[gentoo-user] New install - Wayland and graphical login

[Wols Lists]

What happens when you get to the end of the handbook?

I want to get a working Wayland setup with a (multi-user) graphical
login. When I set my old system up ($DEITY knows how long ago) I seem to
remember a page on setting up X, and all sorts of stuff.

Now, you seem to get dumped at working tty1 prompt, and then the
*helpful* documentation JUST STOPS. It doesn't even point you at
anything! (Yes it points you at the portage page about how to maintain
your system, but that isn't much use if you can't DO anything with the
system...)

I've found the page on Wayland, but it just says "set this use flag and
install two packages".

Where's the documentation that tells me what I need, and how to set it
up, please ...

Cheers,
Wol

[Michael]

Have you tried using a Display Manager? Some of my systems won't work with
Wayland, but I haven't spent time to find out why all I get with them is a
black screen.

Anyway, from a VT you'd run something like:

XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session startplasma-wayland

or

XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session gnome-session

[jdm]

There is a wayland greeter which uses greetd and gtkgreet which may
be worth looking at and there is a gentoo wiki which goes a long with
it. It works with wayfire which is a nice wayland window manager and is
very reliable.

Also look at https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Wayland_Desktop_Landscape

John

[antlists]

Thanks, but I'm none the wiser ... the thing is, for X the instructions
are simple - "install xorg, run startx".

Okay, I've done that and got errors I need to solve, but with Wayland I
just don't have a clue. I don't know what I need, I don't know how to
start it, all I've got is a pile of bits in a box, and I don't know what
to do with them.

Everything I find is like a meccano set - there's loads of bits and
pieces, but no instructions, and I don't have a clue how they fit
together. Where's the recipe that says "do this this and this and you
should have a gui"?

Cheers,
Wol

[Michael]

From what I recall as long as you set USE="wayland" globally and re-emerge
world with '--changed-use' you should able to launch your dekstop in wayland,
rather than Xserver.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Wayland

There is a caveat, to make things simple: your desktop environment should have
full support for wayland compositing - e.g. Plasma and Gnome come ready baked
with their own compositor and will run in Wayland. Window managers which do
not possess a compositor will require one installed separately, as noted in
jdm's post, but then we're getting into a box with a pile of bits in it.

To launch wayland you can either install a Display Manager and select to start
wayland from its GUI options, instead of X11, or you can run the stanzas I
provided above.

[antlists]

Bear in mind my profile is desktop/plasma/systemd ...

This is very informative, but it blows up on me ... I've checked that
wayland is in my use flags so that should all be okay ...

# XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session startplasma-wayland
... startplasma-wayland not found ...

# emerge qtgreet
emerge: there are no ebuilds to satisfy "qtgreet".

So you've massively helped in that I now know much better how things fit
together, but unfortunately you've also been no help at all in that the
stuff you've pointed at doesn't work ...

Where do I go from here ...

Cheers,
Wol

[Michael]

I don't think systemd is different (although I don't use it with Gentoo),
unless you want to launch a Display Manager like e.g. sddm.

Given your error, you appear to not have installed the requisite packages for
the Plasma/KDE. It should have been installed as a dependency of plasma-
workspace:

$ qfile startplasma-wayland
kde-plasma/plasma-workspace: /usr/bin/startplasma-wayland

If you have Gnome already installed then you can use the stanza for gnome-
session instead.

[Wols Lists]

Looking at sddm, it appears to require X? I might well have to play with
that, given that I want a multi-user system (indeed, multi-head) system,
but that can wait ...

>
> Given your error, you appear to not have installed the requisite packages for
> the Plasma/KDE. It should have been installed as a dependency of plasma-
> workspace:

Ah. Another piece of missing information ... I'll try that. I would have
thought that would have been pulled in seeing as I've got wayland and qt
use flags etc

>
> $ qfile startplasma-wayland
> kde-plasma/plasma-workspace: /usr/bin/startplasma-wayland
>
> If you have Gnome already installed then you can use the stanza for gnome-
> session instead.
>

My use flags also contain -gtk -gnome ... gnome at least is on my list
of pet hates ...

Cheers,
Wol

[Michael]

I am not clear on your particular use case(s). Plasma desktop is usually
installed by setting the appropriate make.profile:

$ eselect profile list
Available profile symlink targets:
[1] default/linux/amd64/17.1 (stable)
[2] default/linux/amd64/17.1/selinux (stable)
[3] default/linux/amd64/17.1/hardened (stable)
[4] default/linux/amd64/17.1/hardened/selinux (stable)
[5] default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop (stable)
[6] default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/gnome (stable)
[7] default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/gnome/systemd (stable)
[8] default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma (stable) *
[9] default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma/systemd (stable)
[10] default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/systemd (stable)
[11] default/linux/amd64/17.1/developer (stable)
[12] default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib (stable)
[13] default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib/hardened (stable)
[14] default/linux/amd64/17.1/no-multilib/hardened/selinux (stable)
[15] default/linux/amd64/17.1/systemd (stable)
[16] default/linux/amd64/17.0 (dev)
[17] default/linux/amd64/17.0/selinux (dev)
[18] default/linux/amd64/17.0/hardened (dev)
[19] default/linux/amd64/17.0/hardened/selinux (dev)
[20] default/linux/amd64/17.0/desktop (dev)
[21] default/linux/amd64/17.0/desktop/gnome (dev)
[22] default/linux/amd64/17.0/desktop/gnome/systemd (dev)
[23] default/linux/amd64/17.0/desktop/plasma (dev)
[24] default/linux/amd64/17.0/desktop/plasma/systemd (dev)
[25] default/linux/amd64/17.0/developer (dev)
[26] default/linux/amd64/17.0/no-multilib (dev)
[27] default/linux/amd64/17.0/no-multilib/hardened (dev)
[28] default/linux/amd64/17.0/no-multilib/hardened/selinux (dev)
[29] default/linux/amd64/17.0/systemd (dev)
[30] default/linux/amd64/17.0/x32 (dev)
[31] default/linux/amd64/17.0/musl (exp)
[32] default/linux/amd64/17.0/musl/hardened (exp)
[33] default/linux/amd64/17.0/musl/hardened/selinux (exp)
[34] default/linux/amd64/17.0/uclibc (exp)
[35] default/linux/amd64/17.0/uclibc/hardened (exp)

If you are looking for some minimalist desktop, a Plasma DE plus KDE
applications with hundred of dependencies is probably not what you want.
Also, I think Plasma DE and most DMs will pull in X11, because: a) they work
both with X11 and wayland; b) many X11 applications can only run in X using
XWayland. XWayland is an X Server running as a Wayland client to enable
displaying native X11 client applications within a Wayland compositor
environment. I haven't looked into it at any depth to see if you can strip a
heavy DE like Plasma from all xserver dependencies - I'd guess you can't.

> > If you have Gnome already installed then you can use the stanza for gnome-
> > session instead.
>
> My use flags also contain -gtk -gnome ... gnome at least is on my list
> of pet hates ...
>
> Cheers,
> Wol

OK, select the Plasma profile, then have a quick look at:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/KDE

You'll need to disable some USE flags of plasma-meta to avoid dragging in
things you may not need/require, like 'display-manager', 'sddm',
'accessibility', etc. Eventually, after you update @world, add any kde-apps
*-meta packages you need.

However, if you intend to use wayland for the most minimalist of purposes,
then you may want to consider something like Wayfire, instead of Plasma.

[antlists]

On 26/06/2021 10:28, Michael wrote:
> On Saturday, 26 June 2021 08:19:24 BST Wols Lists wrote:
>> On 26/06/21 00:51, Michael wrote:
>
>>> Given your error, you appear to not have installed the requisite packages
>>> for the Plasma/KDE. It should have been installed as a dependency of
>>> plasma-workspace:
>>
>> Ah. Another piece of missing information ... I'll try that. I would have
>> thought that would have been pulled in seeing as I've got wayland and qt
>> use flags etc
>>
>>> $ qfile startplasma-wayland
>>> kde-plasma/plasma-workspace: /usr/bin/startplasma-wayland
>
> I am not clear on your particular use case(s). Plasma desktop is usually
> installed by setting the appropriate make.profile:

I just want a working systemd/wayland desktop system. So basically, a
full-weight normal desktop.

>
> $ eselect profile list
> Available profile symlink targets:
> [1] default/linux/amd64/17.1 (stable)
> [2] default/linux/amd64/17.1/selinux (stable)
> [3] default/linux/amd64/17.1/hardened (stable)
> [4] default/linux/amd64/17.1/hardened/selinux (stable)
> [5] default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop (stable)
> [6] default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/gnome (stable)
> [7] default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/gnome/systemd (stable)
> [8] default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma (stable) *
> [9] default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma/systemd (stable)

I've got this one selected, /desktop/plasma/systemd

Not after a minimalist system, and if it pulls in X that's fine.
(Actually, I've installed X, and at the moment it blows up on me, but if
I can get Wayland working, I don't see the point in debugging it until I
need to ...)

>
>>> If you have Gnome already installed then you can use the stanza for gnome-
>>> session instead.
>>
>> My use flags also contain -gtk -gnome ... gnome at least is on my list
>> of pet hates ...
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Wol
>
> OK, select the Plasma profile, then have a quick look at:
>
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/KDE
>
> You'll need to disable some USE flags of plasma-meta to avoid dragging in
> things you may not need/require, like 'display-manager', 'sddm',
> 'accessibility', etc. Eventually, after you update @world, add any kde-apps
> *-meta packages you need.
>
> However, if you intend to use wayland for the most minimalist of purposes,
> then you may want to consider something like Wayfire, instead of Plasma.
>

I'll need something like sddm, because I'll have multiple users logged
in simultaneously. I was trying to use qtgreet as per the "Wayland
Landscape" page, but the package doesn't seem to exist ... I'd rather
avoid gnome/gdm and gtkgreet, lightdm and sddm look like X11 (and I said
I didn't want to debug it :-), and tuigreet looks like it might not
support multi-user/multi-head.

Still, if I can get plasma running, I can work from there ...

Cheers,
Wol

[Michael]

On Saturday, 26 June 2021 11:50:01 BST antlists wrote:

> I just want a working systemd/wayland desktop system. So basically, a
> full-weight normal desktop.

[snip ...]

> I've got this one selected, /desktop/plasma/systemd

Select default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma/systemd (stable).

Then update @world. You should be good to go as long as video drivers and
firmware are in place, but if X11 is not working this could be an area
meriting further investigation.

[Wols Lists]

On 21/06/21 16:17, Michael wrote:
> Have you tried using a Display Manager? Some of my systems won't work with
> Wayland, but I haven't spent time to find out why all I get with them is a
> black screen.
>
> Anyway, from a VT you'd run something like:
>
> XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session startplasma-wayland

Okay, we're slowly moving forward ...

My first attempt got the error "kwin-plasma won't run as root" or
somesuch. Created a new user for me, and promptly got a black screen!

As I said earlier, X currently won't run. I've got a Asus EAH4350, and
am loading the Radeon driver. When I looked at the X log it was clearly
loading the driver, which failed with something like "cannot find
/dev/card1". If that gives anyone any clues where to point me that's
great, or I'll transfer the logs to this machine and post them.

Cheers,
Wol

[Michael]

On Sunday, 27 June 2021 10:05:59 BST Wols Lists wrote:
> On 21/06/21 16:17, Michael wrote:
> > Have you tried using a Display Manager? Some of my systems won't work
> > with
> > Wayland, but I haven't spent time to find out why all I get with them is a
> > black screen.
> >
> > Anyway, from a VT you'd run something like:
> >
> > XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session startplasma-wayland
>
> Okay, we're slowly moving forward ...
>
> My first attempt got the error "kwin-plasma won't run as root" or
> somesuch. Created a new user for me, and promptly got a black screen!

You're meant to be running X11 as a non-root user.

> As I said earlier, X currently won't run. I've got a Asus EAH4350, and
> am loading the Radeon driver.

I am not familiar with the model and any APU/graphics options it may be
furnished with. You have not shared what the video card might be. A quick
search on the interwebs mention an AMD R700 family, HD4350 card. According
to:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Radeon

such a card requires in your make.conf:

VIDEO_CARDS="radeon r600"

emerge 'sys-kernel/linux-firmware' and in your kernel specify the following
firmware:

radeon/R600_rlc.bin radeon/RS780_uvd.bin radeon/RS780_pfp.bin radeon/
RS780_me.bin

> When I looked at the X log it was clearly
> loading the driver, which failed with something like "cannot find
> /dev/card1". If that gives anyone any clues where to point me that's
> great, or I'll transfer the logs to this machine and post them.
>
> Cheers,
> Wol

dmesg will show if there is any problem with the kernel missing modules, or
having problems loading firmware;

/var/log/Xorg.0.log will show what problems X11 comes up with when it tries to
launch.

Normally /dev/dri/card0 is the first card being loaded:

$ grep -i card /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[ 37.111] (II) xfree86: Adding drm device (/dev/dri/card0)
[ 37.148] (II) xfree86: Adding drm device (/dev/dri/card1)
[ 38.366] (II) Applying OutputClass "Radeon" to /dev/dri/card0
[ 38.367] (II) Applying OutputClass "Radeon" to /dev/dri/card1

[antlists]

On 27/06/2021 11:36, Michael wrote:
> On Sunday, 27 June 2021 10:05:59 BST Wols Lists wrote:
>> On 21/06/21 16:17, Michael wrote:
>>> Have you tried using a Display Manager? Some of my systems won't work
>>> with
>>> Wayland, but I haven't spent time to find out why all I get with them is a
>>> black screen.
>>>
>>> Anyway, from a VT you'd run something like:
>>>
>>> XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dbus-run-session startplasma-wayland
>>
>> Okay, we're slowly moving forward ...
>>
>> My first attempt got the error "kwin-plasma won't run as root" or
>> somesuch. Created a new user for me, and promptly got a black screen!
>
> You're meant to be running X11 as a non-root user.
>

And if the only user on the system is root, which I'm logged in as :-)

>
>> As I said earlier, X currently won't run. I've got a Asus EAH4350, and
>> am loading the Radeon driver.
>
> I am not familiar with the model and any APU/graphics options it may be
> furnished with. You have not shared what the video card might be.

Well, "Asus EAH4350" is what it says on the box.

> A quick
> search on the interwebs mention an AMD R700 family, HD4350 card. According
> to:

So I guess Asus have rebadged the 4350 chipset, and those drivers should
work.

>
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Radeon
>
> such a card requires in your make.conf:
>
> VIDEO_CARDS="radeon r600"
>
> emerge 'sys-kernel/linux-firmware' and in your kernel specify the following
> firmware:
>
> radeon/R600_rlc.bin radeon/RS780_uvd.bin radeon/RS780_pfp.bin radeon/
> RS780_me.bin
>

Thanks. I'll add all that stuff ...

>
>> When I looked at the X log it was clearly
>> loading the driver, which failed with something like "cannot find
>> /dev/card1". If that gives anyone any clues where to point me that's
>> great, or I'll transfer the logs to this machine and post them.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Wol
>
> dmesg will show if there is any problem with the kernel missing modules, or
> having problems loading firmware;
>
> /var/log/Xorg.0.log will show what problems X11 comes up with when it tries to
> launch.
>
> Normally /dev/dri/card0 is the first card being loaded:
>
> $ grep -i card /var/log/Xorg.0.log
> [ 37.111] (II) xfree86: Adding drm device (/dev/dri/card0)
> [ 37.148] (II) xfree86: Adding drm device (/dev/dri/card1)
> [ 38.366] (II) Applying OutputClass "Radeon" to /dev/dri/card0
> [ 38.367] (II) Applying OutputClass "Radeon" to /dev/dri/card1
>

Thank you very much. Let's see whether that fixes the problem with
Wayland, too. I found an interesting blog by ?Michael Graesslin on
fixing the "black screen in Wayland" problem, but a lot of it dates from
2016. If Wayland doesn't fix itself, I'll work my way through that, but
it looks like there's a LOT of things that can go wrong and cause
problems...

Cheers,
Wol

[Michael]

On Sunday, 27 June 2021 12:52:39 BST antlists wrote:
> On 27/06/2021 11:36, Michael wrote:

> > You're meant to be running X11 as a non-root user.
>
> And if the only user on the system is root, which I'm logged in as :-)

Then create a plain non-root user account and login as such.

> >> As I said earlier, X currently won't run. I've got a Asus EAH4350, and
> >> am loading the Radeon driver.
> >
> > I am not familiar with the model and any APU/graphics options it may be
> > furnished with. You have not shared what the video card might be.
>
> Well, "Asus EAH4350" is what it says on the box.
>
> > A quick
> > search on the interwebs mention an AMD R700 family, HD4350 card.
> > According
>
> > to:
> So I guess Asus have rebadged the 4350 chipset, and those drivers should
> work.

I don't know if this is so and what might be in the box. Only you can
determine this, definitively, if you follow the guide in the wiki URL below:

> > https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Radeon
> >
> > such a card requires in your make.conf:
> >
> > VIDEO_CARDS="radeon r600"
> >
> > emerge 'sys-kernel/linux-firmware' and in your kernel specify the
> > following
> > firmware:
> >
> > radeon/R600_rlc.bin radeon/RS780_uvd.bin radeon/RS780_pfp.bin radeon/
> > RS780_me.bin
>
> Thanks. I'll add all that stuff ...

Best you establish first what video hardware is available in this PC, as per
the wiki page I posted above, then add the correct corresponding firmware and
drivers, before you rebuild your kernel, update @world and reboot.

[Jack]

I noticed that one post mentioned /dev/card1 and the other talked about
/dev/dri/card0.  If the former was not a typo omitting /dri/ then that
might be something to check out.

[antlists]

The former was a what I remembered ... quite possibly wrong ... :-)

Cheers,
Wol

[antlists]

Okay, ...

One new kernel later (along with some grub debugging :-), world updated, ...

X11 still isn't working - first it complained it couldn't find twm, so I
emerged that, now startx just runs and exits, and the log doesn't seem
to show anything wrong ...

Wayland is interesting ... if I try to startplasma-wayland, it comes up
with the starting plasma stuff, and there's a mouse cursor, but nothing
except a black screen and the cursor. When I kill it from a root tty,
there's an error

Failed to create wl_display (No such file or directory)

which a google tells me I haven't got a compositor ...

I also get further errors, but they're probably a consequence -

Could not load the Qt platform plugin "Wayland" in "" even though it was
found

and the same error for xcb.

Cheers,
Wol

[Wols Lists]

So simple. I was missing "emerge plasma-meta".

This is where it would be nice to have something like the handbook, or a
chapter in the handbook, on bringing up a working graphical environment.
Now to get something like sddm working :-)

(Plus updating my SUSE version to 15.3, re-organising my hardware, blah
blah blah :-)

Cheers,
Wol

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 29 June 2021 08:49:49 BST Wols Lists wrote:
> On 28/06/21 20:23, antlists wrote:
> > On 26/06/2021 13:00, Michael wrote:
> >> On Saturday, 26 June 2021 11:50:01 BST antlists wrote:
> >>> I just want a working systemd/wayland desktop system. So basically, a
> >>> full-weight normal desktop.
> >>
> >> [snip ...]
> >>
> >>> I've got this one selected, /desktop/plasma/systemd
> >>
> >> Select default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma/systemd (stable).
> >>
> >> Then update @world. You should be good to go as long as video drivers
> >> and
> >> firmware are in place, but if X11 is not working this could be an area
> >> meriting further investigation.
> >
> > Okay, ...
> >
> > One new kernel later (along with some grub debugging :-), world updated,
> > ...
> >
> > X11 still isn't working - first it complained it couldn't find twm, so I
> > emerged that, now startx just runs and exits, and the log doesn't seem
> > to show anything wrong ...

X11 will ask for twm if there is no other Window Manager available, or a
Display Environment not configured.

Have you sorted out your ~/.xinitrc, or have you added your startup command in
/etc/env.d/90xsession?

There used to be a time when you could drop in your startup command in /etc/
X11/Sessions/, but I think this is no longer used.

You should spend sometime reading:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Xorg/Guide

> > Wayland is interesting ... if I try to startplasma-wayland, it comes up
> > with the starting plasma stuff, and there's a mouse cursor, but nothing
> > except a black screen and the cursor. When I kill it from a root tty,
> > there's an error
> >
> > Failed to create wl_display (No such file or directory)
> >
> > which a google tells me I haven't got a compositor ...

In Plasma this would be kwin, which acts as a window manager and a compositor.
If you had installed Plasma in accordance with the URL I shared in previous
emails you shouldn't have this problem, because from what I recall kwin is
being drawn in as a dependency of Plasma.

> > I also get further errors, but they're probably a consequence -
> >
> > Could not load the Qt platform plugin "Wayland" in "" even though it was
> > found
> >
> > and the same error for xcb.
>
> So simple. I was missing "emerge plasma-meta".

Heh! Yes, you can't expect a DE to work if major packages are missing. ;-)

> This is where it would be nice to have something like the handbook, or a
> chapter in the handbook, on bringing up a working graphical environment.

It is not in the Handbook, which has the purpose of installing the Gentoo OS
itself, but it is in the Gentoo Documentation - look at the dropdown menu
'Documentation' of the Handbook web pages:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Category:Desktop

In your case, as I posted previously, you need:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/KDE

But, from the errors you've been getting with startx it seems you haven't read
relevant Xorg documentation either.

> Now to get something like sddm working :-)

For SDDM you better read this first:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SDDM

> (Plus updating my SUSE version to 15.3, re-organising my hardware, blah
> blah blah :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Wol

Glad you got your desktop going! :-)

[antlists]

On 29/06/2021 10:44, Michael wrote:
> On Tuesday, 29 June 2021 08:49:49 BST Wols Lists wrote:
>> On 28/06/21 20:23, antlists wrote:
>>> On 26/06/2021 13:00, Michael wrote:

>
> X11 will ask for twm if there is no other Window Manager available, or a
> Display Environment not configured.
>
> Have you sorted out your ~/.xinitrc, or have you added your startup command in
> /etc/env.d/90xsession?
>
> There used to be a time when you could drop in your startup command in /etc/
> X11/Sessions/, but I think this is no longer used.
>
> You should spend sometime reading:
>
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Xorg/Guide
>

Well, I hadn't originally intended to set up X, so I was a little
slapdash. I will investigate deeper at some point, I expect ...

>
>>> Wayland is interesting ... if I try to startplasma-wayland, it comes up
>>> with the starting plasma stuff, and there's a mouse cursor, but nothing
>>> except a black screen and the cursor. When I kill it from a root tty,
>>> there's an error
>>>
>>> Failed to create wl_display (No such file or directory)
>>>
>>> which a google tells me I haven't got a compositor ...
>
> In Plasma this would be kwin, which acts as a window manager and a compositor.
> If you had installed Plasma in accordance with the URL I shared in previous
> emails you shouldn't have this problem, because from what I recall kwin is
> being drawn in as a dependency of Plasma.
>

And Plasma is a dependency of what? Again, this is down to me not fully
understanding everything, but surely if I selected the
desktop/plasma/systemd profile, that should call in the basic plasma
packages by default? Maybe even the kde ones?

(Having re-read the KDE page, it's suddenly making a lot more sense, but
that's with hindsight. But am I right that the profile modifies the
system set of packages?)

>
>>> I also get further errors, but they're probably a consequence -
>>>
>>> Could not load the Qt platform plugin "Wayland" in "" even though it was
>>> found
>>>
>>> and the same error for xcb.
>>
>> So simple. I was missing "emerge plasma-meta".
>
> Heh! Yes, you can't expect a DE to work if major packages are missing. ;-)
>
>
>> This is where it would be nice to have something like the handbook, or a
>> chapter in the handbook, on bringing up a working graphical environment.
>
> It is not in the Handbook, which has the purpose of installing the Gentoo OS
> itself, but it is in the Gentoo Documentation - look at the dropdown menu
> 'Documentation' of the Handbook web pages:
>
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Category:Desktop
>
> In your case, as I posted previously, you need:
>
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/KDE

I'm currently emerging kde-apps-meta, because I discovered that plasma
(once I'd got it working) was missing all sorts of things - like
konsole! But that kde page you pointed me at only mentions it in passing!

It's the classic problem that man pages are very good as reference, but
if you don't know what they're talking about they are very bad at
enlightening you.

A "dummies guide to plasma" would have been very useful telling me the
packages I needed to emerge and why would have been very useful. Now I'm
getting my head round it it's all falling into place, but I've been
unable to see the trees for the forest :-)

>
> But, from the errors you've been getting with startx it seems you haven't read
> relevant Xorg documentation either.
>
>
>> Now to get something like sddm working :-)
>
> For SDDM you better read this first:
>
> https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/SDDM
>

And I'll probably be tearing my hair out screaming because I'm straying
into unknown territory again :-) I doubt many people run multi-seat, so
that'll be fun ... (and I gather some of these greeters don't support
it, either :-(

>
>> (Plus updating my SUSE version to 15.3, re-organising my hardware, blah
>> blah blah :-)
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Wol
>
> Glad you got your desktop going! :-)
>

Thanks. At least I'm back on familiar territory there.

Here's hoping for a lot more foresight :-)

Cheers,
Wol

[Michael]

On Tuesday, 29 June 2021 11:32:52 BST antlists wrote:
> On 29/06/2021 10:44, Michael wrote:

> > In Plasma this would be kwin, which acts as a window manager and a
> > compositor. If you had installed Plasma in accordance with the URL I
> > shared in previous emails you shouldn't have this problem, because from
> > what I recall kwin is being drawn in as a dependency of Plasma.
>
> And Plasma is a dependency of what? Again, this is down to me not fully
> understanding everything, but surely if I selected the
> desktop/plasma/systemd profile, that should call in the basic plasma
> packages by default? Maybe even the kde ones?

The make.profile choice switches on/off certain USE flags and specifies a set
of system packages for the particular profile. These will in turn drag in
other packages as dependencies when you update your system. Therefore, unless
you go for a minimalist make.profile you should not need to be emerging
packages one at a time to get a functional desktop, although you will need to
emerge individual applications of choice if these are not already included in
the DE default set of packages. More details:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Profile_(Portage)

KDE applications are mostly grouped in meta packages. These are meant to be
installed selectively. For example I install 'kde-apps/kdepim-meta' because I
use Kmail, but will not install 'kde-apps/kdegames-meta' because I don't run
any games applications.

> (Having re-read the KDE page, it's suddenly making a lot more sense, but
> that's with hindsight. But am I right that the profile modifies the
> system set of packages?)

Yes, as I mention above, it modifies USE flags and specifies a set of system
packages too.

You could have started with a stripped down profile, like 'default/linux/
amd64/17.1/systemd (stable)' and then spend a lot of time tweaking USE flags
and installing various packages and meta packages to get to the same end
result. Thanks to Gentoo devs, all this work is no longer necessary since
there are more make.profile options to choose from. :-)

[Tamer Higazi]

Hi Wol,

If I am you, I would install "mate" desktop, which is basicly gnome2 and
gnome transition to wayland is as much as I know completed. XFCE is a
bit behind, that takes a time ...

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/MATE

What I figured out, that this is not the very only thing to have wayland
supported.
When it comes to screensharing and propper bluetooth integration there
is a fast moving project called "pipewire".

I have replaced pulseaudio with pipewire on my gentoo machine and teams
work smooth as well bluetooth with AptX HD.

url: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PipeWire

what this article doesn't cover is to setup the "module policy section"...
Here you sould change in /etc/default/pulse:

 load-module module-bluetooth-policy

to

|load-module module-bluetooth-policy auto_switch=2|

That makes it possible to automaticly switch the codec automaticly when
"mic" is needed.
(as windows does)
||

|I am happy :-)|

|
|

|best, Tamer

[antlists]

On 03/07/2021 12:00, Tamer Higazi wrote:
> Hi Wol,
>
> If I am you, I would install "mate" desktop, which is basicly gnome2 and
> gnome transition to wayland is as much as I know completed. XFCE is a
> bit behind, that takes a time ...

My make.conf contains "-gtk -gnome". I have ABSOLUTELY NO plans to
change that, sorry ...

Oh - and if "startplasma-wayland" won't run, I'm sure
"startgnome-wayland" won't, either ... :-)

But this has taught me a lot. Which was the whole point of the exercise
:-) I now have a much better understanding of how systemd and wayland work.

Cheers,
Wol

[antlists]

On 21/06/2021 16:17, Michael wrote:
> Have you tried using a Display Manager? Some of my systems won't work with
> Wayland, but I haven't spent time to find out why all I get with them is a
> black screen.

I've had that on a couple of occasions, now, and I just thought I'd post
this in case anybody else hits it and wants to find the solution.

The first half of the fix is to ssh into the machine from somewhere else
(or if you're lucky and <ctrl>-<alt>-Fn is working, switch to a
different tty) and kill kwin or whatever. Basically kill whatever it
takes to get back to a tty. (This assumes you're not running a
greeter/graphical login.)

Then you should see a bunch of error messages etc. I'm not aware of any
way to get them logged, which would make life easier.

And they should tell you what's wrong, like in my case two different
problems on two different occasions - once I was missing the compositor,
once my video drivers weren't loaded.

Cheers,
Wol

[Michael]

I've noticed login out of Wayland ends up with a number of KDE apps crashing,
rather than exiting gracefully. I think kwin is one of them, as well as
KDEPIM related apps, perhaps others too.

Wayland is much more stable today than a year ago, but I think as far as
Plasma is concerned it's not yet ready for production time.