Difference Between KDE Live or KDE Workstation Install?

[captainfur]

Hi All,

Have used Mageia for the last few years (and Mandriva/Mandrake on and off before that) but had a break last year when I tried OpenSuse (mainly because Openshot would not load on my Mageia). Replaced my computer a few months ago and have been using Windows in the interim.

Have been playing aroung with which distro to install - Mageia, OpenSuse, Manjaro etc but have decided to go back to Mageia for me (I use my computer for basic browsing, photo management - Digikam, video editing - Openshot but may try Kdenlive, and some basic Photo editing - GIMP) but might try something like Manjaro, Solos or Elementary for my wife's computer (she only does browsing).

Anyway what difference do you basically end up with installing the KDE live vs doing a KDE Workstation Classic install? And which would you reccomend?

Cheers.

[doktor5000]

Anyway what difference do you basically end up with installing the KDE live vs doing a KDE Workstation Classic install? And which would you reccomend?

Essential difference is that with the live version you end up with some nonfree packages, like graphic card drivers, firmware and drivers for some wireless chips, but some of the optional packages (in rpm terms those that are installed as dependencies of type Suggests/Recommends) are not installed when using the live version as it is more space constrained. When installing the regular version, you need to enable nonfree repos but you get all the packages for the categories you select. Another difference is that using the live version, you get only the translations and man pages and such for the language you have chosen, and not all the languages, which is slightly harder to "fix" if you want to have translations and man pages for another language later on in the installed system. (FWIW this is defined by the value of the macro %_install_langs in /etc/rpm/macros )

If you want to install, and not only try it out first, then I'd always recommend a regular install vs. the live one, and just do a default install with the desktop environment of your choice. regular install is also quite a lot faster then live install IMHO.

[captainfur]

Thanks heaps. In that case I will do the classic install, will download tonight and install tomorrow.