Re: KDE Plasma desktop vs. Cinnamon (KUbuntu vs. Linux Mint)
By: Nightfox to All on Thu Jan 29 2026 05:59 pm

I did some research on what Linux desktop environments look best on a 4K monitor. I kept seeing KDE Plasma recommended, particularly with Wayland

Since I've been used to using Linux Mint lately, I gave KUbuntu a try

Please don't take anything I mention below as criticism - I find some of this interesting as I was even having a conversation with my son just last night about how a distro is not a desktop environment, and the total misconceptions MacOS and Windows put on people about what an OS is, what a GUI is, etc.

So I fully recognize that perhaps you had some other unmentioned reason for switching distributions, but did you know that with Mint you had an install that fully supports KDE Plasma?

https://linuxcapable.com/how-to-install-kde-plasma-on-linux-mint/

In fact, there would be several different GUIs that you should have access to on any Linux distro. What you're seeing when firing up Kubuntu vs. Mint are just what they install and use as *default*.

But, like a preference in command shell (bash vs dash vs zsh vs... whatever), you can have more than one desktop environment or even simpler window manager setups installed on your system and choose at login time what you'd like to use for that session.

You can logout from a Plasma session and login to a Cinnamon session, for example.

So, if you weren't aware you could do this, then hopefully it's helpful for the future if you're wanting to try other environments out without having to install a distribution from scratch.

If you were aware, I hope you're enjoying the new experience! :-D

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Re: KDE Plasma desktop vs. Cinnamon (KUbuntu vs. Linux Mint)
By: Nightfox to The Wanderer on Fri Jan 30 2026 03:04 pm

Also, I've seen people say that although you technically can install KDE in Linux Mint, people generally don't really recommend doing so because KDE isn't officially supported by Linux Mint; and it's better to use a

Yes, I suppose if the distro doesn't treat certain packages as first-class citizens, the experience could be shoddy. That's unfortunate, but I guess expected. I'm not a huge fan of those distros that are only good at one thing, but... that's their perogative.

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Re: KDE Plasma desktop vs. Cinnamon (KUbuntu vs. Linux Mint)
By: Nightfox to The Wanderer on Sat Jan 31 2026 11:12:50

Are there distributions that would behave better if you decide to install a different desktop environment?

Distros that are more terminal-centric are good candidates, like Arch, Gentoo, Slackware, et al. While they come with a GUI, you're not obligated to run it by default.

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Re: KDE Plasma desktop vs. Cinnamon (KUbuntu vs. Linux Mint)
By: Nightfox to The Wanderer on Sat Jan 31 2026 11:12 am

Yes, I suppose if the distro doesn't treat certain packages as
first-class citizens, the experience could be shoddy. That's unfortunate,

I thought that was fairly common for distributions that include a specific desktop environment. Are there distributions that would behave better if you decide to install a different desktop environment?

I think Debian is, as far as I know, pretty solid with several environments. I use Gentoo on many systems, and it has several environments as first-class citizens.

There certainly should be others as well that aren't so focused on one environment.

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Re: KDE Plasma desktop vs. Cinnamon (KUbuntu vs. Linux Mint)
By: Nightfox to Mortar on Sun Feb 01 2026 08:21 am

I remember it used to be that in Linux, you could set the 'runlevel' to determine whether it automatically started in the desktop environment or not (I think runlevel 3 was to start up at the console, and runlevel 5 was to start up in the desktop environment; specifically, to launch XFree86 on startup). And I remember being able to exit out of XFree86, and also running 'startx' to run XFree86 again. Is that not the case anymore?

It's certainly do-able, but via different means these days, as I don't know that it's really ever controlled out of init any longer. In Gentoo's OpenRC, you have an init script that fires up a gui login manager, such as sddm, which then can fire up a desktop environment of your choice. Under systemd there's a service that would be fired up. These items could certainly be enabled/disable on the system to enable or prevent a graphic environment from occurring.

I don't know what Wayland's "startx" equivalent is, to be honest. But I see on my system I have /usr/bin/startplasma-wayland - not something I've ever played around with yet, to be honest.

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Re: KDE Plasma desktop vs. Cinnamon (KUbuntu vs. Linux Mint)
By: Nightfox to Mortar on Sun Feb 01 2026 08:21:48

I remember it used to be that in Linux, you could set the 'runlevel' to determine whether it automatically started in the desktop environment or not (I think runlevel 3 was to start up at the console, and runlevel 5 was to start up in the desktop environment; specifically, to launch XFree86 on startup). And I remember being able to exit out of XFree86, and also running 'startx' to run XFree86 again. Is that not the case anymore?

I remember doing that long ago, but I've gotten so used to GUIs, I forgotten if that can still be done, though I'd bet you still can. These days, the boot loader/manager usually has an option to start without a GUI.

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