KDE Neon – A Linux distro that glows

KDE is a good looking desktop environment among the other Linux DEs. I was looking for list of Linux distros where KDE is offered as major DE.

Recently, I tried installing KDE version of OpenSUSE on my Mac as Parallels OS. Installation was a success. However, while trying to install parallels tools on openSUSE, I faced some major challenges. Hence I had to uninstall the OpenSUSE. My search for KDE based Linux distros is on.

This is when I stumbled upon KDE Neon in the Distowatch website (https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kdeneon). KDE Neon is ubuntu based Linux distro and supposed to be always upto date w.r.t KDE Plasma updates.

You can download KDE here – https://neon.kde.org/download. I downloaded the  64 bit user edition ISO image and installed the same as a parallels desktop on my Mac. Installation was a cake walk. Next step was to install parallel tools. This was easy too – followed instructions given in the site – http://kb.parallels.com/en/121370

Below are some screenshots of KDE Neon. At this point, I just want to give a try to the distro, tweak the Desktop look and feel as KDE is a DE that is easily configurable to look differently.

This is indeed a simple and nice looking KDE distro worth giving a try.

 

 

 

 

 

A Mag!cal D!stro called Mage!a

Ever since I got hooked on to Linux, I have noticed that Mageia Linux distribution (https://www.mageia.org/en/) was always listed among the top 10 distros on the Distrowatch website (http://distrowatch.com/).

However, I never got opportunity to try out the same as due to the size of ISO image file. In India, I always faced serious issues with internet connectivity and bandwidth. An ISO image file of size 3.6 GB would take almost a day to download with intermittent loss of internet connectivity.

After a many years of temptation and curiosity, finally over this weekend, I dared to download the ISO image. I downloaded the torrent file first (64bit classic installation from https://www.mageia.org/en/downloads/) and then the ISO image file.

Using the Parallels tools on my Macbook Pro, I quickly installed the Mageia Linux with XFCE desktop environment.

Mageia 5 supports multiple DEs – KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, XFCE and Mate.

I am not great fan of XFCE but went ahead and installed as I wanted to try something different. I have Mint, Fedora with Cinnamon DE and Elementary OS with Pantheon DE already on my Macbook.

I tried out KDE couple of times with OpenSUSE Leap and Manjaro Linux. I had a feeling that KDE worked best on Manjaro Linux.

Anyways, the XFCE installation of Mageia Linux happened very smoothly without a glitch. Once this is done, I installed Parallels tools on Mageia manually.

After struggling a little bit with the package manager, I realized that I need to un-check the CD-ROM Core Release option in the control center. After this, I ran the ‘update your system’ and updated to latest available packages (300+ packages were downloaded for more than 5 hour although I downloaded 3.6 GB of ISO image the previous day 😦

This shows the care taken by the community to keep the OS up to date.

Once this is done, I have noticed the OS is very stable. It has by default the following applications installed and many more –

• Ristretto Image viewer, GIMP
• Claws Mail, Firefox browser
• LibreOffice, Audacity, Gnome MPlayer, Parole Media Player
• Engrampa Archieve manager, Tunar File Manager and Screenshot

I have installed the XFCE weather plugin and added the same to XFCE panel. Also Installed the Cairo Dock.

Overall, Mageia looks like a stable and easy to use OS and worth trying it.

I am already liking it and joined the google plus community and plan to stick to it for the time being.