I was recently interviewed for episode 261 of Destination Linux, and it was a blast! Check it out there, or here:
For the folks commenting on my background, yes indeed, all KDE bugs are bed bugs.
Speaking of which… go squish some!!!
Interview in Destination Linux
Published
Adventures in Linux and KDE 
I really think you are quite a driving force for good in KDE. Very enjoyable interview.
You nailed it with the focus on bugs and stability. As someone really hoping for a solid 22.04 Kubuntu LTS, this is everything to me. I’d also love to see more of an ‘LTS’ focus in KDE in general. I really feel like this is SO close to being the best desktop in Linux (for me anyway). It’s exactly what I WANT, but it’s just never been stable enough in my personal experience up to this point. 5.24 is really exciting me, but it MUST have ongoing polish where it is implemented. I know this would never fly, but at this point I almost wish there was just a feature-freeze so stability (perhaps even security) could be focused on for awhile.
Anyways, I’m not super talented with the nuts and bolts, so I’m trying to help by running some testing and unstable Neon VMs. Thanks to all the ones who can actually code for all the great work.
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You’re very welcome!
Let me note that in general I don’t see KDE software as super compatible with the concept of the LTS distro at this point in time. LTS distros don’t actually provide stability; they provide old packages with security fixes backported. In an ideal world LTS distro packages would be constantly working upstream to improve stability and also backporting bugfixes, but in practice this seems to happen less and less over time, especially for KDE stuff.
That’s fine if the software versions they froze on were already stable, but if instead the software was unstable or continued to become more stable over time, then you’ll actually have a more stable experience using a rolling release distro, at least for software that has those characteristics.
We do have a Plasma LTS product, but beyond that, KDE’s software is released on a much faster schedule than the typical two-year LTS cycle. During that time, there will be 24 non-LTS Frameworks releases, plus 6 non-LTS Gear releases and 5 non-LTS Plasma releases each with their own minor bugfix releases. That’s a lot of stuff you’ll be missing if you stick to old software. Yes, the newer stuff will sometimes introduce regressions, it’s true, but we are trying to minimize this as much as we can, and newer stuff will also fix old bugs and improve stability over time too. I would consider Plasma 5.24 much more stable than 5.18 was, which it was much more stable than 5.12. And so on.
Overall I recommend migrating away from LTS distros and toward high-quality semi-rolling distros like Fedora KDE (semi-rolling everything) or Neon (old base, rolling KDE stuff). Truly rolling distros like Tumbleweed and Arch and Manjaro are fine too as long as you can tolerate a bit of breakage from time to time.
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You certainly do make a good point regarding stagnation in the package base. I do have to maintain PPAs for quite a bit of software. Maybe I need to broaden out a bit on that front (I have strong opinions, but I am also as wrong as anyone else plenty of the time, lol). I do want reasonable expectation of a stable system however. I work with Redhat / RPM and Debian / DEB bases regularly, and am most comfy with Ubuntu, but as much fun as I have had with Neon, perhaps I will venture out a bit more.
Seeing that Valve is going with Arch, I wonder if that base might be a way forward (Never messed with Arch before). I definitely want to ‘settle down’ for good with a KDE system sometime soon, and I feel like that day might finally be close. Fun stuff.
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Super interview !
This really inspires me to help more with KDE, especially with bugs triaging and maybe simple bug solving to start to learn the KDE ways. (much needed, as my tiny MR has stale a bit because of my lack of knowledge)
I can also help with french translation if needed.
I can’t do that “right now right now” though, as I need to square off few things in my life first, but it is on my list.
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That’s awesome!
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