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:
system settings was unable to finde any views and hence has nothing to display"
PLEASEEEEE ideasss???
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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?)
Looks like your upgrade went wrong.
Can you try to fix it:
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).
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.
OK did this
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
If I will find some time tomorrow, I will upgrade my KDE installations and have a look what is going on.
OK Pavroo, you ARE the guy ;)
Off topic: I have Notify me of replies activated and am NOT receiving notification mails..... ¿tips?
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.
OK, did as you suggested. Looks like everything is working, will be back if anything comes up. THANKS :) ;)
Question, due too all this I installed xfce from login dropdown console, xfce is totally standard, is ther a way to add to Sparky KDE an XFC session WITH ALL THE SPARKY TOOLS AND GOODIES??
Sure, you can, simply install what you need.
I have 1 partition with 5 or 6 desktops/window managers, such as: KDE, Xfce, LXDE, e19, Budgie, Openbox, Fluxbox, Gnome and JWM, and everything works fine.
have xfce installed and will keep it just in case plasma borks again.
How do I install all sparky goodies and preferences on xfce desktop?
Pavroo, new problem, System Upgrade tool is behaving weird. It runs, asks for password, runs a terminal window that flickers 2 or 3 times during update process, finishes this and shows a window with the message "Need to get...." .... Upgrade the system now? On clicking on "OK" it enters in a loop again going through the same process, I tried 8 times and closed the window. (with "Exit"). :o
Konsole with sudo apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade runs fine.
Same question about sparky tools for xfce, how to install them
Thanjss
It happens if a package/or a few packages have broken dependencies and can be upgraded, but apt detects that they are stil to upgrading.
Next time, when the tool tell you the second time that you can upgrade, check the change log and post it here.
What sparky xfce tools you mean?
If you open Synaptic, search 'sparky', you can install any sparky tool you'd like.
changelog as asked:
QuoteReading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
libkvazaar1 libopenh264-0
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be upgraded:
python-gi python-gobject python3-gi sparky-xterm
The following packages will be DOWNGRADED:
xnview
4 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 downgraded, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,287 kB/29.1 MB of archives.
After this operation, 2,048 B of additional disk space will be used.
xview I installed manually with deb from autors site, it is in last version 0.76.1
EDIT: ok, I put xnview on hold (apt-mark hold xnview) and system upgrade tool did it's job and finished OK.
THANKS
Will try synaptic-sparky tools on xfce DE and be back. ;)
BTW: why would apt-get try to downgrade xnview???
Because you have newer version installed than is in the sparky repos.
I uploaded the latest one to repo now so try again.
OK did an "unhold" on xnview and the System Upgrade tool worked ok.
Let's see: the BIG question is: how do I avoid a similar situation in the future? ....
I am migrating my self and a lot of clients and some friends from windoze to linux... basically on moderns pc's to sparky KDE or Linux Mint KDE, I like sparky most, but not everyone is disposed to go along with an unstable distro ... for older PC's, till now I used LXLE, but I like more Sparky, have to decide if xfce or lxqt ....
Back to point: a LOT of friends, clients, etc, need some apps that ARE NOT IN SPARKY REPOS. If I install latest version from a deb, on dist-upgrade saprky will DOWNGRADE the app ... I would like to AVOID that WITHOUT having to MANUALLY upgrade each non "sparky" application...
IDEAS??? ??? ??? ???
Clients, people who are paying you to make things easier who know less than you about computers. KDE5 in testing and unstable would be the last distro I would recommend. If they want KDE - give them KDE4 from debian stable at this point. LXQT, I am very biased towards, but if you are updating via the siduction repos as it is at present, it is possible that BIG bugs might hit, as the source is tracking unstable, and that is at least 5 days ahead of testing. (I have not seen any problems with that, but it is a possibility) Think of LXQT as a very well behaved 5 year old human. It is very young. LXQT just very recently entered official debian packaging and will be an offering for the next debian stable.
If your clients understand the risk, and like Sparky, LXDE is possibly the safest way, not a huge amount of new development in LXDE itself. However there will be new developments in systemd and as always transitions in libraries as seen in g++ recently, KF5 and qt5.5. XFCE is also an option in my view. This will be less risky when testing goes into the freeze, but that is not soon.
For transitioning people from Windows I would strongly recommend debian stable. For your grandmother, the systemd free LMDE Betsy ( based on debian stable) would be my recommendation, possibly cinnamon besides XFCE and LXDE. One plus to LinuxMintDebianE is that the whol linux mint forum is geared towards less technical individuals and especially for people who are cutting the cord on Windows.
And for wine usage, for utilizing their old windows programs - it might be a whole lot easier going 32 bit and not dealing with multi-arch.
peace out
@ ElQuia
To avoid downgrading packages which been installed manually, edit as root the file:
/etc/apt/preferences.d/sparky
and change the Sparky section from:
Package: *
Pin: origin sparkylinux.org
Pin-Priority: 1001
to:
Package: *
Pin: origin sparkylinux.org
Pin-Priority: 500
Then run:
sudo apt-get update
to refresh package list again
OK Pavroo, thanks will try that.
paxmark1: I like your definition of clients:
QuoteClients, people who are paying you to make things easier who know less than you about computers
But it´s NOT that easy. Lot's of them are migrating from windowze, mainly in these latitudes because off economics, gotta get those old computers a life lease because there ain't no money to buy new ones.
That means Linux. (or older windowzes with antivirus resourse HOGS) ... and for the windows old timers, KDE, better PLASMA is sort of a home experience. THEY JUST FEEL AT HOME. REALLY OLD machines: lxqt or xfce (get them to think Windows XP classic menu), something a tad more modern .... KDE Plasma....
It IS just about selling kiddo ;)