Can you have the latest KDE on Debian without it making the distro unstable?
Edit to add - Here is my system specs.
Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 13
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.6
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.13.0
Qt Version: 6.8.2
Kernel Version: 6.12.107+deb13-amd64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 16 × Intel® Core™ i9-9900KF CPU @ 3.60GHz
Memory: 64 GiB of RAM (62.7 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER/PCIe/SSE2
Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Product Name: Z390 AORUS MASTER
9 replies
In theory yes, but KDE is honestly the buggiest part of my Arch Linux system. It's not called krashes for nothing.
Honestly it's better to just go all the way and switch to something like Opensuse Tumbleweed (or Slowroll), Fedora, Arch Linux, or Bazzite (KDE version forgot the name) if you want a newer KDE.
The important thing to understand is that unstable doesn't mean unreliable. Unstable just means that it changes a lot. The bugs you get change, whereas Debian freezes things, meaning you have to deal with the same set of bugs, which can be important if you care about the system being predictable.
I have another comment if you are interested in mixing and matching packages from different releases/distros though: https://programming.dev/post/53832740/25029283 , although this might be a lot of work to put it together.
So it sounds like I am better off just sticking with what I have and not messing with it. And I am not, but thank you. =) I am just your average user. But I do love my Linux.
Yes, you can run Debian testing rather than Debian untestable.
Don't do this, Debian Testing does not receive security updates in a timely manner. It's for testing only, and it doesn't have any stability or reliability guarantees:
PSA: You should know that Debian Testing does not receive security updates in a timely manner, and is not intended for production use.
I had no plans to do that. However, it is good to know about the way they do the testing version.
Try Neon
I do love Neon, but is that based in Debian or Ubuntu? I cannot remember. And does it actually make for a good desktop compared to using Debian KDE?
@voidandcozy @mfdoom Nope
What I found does not work great, is mix all the different channels and pull in something big like an entire desktop environment. It's possible. But it'll require manual work and occasional fixing once it breaks. Switching channels entirely seems better to me, I've ran machines on testing or unstable before. And while it's not recommended to do it, it does work just fine. Just be aware of the consequences. And mixing stuff works if it's just one or two specific packages, like the latest kernel.