I've been primarily a Windows user for many years, though I've also used Linux for quite a while too, for work and sometimes at home. My favorite Linux distro lately has been Linux Mint, as it usually "just works". I've had my main PC at home set up to dual-boot Windows and Linux Mint for a few years, though I had mainly still been using Windows on it.

I recently started primarily using Linux on my main PC, as there are some things about Windows that have been bugging me: Some personalization chagnes reverting back to stock, and auto-rebooting overnight to install Windows updates if I leave the PC on (I'm pretty sure you can configure Windows to wait to install updates though).

I have a 4K monitor that I use on my main PC, and although Mint's Cinnamon desktop environment looks fairly good on it, I still thought it could look better. Also, Cinnamon's fractional scaling (although working) is still experimental. I use the factional scaling to scale things up a bit but not too big.

I did some research on what Linux desktop environments look best on a 4K monitor. I kept seeing KDE Plasma recommended, particularly with Wayland (which is a modern replacement for X11, which is designed to perform better and handle modern features better, such as fractional scaling).

Since I've been used to using Linux Mint lately, I gave KUbuntu a try (Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, and KUbuntu is basically Ubuntu with KDE Plasma). I first installed KUbuntu 25.10 alongside Linux Mint to try them both; I ended up really liking how things look overall with KDE Plasma in KUbuntu, so I decided to fully replace my Linux Mint setup on my main desktop with KUbuntu. So far I'm enjoying it.

I've heard there are some reasons why people don't really like Snap in Ubuntu; I saw there's a way to disable Snap, which I've done, as well as enabled Flatpak in its software configuration, so that part is basically set up like Linux Mint. But I feel like it might not really matter much in the end.

As far as running Windows software, I still have my PC set to dual-boot with Windows, so I can still use Windows when needed for certain software. But I've also set up a Windows 11 virtual machine in the Linux setup, and I've installed Wine too, which is able to directly run some Windows software in Linux. There are also other options for making it easier to run Windows software, such as Bottles (which I haven't used much yet) and WinBoat (which looks like it runs a separate Windows instance like a VM but makes it a bit more seamless with Linux).

Some PC games I like to play even have native Linux ports; also, Steam has made it easy to run some Windows games in Linux.

Nightfox

Nightfox wrote to All <=-

I did some research on what Linux desktop environments look best on a
4K monitor. I kept seeing KDE Plasma recommended, particularly with Wayland (which is a modern replacement for X11, which is designed to perform better and handle modern features better, such as fractional scaling).

Wayland has completely failed on all its goals. It doesn't perform better than X11 (but it doesn't perform worse either). It doesn't offer nearly as much as X11 so it's still not even close to feature-complete.

But the whole X11 topic has been the target of politics. The group in charge of X11 has a stated goal of killing it in favor of Wayland. No problem there. Bring Wayland up, debug it and we're good. But they don't have the technical knowledge to do so. So Wayland growth has been stagnant.

In the meantime, the main developer for X11 worked it to XLibre then applied all the updates that the X11 guys effectively blocked. So now we have a better X11, with all the features, completely compatible with X11 (as far as we know right now) and is mostly tried-and-tested code, unlike Wayland.

Right now, if anyone is trying to push you to Wayland, take a good look as to why first.


... If the thread ended in her jeans, should we follow it?
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Re: KDE Plasma desktop vs. Ci
By: Dr. What to Nightfox on Fri Jan 30 2026 07:18 am

Wayland has completely failed on all its goals. It doesn't perform better than X11 (but it doesn't perform worse either). It doesn't offer nearly as much as X11 so it's still not even close to feature-complete.

Right now, if anyone is trying to push you to Wayland, take a good look as to why first.

I wasn't familiar with Wayland at all until the past few days as I was looking into recent Linux distros and the desktop environments - so I didn't know there was this going on. However, so far in just a couple days of using KUbuntu, Wayland and KDE Plasma seems to be working fairly well so far.

Also, I don't think anyone was pushing me to Wayland. I had simply been doing some searching online for information on Wayland, KDE Plasma, and Cinnamon, and I saw multiple people saying in various forums that Wayland was designed to do some things better, it's the future, Cinnamon would eventually be ported to Wayland, etc..

Nightfox

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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