Broken KDE in Sid/Unstable

[Miguel A. Vallejo]

Hi!

This morning an apt update broke my kde. I can log in, but only to get into a black screen with the mouse's cursor, even using a newly created user.

I can't see any obvious error in syslog, but there is something in .xsession-errors :

Kapplymousetheme ("breeze_cursors","24") exited with user code 255

And some lines below a lot of unrecognized keysims from kwin_xkbcommon, a NULL argument for networkIdsList, a failed to parse kaccess.desktop, many other errors ( sorry, I'm typing on phone) until a broken connection to the X11 server brings back the login screen.

Any ideas? 

Thanks in advance.

[bruno zanetti]

Hi Miguel,

I assume you are on sid/testing and you did a dist-upgrade (or full-upgrade).

This morning I tried to dist-upgrade sid but I eventually gave up since apt asked to remove plasma-desktop and other stuff I didn't think it was good to remove.

Look at the logfiles in /var/log/apt and see if something got removed along with the upgrade.

Just guessing.

Best

bz

[Miguel A. Vallejo]

I didn't notice anything weird, so I went with the upgrade... I guess
I missed something.

After some time I found some missing packages so I could log in but no
taskbar was visible.

Removing ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc and relogin
did the trick, but lost all the personalization.

Some minutes reconfiguring KDE and everything seems to be Ok again.

Thank you!

[Diederik de Haas]

On zondag 19 september 2021 17:10:51 CEST Miguel A. Vallejo wrote:
> Removing ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc and relogin
> did the trick, but lost all the personalization.

I've had similar problems a number of times now in the last few weeks.
Lost my task bar a couple of times and last week several widgets on my desktop
and other icons I had on my desktop got moved around.
So far the problems have not been as severe as you reported.

But I rarely use dist/full-upgrade; (almost) always safe-upgrade.

[Miguel A. Vallejo]

The main drawback I see every time KDE gets updated is that everything
changes. Few weeks ago the main menu changed to a ugly one with too
big icons... and no way to get back the old one. Today the taskbar
reappeared with an "only icons" version. Once I changed the widget to
the traditional one I just have too much text in taskbar items...

KDE is a constant fight between the user keeping things like he wants
and the developers changing everything to a worse / uglier version.

[chris]

On Sunday, 19 September 2021 16:19:09 CEST bruno zanetti wrote:
> Hi Miguel,
>
> I assume you are on sid/testing and you did a dist-upgrade (or
> full-upgrade).
> This morning I tried to dist-upgrade sid but I eventually gave up since apt
> asked to remove plasma-desktop and other stuff I didn't think it was good
> to remove.

There is a small difficulty around `libqalculate22`, with `dist-upgrade`. And
you might have to manually fix it. (It was the 16th, and `dist-upgrade` was
removing a large part of kde).

I did:
`aptitude full-upgrade libqalculate20-`
and then:
`aptitude full-upgrade`

On `#debian-next`, someone did suggest:
`apt full-upgrade task-kde-desktop plasma-workspace kwin-x11`

(I use wayland, not sure it would have worked).

[piorunz]

Problems you are describing are happening because you using are Sid.
This is not KDE's fault. Packages in Sid are landing when they are
ready, without checking for dependences, that's how Sid is designed to
be. You are doing full upgrades, which are breaking your system. This is
very often accuring after new stable release, which happened last month.
You don't know how to use Sid properly - you should be using Testing,
not Sid. Next time Sid can pull out half of your system, not just some
KDE packages, because you are full-upgrading without reading.

If you want to stay with Sid, I recommend at least start using backups
and do safe upgrades, not full upgrades, and *read*.

--
With kindest regards, Piotr.

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀

[bruno zanetti]

Il giorno lun 20 set 2021 alle ore 01:30 chris <inkbot...@gmail.com> ha scritto:

On Sunday, 19 September 2021 16:19:09 CEST bruno zanetti wrote:
> Hi Miguel,
>
> I assume you are on sid/testing and you did a dist-upgrade (or
> full-upgrade).
> This morning I tried to dist-upgrade sid but I eventually gave up since apt
> asked to remove plasma-desktop and other stuff I didn't think it was good
> to remove.

There is a small difficulty around `libqalculate22`, with `dist-upgrade`. And
you might have to manually fix it. (It was the 16th, and `dist-upgrade` was
removing a large part of kde).

I did:
`aptitude full-upgrade libqalculate20-`
and then:
`aptitude full-upgrade`

On `#debian-next`, someone did suggest:
`apt full-upgrade task-kde-desktop plasma-workspace kwin-x11`

(I use wayland, not sure it would have worked).

You're right, I did the same, but in my case 'aptitude full-upgrade' alone did it right with no need for any hint.

It seems there are some missing break/replace in libqalculate22 that would have eased the upgrade.

Anyway, aptitude proved to be smarter than apt and gave the right solution.

Best

bz

[Norbert Preining]

Hi,

> The main drawback I see every time KDE gets updated is that everything
> changes. Few weeks ago the main menu changed to a ugly one with too
> big icons... and no way to get back the old one. Today the taskbar

I somehow disagree. Since I started packaging KDE/plasma with 5.18 or
so, I have been tracking every single minor and major release within a
few days, and I never have seen any considerable change in
layout/design.

So I am really surprised about your experience.

Best

Norbert

--
PREINING Norbert https://www.preining.info
Fujitsu Research + IFMGA Guide + TU Wien + TeX Live + Debian Dev
GPG: 0x860CDC13 fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0 ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13

[piorunz]

On 20/09/2021 12:19, Norbert Preining wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> The main drawback I see every time KDE gets updated is that everything
>> changes. Few weeks ago the main menu changed to a ugly one with too
>> big icons... and no way to get back the old one. Today the taskbar
>
> I somehow disagree. Since I started packaging KDE/plasma with 5.18 or
> so, I have been tracking every single minor and major release within a
> few days, and I never have seen any considerable change in
> layout/design.
>
> So I am really surprised about your experience.

So you are maintainer and you package KDE for Debian, I understand
correctly? If, yes thanks for your work :)

Unfortunately, OP author got this because he clicks YES when apt
full-upgrade wants to many delete packages due to unmet dependencies.
That ends up with more or less broken system, and in this example,
broken KDE.

[Norbert Preining]

On Mon, 20 Sep 2021, piorunz wrote:
> So you are maintainer and you package KDE for Debian, I understand
> correctly? If, yes thanks for your work :)

Yes.

> Unfortunately, OP author got this because he clicks YES when apt
> full-upgrade wants to many delete packages due to unmet dependencies.

Well, that is OP fault. Running sid/testing requires a minimal knowledge
about what is going on, and often waiting for conflicts to be fixed by
updated packages instead of removals.

Nothing I can do here.

Thanks for the explanations.

[Miguel A. Vallejo]

> I somehow disagree. Since I started packaging KDE/plasma with 5.18 or
> so, I have been tracking every single minor and major release within a
> few days, and I never have seen any considerable change in
> layout/design.
>
> So I am really surprised about your experience.

I am really surprised your experience is not the same if we are
running the same KDE.

One or two months ago the main menu changed drastically. Now the
taskbar is a only icons version, another drastic change. What is the
secret to keep KDE the same across updates? I would love to hear from
you.

Greetings

[Joe McEntire]

The KDE main menu did change in version 22, I believe, but you can download a
widget to restore the old one if you like it better. That change will happen
no matter what, because the old menu was removed entirely for some reason and
you must get the widget to revert the change manually if you want to. The icon
only task manager is the new default in KDE going forward, but if you're
desktop is already set up, it shouldn't change yours. Only on new installs
will you see the change, unless you manually change it yourself as far as I
know. If your changes aren't sticking then your configs aren't being recorded
in your home directory properly maybe, dunno. I'm not 100% sure on this though
because I use the icon only task manager already anyway and I, frankly,
welcome the new default. You can simply right click the task manager in a
blank spot and select "show alternatives" to get an option to choose the task
manager that's right for you.

Also, if you want a stable experience where stuff doesn't really change much,
run "stable", not "testing", or "unstable". The branches are named truthfully.
If you stick to stable then you'll only notice a big change when the new
release happens, sometime 2ish years from now.

Joe McEntire
J...@EmberLife.com

---------- Previous Message -----------

Subject: Re: Broken KDE in Sid/Unstable
Date: Monday, September 20, 2021, 3:06:44 PM EDT
From: Miguel A. Vallejo <ea4...@gmail.com>
To: debia...@lists.debian.org

-----------------------------------------

[Luigi Toscano]

Miguel A. Vallejo ha scritto:

The main manu (Application Launcher) changed in Plasma 5.21 (and in a few
weeks Plasma 5.23 will be released), we haven't seen it before due to the
Debian freeze:
https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/

The classic menu (Application Menu) hasn't changed.

I have the text for all applications in my taskbar, maybe just the default
changed but you can probably tune it.

--
Luigi

[Borden]

> Well, that is OP fault. Running sid/testing requires a minimal knowledge
> about what is going on, and often waiting for conflicts to be fixed by
> updated packages instead of removals.
>

It depends. Since we're not born knowing how the Debian ecosystem works, it's unreasonable to expect a curious newcomer to understand the risks on the sid or unstable branches. Ironically, I use testing because I had major driver problems when I started using Debian back in 2004, so I was told to use testing to get the usable drivers and a bootable system - since "stable" was apparently not.

My ancient experience in reporting bugs against stable is "Sucks to be you. Maybe we'll fix it in the next stable release. Maybe not." So at least on testing there's a chance my problem will get fixed in a timely manner, or at least I'll have plenty of warning to figure out a workaround - especially when I rely on packages that get dropped between releases.

> Nothing I can do here.
>

Perhaps not, but whoever manages apt-get and/or aptitude should really have a "here be dragons" warning when users select non-stable branches with a reminder that they accept the risk of having an unbootable system after a dist-upgrade. So "it depends" because if the user in question ignored explicit warnings before dist-upgrading, then, yes, that's the user's fault. But if the user dist-upgraded because they didn't know any better, that's a UI bug.