[digiKam-users] Best distro for digiKam? (user)

[Sveinn í Felli]

Chiming in a bit late:

Every couple of years I do some distro-hopping to see what fits my 
needs; lately my main environment has been LinuxMint with Cinnamon 
desktop - and some repository tweaking; some backport packages and of 
course the Philip repositories to have the latest DigiKam and friends.

Even so, there have been occasional quirks, normally solvable, but 
sometimes waiting a couple of days for a fix. This is I think valid for 
most of the *buntu derivative distros.

Meanwhile, I've kept some other distros at hand, sometimes using them to 
test the newest versions of DigiKam.

Mageia is rather easy to use, and seems to have good support for KDE. 
Manjaro seems to be similar in many ways.

But for a solid, stable productive setup I'd go for OpenSUSE; behind the 
scenes they have quite a mechanism for spinning customized repositories, 
the software selection at <https://software.opensuse.org/> is immense, 
support for hardware is among the best in the Linux-world, they offer an 
easy "One Click" package installation (RPM-format) and the 
YAST-interface is usable in text-mode from the command-line (has saved 
my butt several times when video-card drivers have gone fubar...).

Nevertheless, OpenSUSE are distros I'd try to avoid to set up for other 
non-technical users on the same box (guest access or concubine), they 
have tendency of getting somewhat bloated (SUSE has a record of doing 
things not quite the standard ways) and sometimes it's not 
straightforward to configure/isolate issues when there's an overlap of 
the configuration managers (clashes/overrides between YAST and the 
GNOME/KDE-system managers).

So, I'd recommend OpenSUSE for a private workstation on a box with 
plenty of horsepower and for an user willing to set things up as he sees 
fit.

Just thoughts,

Sveinn í Felli


Þann þri 31.júl 2018 15:41, skrifaði Daniel Bauer:
> 
> 
> On 31.07.2018 16:39, Peter McD wrote:
>> Am 31.07.2018 um 16:00 schrieb Andrey Goreev:
>>> I think openSUSE with KDE is one of the best ones for digiKam. They keep
>>> digiKam up to date and everything just works. ...
>>
>> I run Tumbleweed. If you can stand the weekly update-volume, this is 
>> the distribution. (I have not tried Arch, yet)
>>
>> But the most, really most important aspect is whether the distribution 
>> supports ALL your hardware the way you need it.
>>
>> Check that, I'm sure you will find a way to get the newest digikam for 
>> that distro, too.
>>
>> cu
>> Peter
>>
> 
> I run OpenSuse, right now 42.3, since Suse 6x, and in general am happy 
> with it. I guess it's a lot of just being accustomed. I like the easy 
> management tools ("Yast") to install and de-install programs.
> 
> I have never tried other distros but I think it's probably the same as 
> with Canon and Nikon users: mine is better than yours, where both are 
> the same good and all is a matter of taste.
> 
> So, if you're new to Linux, I'd try to install several of the common 
> distros (Ubuntu, Suse...) and play a little around with them to see 
> which one applies best to your personal taste.
> 
> I wouldn't go for a "cutting edge" distro like tumbleweed if you are not 
> familiar with all the tools to eventually repair things from an update.
> 
> Also check if that distro supports your hardware from scratch. I have 
> huge problems (unsolvable) with optimus (intel/nvidia graphics) which on 
> my asus laptop simply does not run correct (nvidia not at all, intel 
> with lots of annoyances). Don't know if other distros behave better with 
> that (I guess it's a general problem), but try them on your hardware.
> 
> Once you decided for a distro you most probably will stay with it for 
> many years, so invest some time to get a feeling for the differences. 
> You could install them in virtual systems (virtualbox), so that you can 
> even switch between them and compare directly.
> 
> Another thing to consider is what distro your friends are running - in 
> case you need help...