I have an Acer Aspire XC-330 with an AMD A9-9420 APU, Radeon R5 graphics, 12 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB SSD. I want KDE Plasma without a rolling release schedule.
Arch's update model made me nervous, and Kubuntu 26.04 LTS has been crashing and failing to detect headphones reliably. What else is worth trying?
Fedora KDE is worth a look. It uses versioned releases rather than a rolling model, while keeping Plasma fairly current. There's also plenty of documentation if you need to troubleshoot something.
Try a live session first and check the headphone jack, graphics, and networking before installing. A different distro may help, but it won't necessarily fix a hardware or configuration issue.
Debian with KDE is another option if you prefer a slower-moving system. Its stable release generally favors older, well-tested software over the newest Plasma features. Check that the live image detects your graphics and audio properly before committing.
Fedora Kinoite could be interesting if you want Fedora's versioned releases with an immutable-style desktop. System updates are handled differently from a conventional install, so check whether its approach to installing and changing software suits you before switching.
Before reinstalling, try Kubuntu with the default theme and check whether the headphone issue persists. The crashes, theme problems, and audio detection may not all have the same cause. Keep backups either way, and make sure you understand any troubleshooting commands before running them.
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heckyes:
That's a different choice from regular Fedora KDE, even though both provide a Plasma desktop.