Thanks onhoho,

I'll keep a note of your recommendation should I decide to swap the drive over. I'm letting sleeping dogs lie for the moment. Out of sheer exhaustion to be frank!

I'm going to concentrate on setting up KDE Neon for now.

Well spoke too soon.

Discover worked for a while then started crashing again.

Is there another way to get Apps?

I have no idea what "Discover" is
I assume it is some kind of package manager since you talk about getting apps

in any case, it probably merits a new thread, in the appropriate sub-forum
include details, like distro/version and any error messages you get.
if the distro has a sub-forum., use that.

but for what it is worth,
if that is the distro's flagship package manager.
Find a new Distro.

Agree with Firerat. I can only be biased because the vast majority of my Linux experience is in Debian based distributions that all use the APT package manager. Ubuntu does have an app store, but I have been put off it due to snaps being pushed (another topic in itself). I use Debian 10 (which gives you a choice of desktop environments, including KDE). I found Cinnamon the best overall after trying them all out.

What spec is your machine? I find Linux pretty light on resources and anything more than 4GB has been fine... (I write this from a 32GB Ryzen 7 so maybe things have changed!).

My Dell 11-3157 2 in 1 has an Intel Pentium Quad Core with 4Gb RAM, which I think I will take to the max of 8Gb and see how it goes.

Other than Discover which is the default package manager I like everything else about KDE Neon and have a lot more to do to get it a productive setup.

Interestingly the bug reporter for Discover also fails!

I have currently had it with distro hopping in search of the One Distro To Rule Them All! So I'll stick with KDE Neon for the time being to see what I can make of it. I have tried 6 so far, I could do this forever. Enso's packet manager looked like a Soviet era Larder with sparse choice and what there was, was mostly unreviewed and most times without even previews, which indicated its role as a minor distro I presume. I had Ubuntu Budgie on an external HDD and it's not much better. Same with Zorin OS and Elementary OS on two other external HDDs. Might try Linux Mint or Ubuntu just to see what the more popular distros look like. I couldn't get Ubuntu Studio and several others to install, just got a cryptic error message.

Is there anything like macOS's Console Log or Etrecheck equivalent that Linux users can use to see what was happening at the time of a crash? If so how do you get to it? It may contain a hint of what is going on and let me report back.

Don't take this the wrong way, I'll continue with Linux, but I begin to see why Linux users talk so much about stability and updates and why macOS users do not.

it looks like working your way through the Debian derivatives

You should try Debian

I just checked , it has kde plasma

and discover

you would install it with
but it isn't "the latest" ,
after a quick look on kde neon site I see mention of 5.16, Debian 10 (Buster) has 5.14


looking at Debian bug tracker I found this
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...cgi?bug=915076
which seems to fit what you described
If it does that bug has been around for some time
but I guess any bug with the word crash in it would fit


personally I use the command line to do updates, install etc.



Regards Stability, the Linux people who talk about have no idea what they are talking about


A stable release is one that will not have frequent updates

I'm on Debian Sid, aka Debian Unstable .. it gets updates a lot.. 35 in last 24 hours
but my system doesn't crash, my applications don't crash.. it just works
sure, I get the occasional problem . .by the time I get to bug reports it is already reported.

Now, If I were a system Admin I wouldn't want to be constantly doing updates, getting new features which change the way programs do things and have to adapt custom Applications/scripts to work.
So I would choose a Stable Release, where I get no feature changes, a stable API that my custom applications and scripts work with, but get important security updates / bug fixes.

The people who complain about "Stability" are the guys who want the latest and greatest everything NOW.. They can't wait and start adding this and that Repo/PPA .. and install software from all over the place..( even forcing things that the package manager complains about ) and than complain when software starts screwing up ( because they have miss-matched packages )

when you see stable release , think - unchanging
when you see unstable release , think - changes frequently

when you see someone going on about stability , think what did they do to break it then?

it is not a Linux Problem, it is a Language problem

Although being free to do what you want doesn't help
and you are not free to do what you want with MacOS, so I guess that helps


tl;dr
Use a stable release
Don't add third party Repos ( unless you *really* *need* to )
Leave unattended upgrades on
Don't force things

have a happy Linux system

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This crashing Discover started after the latest update a few days back. Unfortunate, you had to experience that. Before that it was very stable. I hope Neon developers will fix this shortly - I guess they have received many complaints, if not proper bug reports, by now.

Alternatively, you can install applications using sudo apt install package_name.

If you have installed the User edition, I can tell you Neon is very stable and user-friendly.

1 members found this post helpful.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=411286

you could try downgrading the package
we can try apt, and it it gets messy aptitude

first lets get a list of available versions

output will be something like this
bold is the version number
you should have [installed] next to one
with luck you will also see a lesser version number

I'll call your faulty version 5.16.x.1-1 and previous ( working ) version 5.16.y.1-1

we need to install the more powerful aptitude ( probably not installed by default )
which will present more options
it will complain but offer options
the first one is usually keep everything as it is
so hit n

you are looking for the option that downgrades all 'linked' packages
when you see that do "y"

test Discover doesn't crash ( we hope the older version is fine )

you can now do updates without fear it will pull down the faulty one
and hopefully the newer version is fixed

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If you want information on comparable software, it would help if you indicated what exactly "Console" and "Etrecheck" do on your Mac since most members here are not familiar with them. If you want info on what happened in a crash there are all kinds of log files with information under /var/log on Linux systems. Also, the dmesg command explained at the link below gives some info. Crash is an all-encompassing term, details on what it means in a particular situation help.

1 members found this post helpful.

Well, if you read my blog on this site, you will see that I found MacOS to be horribly unstable, particular for software running on it - and that was using it every day for work for a year to do an actual job. I found that my colleagues just dismissed crashing software as a non-issue and you could just restart it - there is definitely a strange religious aspect to being a MacOS user/lover I think! I personally grew up on Macs & Ataris and not being a fan of PCs until I needed one for college (for Visual Basic).

If you want stable, you want Debian (of the Debian derivatives) - It is not a derivative, so you have none of the extra bits of fluff that seem to trip things up. It is behind on the latest updates in order to be completely stable. It has been a popular distro for servers and now in Debian 10, it has become a great desktop choice, especially as you can install a bunch of Desktop Environments (KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, xfce, etc.) and switch between them - pretty useful for evaluating.

Thanks everybody I'll get onto that tomorrow.

As a noob I don't understand where Linux is getting the apps from when you do the command line installation. Somewhere in the 'Net? But I don't see an address. Is there a default location? Is it possible to go off and just get stuff manually bypassing Discover, or is that too complicated?

The only complaint I have so far in KDE Neon is Discover, so if I resolve that I should be fine.

I take it a "package" is much what it means on macOS, an App bundle, which you can open and look at the component parts?

What are the other ways that Apps are bundled and can they be installed on my distro? If so how?

Without getting into a deep debate of macOS vs Linux, I'll say that macOS is not as fixed as you appear to think it is. There are plenty of ways to modify it but most do not choose to because it is very well tuned. In macOS I would not need to do all the changes that I am now doing at length in Linux because it already has the features (and more). Plus the Apps, Widgets, Haxies, Utilities, Services, Keyboard shortcuts, Universal Dictionary, SpellChecker and Wikipedia lookups etc. There are things that annoy me and I've wanted to change in Terminal if i find a way, such as the stupid way Apple changed Save As. But most of the things that Linux users keep praising various distros and Apps for are just normal and taken for granted on macOS. macOS has way more and is far smoother, interactive, consistent and predictable. I have yet to see one thing that Linux has over macOS (I hope to but it hasn't happened yet).

Linux is like Ikea. You get to assemble the furniture and have some sense of achievement after the whole weekend disappears trying to follow the instructions, swapping legs, tops and castors around, but Ikea is not really good furniture, and YOU are NOT an ace Scandinavian designer. Wrangling an Allen key, damaging the cheapish parts, does not produce anything exceptional, just a cheapish knock off that will be in the tip next year.

But then I am not doing this on my Macs, I am doing this on my Dell laptop and maybe my old PC desktop later. Linux is a step up from Windows!

When did you last use macOS? macOS just runs. F o r e v e r !

Occassionally an App might fall over but even that is rare, and I've never seen anything like Discover (which is a core App in my Distro) or the hastle of installation of anything like I have with Linux.

The Great Distro Hunt is not in my experience a stroll down Madison Ave looking in shop windows. It is a rummage through sale bins hoping to find something "not broken" that you can "fix'.

What I would say is that if you treat Linux to better hardware, it certainly runs better, like any computer. I suppose there are the two worlds of spending money on the whole experience, vs breathing life into older machines - you can of course do both with Linux and I agree in principle that if a Mac has what you need out of the gate, then it makes a lot of sense (I just found it did not have what I needed and then proceeded to be more like your Linux experience when I tried to change things!).

It is probably worth researching how the installation of software works in Linux for your distro. It is possible to download and install .deb packages from websites in a Windows-like way, but this is not recommended unless it is the only way for that software and that you trust it.

The way packages tend to work (and I am completely generalizing here probably) is that a package manager will have a maintained list of repositories where all of the (procured) software can be found. This is a procured list and avoids you downloading dodgy pieces of software. As an example, I have Synaptic Package Manager which is a graphical way of seeing everything in the repositories and you can search - I find this is a relatively friendly but also educational tool to use because it shows packages and also marks the dependencies when you pick one and you can search for software - it is not as pretty looking as an app store front-end, but it does not hide everything from you either.

Using the command line/terminal is pretty easy for installation (e.g. "sudo apt install synaptic"), but you do need to know the name of the package that you are installing. One advantage of installing via terminal is that you get a lot of feedback on what is happening. Also launching applications from the terminal is a great way to diagnose issues if an application was misbehaving - it may well tell you what is wrong.

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nooo, synaptic is awful
it is not a GUI, it is just text pretending to be gui.

if you must recommend a gui to people the default "software" is prettier
under system-tools I think, .. I don't have any gui package mangers installed
so going from memory here.

anyway, if you still have the external option, try Debian 10.1
and try Debian 10's 5.14 Plasma-desktop
it might have enough bling to satisfy you

if Debian does satisfy, you need to look at the likes of CentOS

I am not too opinionated on it really, I was just giving an example of what I use (because at least it is honest) to answer the question around how software is installed and where it comes from. Also, I have had zero problems with synaptic ever so I don't think it is awful based on a few years of experience with it. Again, just presenting my experiences which is all I can do.