Kubuntu 23.10
Nate Drake explores the lavish new Plasma desktop in the latest Kubuntu. Is this the greatest KDE-based distro to date?
The helpful installer displays the various applications you can download via Discover. Make sure you check out the default programs first.
IN BRIEF
Kubuntu continues to be an excellent choice for KDE lovers. The installer is easy to set up. Although not all Gear apps are bundled, they are simple to download via Discover.
SPECS
CPU: 2GHz dual-core
Mem: 4GB
HDD: 25GB
Builds: AMD64
Kubuntu has been in development since 2004 as an official flavour of the Ubuntu operating system. Current iterations, including the most recent version 23.10 (Mantic Minotaur), use the KDE Plasma desktop.
Given that it has an Ubuntu base, Kubuntu 23.10 will be supported for nine months. Crucially, 2023 is the last year that Kubuntu will support 32-bit users, as it is currently only available for AMD64 architectures.
If you choose to download the hefty 3.7GB ISO, you can take it for a test spin in live mode or install to a drive. We chose to do the latter and, as we’d expect from a Ubuntu-based OS, the install wizard was a breeze, offering the option to install thirdparty codecs, partition the drive and, most crucially, encrypt the system drive via LUKS. The experimental ZFS install options are not available by default, though power users may be able to configure these manually.