Quick KDE Question

[lunar locust]

NOTE: I am pretty bad at doing these dumb support things, so excuse the rambling.

I currently have Mint installed on a laptop, and today I decided to install the standard KDE plasma package onto it (while keeping Cinnamon).

I've got a few questions.

1. If sddm has the better KDE integration, why does the guide recommend keeping the LightDM display manager? Does it inherently work better with the default Mint display manager? I just can't wrap my head around the logic of not using the display manager designed for the DE.

2. I've noticed a distinct drop in battery life since installing KDE plasma.

For reference, my average battery life used to range from 5-6 hours, and has now dropped to roughly 3 1/2...

This remains true for both the default DE (cinnamon) and KDE plasma. I did do a lot of installing and redownloading and stuff, so I understand there may be some strain on the laptop. But I was also wondering if the battery inefficiency may be due to KDE not necessarily being optimized for Mint even if Mint can support it? That's my main theory... but that wouldn't explain why that screwed my Cinnamon desktop. Perhaps it's the storage use? I have 256 gig storage though. not a lot, but def serviceable.

3. Are there any surefire ways to improve the efficiency of my laptop while using KDE? If I plan on switching to KDE long term, should I then install the full package and delete Cinnamon to reduce bloat? I know I can reinstall cinnamon through the terminal and remove KDE, the vice versa of the hypothetical question, so i'm not particularly scared to do so.

Laptop Info (for clarity):

Operating System: Linux Mint 22.3
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.12
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.115.0
Qt Version: 5.15.13
Kernel Version: 6.17.0-19-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 8 × 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i3-1215U
Memory: 7.5 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® Graphics

[trail reef]

sddm is a generic display manager. Same for LightDM. It's just commonly used in combination with Plasma

[lunar locust]

SDDM is?

[trail reef]

yes

[lunar locust]

okay, so does it mean it doesn't matter which one I choose?

i am honestly trying to understand why the author of that guide recommended staying with LightDM

[trail reef]

doesn't matter yes

[lunar locust]

okay

makes enough sense

[trail reef]

but if you do plan to keep Plasma, do so on a distro that supports it as its primary DE

mainly because the Plasma package shipped by the Ubuntu base used by Mint is several versions behind upstream. Therefore it is missing a lot of optimizations.

[lunar locust]

Ah, I see. Basically comes down to whether I even want to keep Mint. I understand... yeah no I'm not ready to hop quite yet. I have CachyOS on my PC, not sure if my laptop is quite up to snuff for Cachy.

I feel like if that's the case I'm better off sticking with Cinnamon for the time being until I come to a more concrete decision about what I want for my workflow because I only really use my laptop for work (usually through browser and LibreOffice), and chatting with friends and servers on discord (for the time being)

On the other hand, I really love Plasma. As stated earlier, I have it on my CachyOS desktop PC, and it treats me well.

Decisions, decisions. Thank you for your help!

[trail reef]

np

[lunar locust]

Yeah I think I'm just gonna stick with cinnamon. I backed up everything I have on here (not a lot, mind you) onto a usb stick so I can switch whenever I feel like. I just don't want to hop around on this laptop

[static geode]

also you don't need to go to Arch or Cachy for latest Plasma. You can install KDE Neon, or Pika OS

either are Ubuntu- or Debian-based respectively

though Pika is on the Debian testing/unstable branch

Tuxedo OS , another well-supported Plasma distro based on Ubuntu. Used by Tuxedo Computers on their shipped machines. Works on generic PCs also

[lunar locust]

That's very true