“Long-Term Support” doesn’t mean what you think

My last post about good beginner-friendly KDE-focused operating systems sparked some discussions about the concept of “Long-Term Support” (LTS) releases.

But what does this term mean? It’s a bit generic-sounding, making it easy to interpret as meaning almost anything. So let’s go to the source: how the term is defined by the operating systems using it! Here are the non-commercial ones:

Debian Stable says:

Security updates are provided by Debian security team for three years. This generally means that each stable release is supported for its whole life plus an extra year (or so) after a new version of stable is released. In addition, further security support is provided by the LTS and LTS/Extended projects.

Ubuntu says:

LTS stands for long-term support — which means five years of free security and maintenance updates

Kubuntu says:

The latest Long Term Support (LTS) version of the Kubuntu operating system for desktop PCs and laptops, Kubuntu 26.04 [is] supported with security and maintenance updates, until April 2029.

(I didn’t include openSUSE Leap because its marketing material doesn’t use this term, though what it offers is fairly similar in practice)

So these operating systems are fairly consistent about what “Long-Term Support” means to them:

Each discrete OS release will continue receiving updates for a certain number of years.
Those updates will include fixes for security issues.
Those updates may include whatever “maintenance” means; Ubuntu & Kubuntu promise this, Debian doesn’t say.
Those updates will not include any new features, UI improvements, or other non-bug-fix releases from the software’s developers. That is to say, each piece of software is effectively locked to a specific version for the life of the release.

That’s it! So let’s look at what’s NOT promised:

Lack of bugs
Lack of crashes
Fixes for non-security issues
Personal support for issues you encounter
Support for newer hardware devices (Ubuntu offers “hardware enablement” kernels for desktop installs by default, but they come with no stated guarantees and don’t cover the parts of hardware support that go beyond the kernel)

That doesn’t mean an LTS release of Debian, Ubuntu, or Kubuntu will be devoid of these things. It just means they aren’t promised. Probably you’ll get a lot of them anyway, but there’s no guarantee.

I think this is where some of the persistent confusion around the LTS topic comes from.

LTS releases are fairly reliable as long as you use the most popular software from their included software repositories. So in the circumstances when this stops being the case, I think sometimes people can feel betrayed. They think, “I thought this was supposed to be stable! Why didn’t anyone fix this bug yet? Where’s my long-term support?”

But Debian, Ubuntu, and Kubuntu never promised any level of reliability or absence of bugs. They promised that the version-locked software in their repos would receive security fixes for a certain number of years. Ubuntu and Kubuntu also offered a certain amount of non-guaranteed best-effort hardware compatibility improvements and non-security bug fixes.

That’s it!

So it’s important to understand what you’re actually getting with an LTS-style OS. And maybe it’s not for you. There are plenty of other options for people with different desires:

I want newer software

If you’re a software developer or a technology enthusiast, you may want to get software on or closer to its developers’ release schedules. This will give you a stream of new features, UI improvements, and fixes for bugs. In this case, the better option is a rapidly-updating OS like Arch Linux, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora KDE, or one of their children.

The trade-off here is that you may have to live with some things that are currently working getting broken after updating. In other words, the bugs are unstable, unlike in an LTS OS where the bugs are stable.

I personally fall into this group, which is why I use a rapidly-updating OS and not an LTS OS.

I want fewer bugs

I think a lot of people choose an LTS OS to experience fewer bugs, but this is generally not a strength of the LTS product. When an LTS OS freezes on a specific set of software, all the bugs in those versions of the software are frozen, too. Unless the LTS OS provider fixes any of those bugs themselves or backports fixes for them, users will be exposed to them for the lifetime of the release.

With a rapidly-updating OS, when software developers fix bugs in their software, you’ll get those bug-fixes quickly. As long as the software itself is becoming less buggy over time, a rapidly-updating OS shipping software close to its developers’ release schedules will likewise become less buggy over time.

It’s not all puppies and rainbows, though. A fast pace of change means more opportunities for those developers to accidentally introduce new bugs, and also for the introduction of integration issues: bugs caused by software being mis-configured or incompatible with other software. LTS OSs excel at minimizing integration issues between software, because a frozen set of software isn’t a moving target for QA testing.

So in a lot of ways, this choice boils down to whether you’re more bothered by software bugs or by integration issues.

I want better hardware support

If the manufacturer of your device didn’t provide much or any Linux software support for it, a rapidly-updating OS is likewise a better option here. You’ll quickly get all the components that improve hardware support, not just the parts in the kernel.

I want a true reliability guarantee

If time is money for you, this makes sense. And to get it, you’ll need to pay for a commercially-supported operating system. For example, Canonical offers “Ubuntu Pro” with a level of support that includes the following:

Build with confidence with 24/7/365 phone and ticket support. Get prompt help when something breaks on any of the packages in the Ubuntu Main and Universe repositories, including the most widely used open source applications and toolchains. Our 24/7 plans now include SLAs not only for initial response times, but also for ongoing follow-up updates ensuring continuous visibility and faster remediation throughout the lifecycle of your support case.

Wow! Now that’s support. It costs $300 per year for workstations (servers are over 5x as much).

Red Hat and SUSE offer similar services at similar prices.

And they aren’t cheap! But if time is money, those prices may look pretty reasonable. And you’ll get to talk to a perky and friendly person over the phone when you encounter a covered problem, and someone will to take direct responsibility for getting a fix delivered.

What about Flatpak and Snap?

In principle, these technologies allow an LTS-style OS to offer the best of both worlds: a stable base with apps updating more rapidly.

In practice, what you get is a mixing of both worlds. The base OS retains its LTS characteristics, while apps become rapidly-updating, giving you some exposure to breakage coming from new versions alongside more features, UI improvements, and fixes for existing bugs.

We’re spoiled for choice in our ecosystem, which means everyone can find a free software operating system that matches their needs and desires. But you have to know what those needs and desires are, and also successfully map them to the available options! Hopefully this blog post has helped explain what the LTS-style operating systems offer, and who should use them.

Start with Fedora KDE or Kubuntu

I regularly read questions from new users on Reddit and KDE’s discussion forum asking what Linux-based operating system they should start out with, or asking for help after choosing an unsuitable one.

Inspired by a recent example on Reddit, I decided to write this post for them.

Not for you, O advanced reader who is happily using NixOS, Gentoo, or Hannah Montana Linux! If you’re content, I’d encourage you to do something more useful with the next five minutes of your life. These minutes are for for your friend who’s currently using Windows.

A major problem our corner of the world faces is that there’s absolutely terrible information about which Linux-based operating system to choose when you’re ready to make the move:

https://distrowatch.com/ shows approximately five billion options and provides no real guidance for making a decision.

Asking “what Linux distro should I use” to a search engine, an AI, or YouTube returns a veritable graveyard of bad advice, link-spam blog posts, and interactive “help me choose a distro” websites that will steer you wrong 100% of the time.

Famous YouTuber Linus Sebastian has probably made tens of thousands of dollars repeatedly and somewhat hilariously choosing bad options in front of a camera.

With so little to go on, people can be forgiven for making bad choices. So today I’d like to share my personal recommendations — at least for KDE-centric options! KDE maintains https://kde.org/distributions/, which includes four pretty good ones. But I’m going to be bold and recommend only two of them:

Choose Fedora KDE or Kubuntu

Both Fedora KDE and Kubuntu share a lot of positive traits:

Secure Boot is supported, so you can install them on devices that ship with secure boot enabled (which is most sold in the 15 years or so).
Included software repositories are large, so you’ll probably be able to get most or all of the apps you need without having to add third-party sources.
Software from their built-in repositories is updated reasonably quickly, meaning newer hardware and software are generally well-supported. For Kubuntu, this is only the case if you upgrade every 6 months rather than sticking with the LTS versions, so do that!
Their developer communities do real QA to ensure that users are protected from most short-term and major regressions from upstream.
Their user communities are large, with good documentation and support resources.
KDE software is well-integrated and offers a good experience, with nothing obviously missing or broken.
Their core package management systems are robust and integrated well into KDE’s Discover software center app.
Popular proprietary software and media codecs are easy to make available during initial installation or setup, and don’t de-stabilize the system as a result of doing so.

There’s just a lot to like here.

But are Fedora KDE and Kubuntu perfect? No. In particular, both are made from mutable packages assembled on your system. This means:

If a system upgrade gets gets interrupted in the middle by a power cut or hardware failure, the system can end up unbootable without intervention by an expert.
Without manual maintenance, long-term installations can end up drifting out of sync with what a new installation would provide, introducing weird issues that are hard to debug.
Adding third-party software repositories is tempting but unsafe, and can introduce package conflicts that render the system unable to update without intervention by an expert.
If you tinker too deeply without knowing what you’re doing, you can accidentally damage these systems in a way that requires intervention by an expert to repair.
Major system upgrades take a long time to complete, with multiple reboots (as long as you keep the “offline updates” feature turned on, which is at least a bit safer than in-place updates).

So, not perfect. But, I think, good enough.

What about the immutable OSs? They solve those problems!

Indeed they do! For whose who aren’t familiar, there’s a new crop of operating systems on the horizon, so-called “immutable” OSs — a terrible term since it implies they’re completely locked down and unchanging, which are not the case.

These operating systems offer some form of a read-only core OS, plus various mechanisms for overlaying software on top of it while preventing the core from being damaged over time. This improves safety around system updates in particular.

Practical options here include Aurora, Fedora Kinoite, Bazzite, Kalpa Desktop, and KDE’s own in-progress KDE Linux. Valve’s highly-successful SteamOS is also in this category, though as of early 2026, it’s not yet intended for general-purpose usage on arbitrary hardware the way the others are.

I feel as strongly that this model of operating system represents the future as I do that said future has not yet fully arrived for everyone.

The truth is, while these OSs solve many longstanding problems in traditional package-based operating systems, they also also introduce a plethora of difficult-to-avoid rough edges and paper cuts for general use. Those who work on these OSs need to smooth out those rough edges before their work can go mainstream. I’m personally involved in an effort to do so for KDE Linux, and I’ll be the first to admit it’s not there yet.

But I don’t like Fedora KDE or Kubuntu!

If you already have a preferred OS, you’re not in the target audience for this article. 🙂 You’re opinionated and competent enough that you can probably make anything work, and whatever you’ve ended up using likely perfectly suits your own personal tastes.

New users have none of your skills or opinions; they need a general recommendation for something that’s good enough, safe enough, and not too weird. That’s what I’m writing about here.

To be clear, I’m not saying other Linux-based OSs are bad. On the contrary, many are great, and better in a lot of ways than the two I’ve mentioned. Fedora KDE and Kubuntu have other annoyances beyond just “being made of packages” that I wrote about earlier: neither sets up any kind of emergency rollback system by default; their tentative forays into the realm of Snap and Flatpak as additions to their traditional packages complicate things unnecessarily; and I don’t love their goofy wallpapers. These operating systems could be even better for sure.

But whaddaya gonna do, nothing’s perfect. What I’m saying here is that I think these two are good enough to be the best choices for new users in the KDE world.

Well OK, but why should I listen to you, anyway!?

Ideally you shouldn’t; you should do your own research and make your own decisions. But that can be hard if you’re starting from square one and you don’t know what to look for!

So I’d say the important part is to look for other options out there that share the same traits I wrote in bold text in the “Choose Fedora KDE or Kubuntu” section. Those are what will make a Linux-based OS easier and more comfortable to adopt.

But no matter what you choose, have fun and see it as an adventure! Switching your operating system out for another one is something most people will never do; you’re automatically an interesting person for even making the effort.

If you run into problems, ask humans for help. Don’t ask AI, and don’t go looking for personal workarounds that will only benefit you and might break in the future. Be a part of the community; learn and grow, and help others do the same.

Good luck!

A Mac-like experience on Linux

In 2016, after being a Mac guy for 23 years, I took the plunge and made a full-time switch to Linux. I did my research, and over and over again encountered the idea that GNOME was good for MacOS refugees like myself. So I gave it a try!

But my experience didn’t support the meme. I think a lot of people make this assertion without really having a deep understanding of the MacOS user experience, or the actual positive qualities of the software, because I don’t think GNOME offers a particularly Mac-like experience at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I think GNOME shell is pretty good, and largely succeeds at doing what it sets out to do. But that thing does not appear to be “offer an experience that’s a lot like MacOS.”

I still see this mentioned on forums and YouTube videos today. I don’t think it’s helpful, and today I want to provide a bit of context from my perspective.

So let’s compare MacOS and GNOME! Right away we see some obvious differences:

MacOS image from https://betawiki.net/wiki/File:25A354-Desktop.png; GNOME 49 image screenshotted by me

Dock

One of the the two major anchoring user interface (UI) elements on MacOS is the dock. It’s an app launcher and switcher, an unread count notifier, a place for minimized windows to go, a quick shortcut to the trash, downloads folder, and any other files or folders you put on it.

GNOME doesn’t have this. Its anchoring UI element is the Activities Overview screen, which contains a small program launcher, but the whole thing is hidden by default, meaning it can’t be easily used for monitoring unread counts or switching between apps. It’s also not customizable at all, while the MacOS dock is extensively customizable. It’s just a very different experience.

Global menubar and app functionality

The other major anchoring UI element is the global menu. Every Mac app exports a global menu structure, including the desktop itself. This allows Mac apps to be visually simple, because all the powerful features are hidden away in the menu structure.

GNOME has a top bar, but there’s no global menu on it. And while GNOME apps do generally have a level of visual simplicity that’s similar to Mac apps, they’re usually more limited in functionality, and they don’t export menu structures full of extra features.

Desktop icons

On MacOS, you can put files and folders on the desktop, and use it for managing frequently or recently used files. Internal and removable drives appear there, too.

GNOME doesn’t have this. The desktop is just a picture; you can’t use it for anything functional.

Window minimize/maximize buttons

On MacOS, if you need to get a window out of your way, you minimize it, just like you do on Windows, Plasma, etc. It flies into the dock and it’s clear how you get it back. You can also maximize a window from another button on the titlebar, and it goes into another.

GNOME apps have neither of these buttons. As a result, it’s not clear how to get a window out of the way or make it bigger without a lot of manual work. You can add those buttons later using the separate Tweaks app, but it’s clear that the system was not designed for it.

At-a-glance app status monitoring

MacOS includes a classic “System Tray” style UI on the top bar holding the global menu. Here apps can put little icons that communicate their state while running but without any visible windows. The MacOS dock also displays unread counts and progress information for running apps.

GNOME doesn’t have these features, either at all, or in a way that’s always visible. Instead, it relies on apps sending notifications about changes to their status.

Configurability

Contrary to popular belief, MacOS is surprisingly rich in personalization options. You can customize the widgets on the desktop or notification center, the text size, highlight colors, sidebar icon sizes, places panel items, screensaver, scrollbar appearance and behavior, lock screen message, menubar positioning, UI alert sound, almost everything about the dock, and so on.

GNOME’s approach to configuration is much more minimal, and the officially-supported options are pretty sparse. Instead, mostly the way you personalize the system is by using Extensions, which can do much more than you can in MacOS, but also offer no long-term compatibility guarantee, so there’s a chance any of the extensions will break with every new release.

So where does the bridge from MacOS lead?

Again, I think GNOME is pretty good… it just doesn’t offer a MacOS-like experience. What it does offer is a near-zero distraction experience. That’s the design goal, and it succeeds. But it’s not MacOS’s design goal.

So if not GNOME, where’s the more MacOS-like experience for refugees? Honestly, KDE Plasma is what I would recommend. It’s where this MacOS refugee ended up, at least. Let’s compare again, but this time with KDE Plasma:

MacOS image from https://betawiki.net/wiki/File:25A354-Desktop.png; Plasma 6.4 image screenshotted by me

Like MacOS, Plasma has a dock-style panel. Despite a few visual differences, it handles the same things: launching apps, switching between apps, seeing apps’ unread counts, and holding minimized windows. This panel also contains the System Tray UI. It’s here rather than on a top panel, but it’s a small difference.

Though neither screenshot shows files on the desktop, both support it. Similarly, both support desktop widgets for building highly personalized workflows.

You can also minimize and maximize windows in Plasma just like you can on MacOS.

And finally, you can personalize a Plasma system in a wide variety of ways — as much or more than you can can on MacOS, in most cases — and all in a 1st-party supported way. There are also GNOME-style extensions available for people who want even more, but these make use of a stable API that only changes about once every 10 years, so compatibility issues are much rarer.

There are still differences, of course: major ones are Plasma’s Windows-start-menu-style Kickoff Application Launcher and the lack of a global menu. But Kickoff can be swapped out for something else or removed, and the Global Menu is actually a fully-supported 1st-party feature, simply being off by default. If this is a part of MacOS that you really like, turning it on is very easy:

Other smaller differences include disks not appearing on the desktop, and maximized windows not going into new virtual desktops.

But in my opinion and experience, these differences are relatively minor, and I don’t think it’s worth chasing the dream of a 100% pixel-for-pixel clone of MacOS on Linux. Rather, I think it’s best to take the most successful parts and ditch the sources of awkwardness. And in my opinion, KDE Plasma fits the bill.

So if you’re leaving MacOS because you found it too distracting, then I think GNOME may be a good option. But if you’re leaving for other reasons, give Plasma a try!