sparky 4 kde bugs problems whatever, system setting not working, etc

[ElQuia]

Hi booted a test notebook I have that multiboots, mint 17.2 xfce, lxle 14.04 x64 and sparky kde 4.0 x64.

I dont have any windows decorations (close buttons etc) or borders (terminal is a black square no borders) sparky system upgrade, aptplus and aptplus extra or dont run or run without visible windows and system settings runs with de following error:

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system settings was unable to finde any views and hence has nothing to display"

PLEASEEEEE ideasss???

[paxmark1]

I am guessing that your mint xfce and lxde both work and that your sparky4 kde4.0 is close to non-functional.  Hitting Ctl-Alt-F1 or Ctl-Alt-F2 might get you into a tty terminal and you can explore things there via the command line. 

KDE in sid and testing have been in the transition from KDE4 to KDE5 for several weeks now and it has been a bumpy ride.  And although for many things here in testing (and Sparky) we are sheltered from the libstdc++6 transition hitting sid-unstable - there is a deep dependency in KDE on c++ 


I believe that other DE's (like E19 - enlightenment and LXQT, etc.) in sparky are still functioning quite well at this time. 

If others post with short ways to help, please listen to them.  For more information about the KDE4-5 change good information (but geared toward sid) can be found at the Siduction forum.  Posts by "Santa" are from a person quite knowledgeable about KDE. 

peace out

[ElQuia]

Yep other multiboot distros are OK and sparky lxqt (in virtualbox) and sparky xfce (on a lot of physical old PC's) are working OK+

I sort of suspected that. Did an apt get dist upgrade, enabled plasma and now I have a (sort of) working desktop, at least I can access my apps. But all the sparky goodies are gone...
SOME QUESTIONS:

1- When do you think this transition to plasma or kde 5 will be ready or stable (sort of haha) to use?
2- Will an sparky upgrade solve the actual problems with some on line upgrade or will we have to download a new ISO?
3- Can I reinstall clean sparky 4.0 kde and AVOID someway all related upgrades that  bugger my notebook install?

THANKS

[paxmark1]

The libstdc++6 transition is at 11% after 11 days.  https://release.debian.org/transitions/html/libstdc++6.html     Weeks? 

My main source for watching the KDE5 transition is sid-unstable based.
http://forum.siduction.org/index.php?topic=5644.0

Transition in general  http://forum.siduction.org/index.php?topic=5719.0

2.  Will the sheer act of dist-upgrades over time result in a "cohesive" system or DE.  Maybe?   Following the above threads of what works and does not work in sid can guide you in testing.  The aim of sid is to eventually update through all errors.        For sid I will be probably only using apt-update or Nothing for weeks.  In sparky in LXQT and E19 via .deb I update and then apt-get dist-upgrade -d and then if I like it - I perform a full dist-upgrade. 

Study and choose how you want to update and "if and how" to upgrade/dist-upgrade. 

Since you have other options to get "real" work done on your other installs, it would not hurt to have someone just push through with apt-get dist-upgrades and report on what you see.   Do you have the time, is it fun, and most importantly will you lose any critical data by this process?   

Probably keeping an eye on irc in kde channels would be helpful. 

3.  I will let others give input on #3

[pavroo]

3. After fresh installation make 'apt-get upgrade' instead of 'apt-get dist-upgrade'.
It will not install some kde5 updates which could breake the desktop.

[ElQuia]

Nothing is as easy at it looks? ;-)

Ok, but one of the beauties of sparky (for me) is/was to be able to have a rolling distro with enough stability for every day use. Yes, yes, yes, I KNOW that KDE changes are NOT your fault.  I am just trying out KDE on some production machines. For me and my personal taste, AND for my pupils and clients, the BEST choice (easier to use and most similar to windows) is XFCE. And Sparky XFCE so far has given me nothing but SATISFACTION (nice work)
Well will toy around with plasma until it gets stable enough for every day use.

[pavroo]

I just made dist-upgrade of the KDE spin on my machine.
Kwin gone, but KDE still works.
Installing openbox and openbox-kde-session helped now.
Plasma-network-manager applet gone too.

[ElQuia]

Hi guys. Again plasma not working, same machine, had it of line for a couple of weeks. Just did a dist-upgrade, graphics froze after finishing downloading and installing about 380 MB, could send shut down with power button. After reboot: login screen, type in passw, tries to log in, shows plasma colors briefly the fall backs to login screen.

What can I do or try?  :o

[ElQuia]

Just in case kde IS totally borked I dropped to console on login and installed xfce and xfce-*

IS there a way to get that xfce to look like the sparky original xfce install with all the sparky configs and tools in place???

(please advise if kde is fixable, please?)

[pavroo]

Looks like your upgrade went wrong.
Can you try to fix it:

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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install -f
sudo dpkg --configure -a
Check do you have 'plasma-desktop' 5.4.x package installed (but not kde-plasma-desktop).

[paxmark1]

You might also have been bit by bug 802811 sddm   libqt5x11extras    .  If so you will need to roll back libqt5x11extras 5.5 ... to libqt5x11extras 5.4.2-2+b1  over in #debian-next they will be very able to assist you.  Very very rare for programs to be introduced into sid and testing at the same time, but it happened in this case. 

also libqt5.5 transitions starting to happen now in testing - moving up from 5.4


edited later.  qt5.5 transition is done and bug 802811 is fixed in sid AND testing.  Oct 30.  Hope plasma5 is settling down.  Tis a big thng  with c++ and getting ready for wayland.   

[ElQuia]

OK did this

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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install -f
sudo dpkg --configure -a

from "pseudo" xfce session and it worked, am now on plasma again, looks just the same as before, whats new?

THANKS

[pavroo]

If I will find some time tomorrow, I will upgrade my KDE installations and have a look what is going on.

[ElQuia]

OK Pavroo, you ARE  the guy  ;)

Off topic: I have Notify me of replies activated and am NOT receiving notification mails..... ¿tips?

[pavroo]

You were right, there was a small problem.
Due to changed from kwin to kwin_x11 as the window manager, I updated 2 of 3 my tools which use wm detecting.
So I updated the 3th one so should be fine now.

Upgrade 'sparky-xterm' package to version 0.1.5 and then run the the System Upgrade tool, and let me know is OK now.