daily and they will inform the community in case of an issue.

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I swear I only update once a week!

<goes off and runs yay 5 times within the hour>

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If you are happy with KDE Plasma, continue using it, if not, try something else.

And if at some point in the future you become unhappy with it, you can easily switch to a different DE.

You have nothing to worry about, really. Just relax.

Plasma is one of the least problematic DEs when it comes to updates and stuff breaking. Usually, it’s typically only minor glitches which most users do not even notice, that get introduced and fixed with almost every update.

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From what I’ve gathered so far, i guess its a matter of arch & kde accidentally breaking something on update but it can be the same for every other DE. I guess i am worried for nothing but i had to know more after reading that thread, i have timeshift + autosnap + grub-btrfs already set up in case anything major happens but thank you for the tip that for minor issues i can simply wait for upstream to fix.

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Chances of something major breaking on update, at least regarding KDE, are negligible.

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I don’t think you’ll face any issues that are significant or any different than any other desktop. Depends on how much you customize it and possible it gets messed up doing that. I have Btrfs set up with snapper so i can recover. You’ll have the same issues that all users have with Arch updates from time to time. As @Kresimir said KDE is one of the least problematic.

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Thank you, bookmarking it now :+1:

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@Numeriku
Just to elaborate what I meant by that post that you linked. The OP of that thread wanted to make an installation that is suitable for an inexperienced Linux/PC user. Other distros, like Linux Mint, are in general pretty straight forward when it comes to updates, update frequency, maintenance and GUI tools. There is not much you can do wrong and most things have a good GUI.

So when it comes down to create an equal experience for people, that have no experience, while using EOS, it would take some time to prepare and teach how to use the system.

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Thank you, my initial general thoughts when reading what you wrote was that there might be system breaking bugs that could occur regularly when using kde, while i am prepared for that since i choose to use an arch based distro, i wanted to minimize the risk so i opened this thread for further inquiries to that but now all the replies has eased my worries.

Sorry that i did not attribute the context of your post to the op of that thread experience in using linux.

You’ll face more issues using Arch than KDE, given its rolling nature. Both are pretty stable, but not bullet proof. Eventually you’ll have to fix something.

Make sure you know how to chroot into your system if an update renders it non bootable.

Make sure you have a tested backup and restore process for your system.

You might not need either of these recovery methods at all for long periods … until one day you will.

I had to restore my main system for the first time in years yesterday. Quite a shock to the system initially.

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Theres even a few of us who even watch Arch testing/forums/etc where we can see issues that may come up before the updates hit so we can be ready.

As noted, have a backup and a USB ready. You’ll do fine, and check here if you run into a problem.

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