3d ago

Looking for the Best KDE Distro – Fast, Stable, and Feature-Rich

Hey folks,

I’ve been using Linux on and off for over a year now—not a total newbie, but still learning. I know the basics and usually rely on GPT or forums when I hit a wall. I’ve tried a bunch of distros so far: Kali, Debian, Pop!_OS, KDE Neon, Kubuntu… and currently running Fedora KDE.

Fedora is solid, but I keep finding myself tempted to try something new. Maybe I get bored easily—or maybe I just haven’t found the one yet. That’s why I’m asking for your help.

Here’s what I’m really looking for:

🔹 Large and fast app repository – I want access to a wide range of apps, updated quickly, without weird dependency issues.

🔹 Great UI/UX – KDE is my current favorite. I love how modern and smooth it feels, and I want something that builds on that experience.

🔹 Stability without being outdated – I don’t mind rolling release if it’s reliable. Crashes and breakages are a dealbreaker.

🔹 Good extras – Whether it’s unique tools, deep customization options, or just thoughtful polish, I love a distro with a “complete” feel.

🔹 Active community/support – Docs, forums, or anything that helps when things go wrong.

I’d love your suggestions—especially if you’ve been in the same place: bouncing between distros, loving KDE, and still chasing that “perfect” setup.

What would you recommend and why? Any underrated KDE-based distro I should check out? Or maybe something mainstream but deeply customizable and stable?

Appreciate your thoughts!

Also, if you can, please share some of the best (and free) resources to really learn and master Linux. I’m still learning and only know some basics, but I want to go deeper and really understand how things work under the hood. Even if I don’t feel super advanced yet 😅, I’m curious and willing to grow.

Thanks a ton in advance!

45 comments

Fedora KDE

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed has great KDE implementation. Best I found and stuck to last time I hopped around.
Rolling release yet super stable. Great configuration tools.
- I would also recommend openSUSE Tumbleweed. I’m usually a Debian/Debian-based person but I’ve been running Tumbleweed on my desktop for a few years now and it’s been great.
  It has a few peculiarities like any distro but it’s been very stable, with few issues even with things like Nvidia drivers. Docs and community seem good too.
- Does OpenSUSE Tumbleweed support HDR monitors?
  
  Yes, I have two and it works very well.
- This, at some point slowroll should also come out which should offer even more stability

You're describing OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
- Agreed, but not quite perfectly. I've been using Tumbleweed for years, but there are a few things to think about.
  Whereas I've very rarely experienced any problems, the package manager is slow compared to the likes of apt and dnf. The repos are large, but the mirrors haven't always been the fastest for me.
  Also "community". There are always people in OpenSUSE matrix/irc rooms etc, but they are a rather small bunch of people. OpenSUSE doesn't have close to the community of, say, Ubuntu or Arch.

I'd personally stick to fedora?
This may be at odds with stability somewhat being rolling release, but you may want to check out SUSE tumbleweed or EndeavourOS. You already have a solid pick based on your established requirements.
Couldn't hurt to poke around other offerings in a VM, though
- I'll +1 tumbleweed. Rolling and stable, it's been great
  
  I concur. It is also relatively unmolested in terms of fucking up KDE programs.
  
  suse is neat 🥰
- i will also +1 tumbleweed. i was playing around with linux for 1-2 years occasionally, and installed tumbleweed almost 2 years ago. perfomance is great, rolling updates are stable (i only had to use snapper once when i manually bricked my internet connectivity because i was being an idiot that had no idea what he was doing)
- Can you compare manjaro and tumbleweed for me . I hope it'll be helpful 🤞
  
  habibi I'm afraid I've not had good experiences with manjaro, I may need to defer to someone else in this thread. tumbleweed is cool as heck though.
  
  Sure, Manjaro is known to break on updates. OpenSuse TW is stable AF. Manjaro is a joke compared to most distros though.

EndeavourOS. The default desktop is KDE these days.
Easy to install.
Attractive desktops out of the box. KDE is the default. A few nice quality of life utilities.
It uses the Arch repos and kernel. The AUR (yay) is installed out-of-the-box. So, the biggest package selection in the Linux world. Always up-to-date. Updates fast.
Great community in the EOS forums. Some of the best Linux docs on the web in the Arch wiki. The Arch wiki is an amazing resource for learning.
Very stable. Breakages are rare, especially if you use an LTS kernel. The current LTS kernel is the same one that Debian 13 will release with “soon”. So, not exactly ancient.
Biggest “downside” is that there is no GUI software installer out-of-the-box.
If that is really a deal-breaker, just install one like pamac or octopi. “yay -S octopi” should do it.
Or install a menu driven text based package manager like pacseek. “yay -S pacseek”
Or just take a few minutes to learn how to use pacman or yay at the command-line. You said you wanted to learn.
- +1 for Endeavour if you basically want easy to install Arch with the very minimal preinstalled.
  There's CachyOS too if you want a few more tweaks OOTB.
  Arch has definitely been my fav so far, the wiki is unmatched. I stuck with EOS.
- Really appreciate bro 👍

Fedora KDE.

Many might not like or bored with this answer but NixOS. It has more fresh packages than AUR. You can pin your version if you want or you can do what i did: i have most of my packages on stabile(which is super reliable and mostly fast to catch up) but I’ve defined that i want some from the unstable channel which is basically the cutting edge. Yes there are a few things missing when it comes to desktop apps but can use flatpack for those. On top of that you can program the whole OS to your liking and it won’t build if you fckup or you can roll back on boot if you don’t like what you’ve done. I’ve installed nixos to make my penguin friend shutup and now it’s my safe space really.

Kinoite is great. The atomic version of Fedora KDE.

Fedora or maybe Bazzite if you're gaming or using an nvidia GPU I'd say.
- Gaming 🥲. Just normal second hand hp elite book

Just jump in the deep end and install NixOS. 😉
I was seduced by the possibility of permanent "new computer smell" and it is 100% worth the fiddling: https://grahamc.com/blog/erase-your-darlings/

Fedora is solid, but I keep finding myself tempted to try something new. Maybe I get bored easily—or maybe I just haven’t found the one yet.
Here’s what I’m really looking for:
🔹 Large and fast app repository – I want access to a wide range of apps, updated quickly, without weird dependency issues.
🔹 Great UI/UX – KDE is my current favorite. I love how modern and smooth it feels, and I want something that builds on that experience.
🔹 Stability without being outdated – I don’t mind rolling release if it’s reliable. Crashes and breakages are a dealbreaker.
🔹 Good extras – Whether it’s unique tools, deep customization options, or just thoughtful polish, I love a distro with a “complete” feel.
🔹 Active community/support – Docs, forums, or anything that helps when things go wrong.
Fedora already provides what you want. So you just get bored, not haven’t found the one yet.
What would you recommend and why? Any underrated KDE-based distro I should check out?
You better check out KaOS, Nitrux, ALT Linux, and OpenMandriva
Also, if you can, please share some of the best (and free) resources to really learn and master Linux. I’m still learning and only know some basics, but I want to go deeper and really understand how things work under the hood.
LFS book is good resource if you want to know about Linux OS components. Arch Wiki (I'm sure you already know about this), Void Linux Handbook, and Gentoo Wiki are also good resources for learning about Linux OS

I switched Fedora KDE -> Manjaro KDE. Manjaro has less unnecessary software, a larger repository with more applications, and fewer issues with drivers. After updating to Fedora 42, I encountered problems with video drivers on my laptop. That was the final reason for switching to Manjaro.
- Problem with Manjaro is they have their own opinionated repository that is not always in sync with Arch because they try to introduce more "stability". I found this actually caused the opposite in most cases as there are a lot of dependencies that end up being behind and so you can't install more stable versions of a lot of software. With the complexity of modern software dependencies, it has become a big problem. Also, they have in the past caused lots of problems with AUR and have let their SSL certs expire multiple times. Overall, they just haven't been reliable IMHO, so I moved to Fedora a while back.
  
  With Manjaro, you can solve a lot of the problems by switching to the "unstable" repositories, which mirror the Arch repositories. It doesn't solve the problems with their processes though. There are still better Arch based distros, like EndeavourOS.
- Manjaro seems to be a word that gets you down voted pretty quickly.
  I've been using it for years with few issues, but then I'm not using AUR.
  I also use EndeavorOS, Xubuntu, Debian in other machines. One thing that annoys me about EndeavorOS is that using a graphical package manager is not recommended but I've grown to like using those.
- By the way i need to know i have watched alot of YouTube videos videos and they sucks manjaro as a very very bad distro. Hows your experience going with it can u elaborate please..?
  
  I do not like being accused of attacking Manjaro but since you asked….
  the project has had lots of governance and quality problems. Maybe those are all in the past. Maybe.
  By design, Manjaro is not compatible with the Arch repos or the AUR. One of the biggest problems is that they hold their software back a few weeks. In theory this is for quality (not my experience). Regardless, many people have had problems, especially with the AUR. I am one. Others say they have not. Some even claim the rest of us have not either. Manajaro has “brought down” AUR itself (compared to a DDOS attack but really just quality again).
  I used Manjaro for over 2 years and would never touch it again. And if what you want is an Arch based distro with an easy install, there is EOS. I have used EndeavousOS for I think maybe 5 years and I love it. Recently I have moved to Chimera Linux, which is not for everyone (it is awesome but I am not recommending it). It is not because of anything wrong with EOS.

I've been using Endeavour OS since September last year. Had some hiccups with my Nvidia drivers but other than that smooth sailing.
You get the benefits of the arch wiki and the endeavour OS community. Can't recommend it enough.

If you got bored by Fedora is probably the right choice for you. Otherwise nothing compares to Arch, esp if you "I’m still learning and only know some basics, but I want to go deeper and really understand how things work under the hood.". Another safer-nobrainer is Tumbleweed.

KDE Neon
- Can't get my HP Printer working on Neon :/ . Works OOB on Kubuntu and Opensuse Leap.

You might want to check out PikaOS.

Debian stable.
I don't understand the "fetish" (for lack of a better word) with updates. Apologies for being provocative.
The only update one truly needs are :
hardware support ... but then the process is flipped, namely buy hardware that IS already supported
security updates for actually important problems e.g. Heartbleed, not theoretically fancy things like BluePilling out of containers
... that's it!
Everything else might "feel" nice but that's not up to the distribution. If you want the very latest Blender because you are a 3D artist who needs a very specific feature, get the latest Blender! Get it straight from them, NOT from your distribution. If you really REALLY want the bleeding age, get right from the code repository, get the binaries for your architecture, heck even build it yourself it's actually rarely that difficult. Maybe the first time you will need some dependencies but the 2nd time it will be way WAY easier.
Anyway... you get he idea, IMHO your system should be 99.99% boring, only necessary changes. For the few things you genuinely, actively, mindfully NEED (even if it's just due to curiosity) go wild, get the latest!

unsuprisingly, arch

You could try Tuxedo OS. It's stable Ubuntu minus Snap plus newer KDE packages by a small Linux system retailer. Been using it for about a year now on my work laptop and it's perfectly adequate.

Be your own package manager. Choose slackware.

45 comments