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Plasma 5 became disfunct - reinstall needed?

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walter69
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Plasma 5 became disfunct - reinstall needed?

#1 Post by walter69 »

Is it possible to remove Gnome and KDE = KDE4, PLASMA5 ???
clean enough for a KDE reinstall that can be considered as single, fresh and clean desktop environment?

Synaptic > remove KDE meta pack, + delete ./usr/share/kde4/, ./home/w2/.kden the install KDE didn't get me there . . . and I got myself into a heck of a mess ;)

additionally:
Is it possible to keep what I have now and get it up and running to it's clunky level parallel to a new install of KDE to copy and backtrack what I got so far in general settings, desktop layout and chosen software, asf. . . . ? In particular wireless setup - it was hard work and should not be affected by doing the above - please confirm!

CPU: Intel Core Duo E4600
OS: 32-bit
Plasma: 5.8.7
KDE Frame: 5.37.0

background -verbose:

A few weeks ago I installed debian testing buster (not sid: SORRY for my mixup!!!)
burnt CD, net-install and all seemed to work fine by just running along all defaults, Gnome got installed.
I did the same a few times about 10 years ago and installed back then too KDE later. (Back then neither Gnome nor KDE could do enough of what I needed - so I went reluctantly to XP.

This time I went again into synaptic but missed the option Edit>Mark Packages by Task and used search to find KDE, marked the meta package for install and applied.

Got KDE up but little bits that should work didn't, over 10 years a lot had changed and I thought I just don't know enough but that turned out to be only part of the trouble.

I found at last Edit>Mark Packages and ticked KDE -> apply. Some bits got better. So I guessed that me not using Edit>Mark Packages>KDE initially made a hash of things and went Synaptic - deinstall KDE + delete ./usr/share/kde4/ then install again.

result: some very clear improvements

next attempt - deinstall KDE + delete ./usr/share/kde4/ & ./home/w2/.kde

result: some minor improvements

All the above was by following advice I dug up over time and by looking for more I came across a page that mentions that installing Gnome and KDE causes messy situations with no way out apart from a clean reinstall of the whole system. But this is against Linux philosophy and the most fundamental reason I need to leave Windoze behind for good. Around that time I found out at last that KDE is in the process of splitting things into KDE and PLASMA and found later /usr/share/plasma/

Things were clunking along just about good enough, I went to find my way around getting wine running and into more of a mess. Knowing a little bit can be worse than knowing nothing ;) Though I never needed to go onto a forum and ask to for help to get unstuck. Search, look, learn was always enough - or following good advice like:'don't even try!'

As updates in sid come by the dozen I always added them in one go using synaptic while I was fiddling with wine and a whole bunch of updates to KDE came along one time.

I did not realise for quite a while that the Plasma Application Dashboard somehow vanished but left the icon on taskbar and in alternatives. Changing to other options revealed via using alternatives that the Application Launcher was down to 5 entries and Application Menu seems still ok but after using it the icon changed into something huge and persisting in that size. Most impractical is that the right-click menu behind clicking on tasks running in the taskbar disappeared. Further, Plasma tends to loose the lot now apart from the one window with the focus. Sometimes it restarts itself and sometimes I have to Alt-F2 > logout when I suddenly have 2 black screens and a mouse arrow that's working fine. X11 did not die ;)

Summing up I'm in a perfect mess with a broken XP HD but all data on external HDs and no Idea what a clean install of Plasma actually should look like. Checked https://community.kde.org/Plasma/5.0_Errata and dug around Plasma but nowhere any mentionining anything clearly related to what I'm at now apart from several points where it was clear and I managed to fix them over time.

Last but not least:
Ran Synaptic: Reload, Mark Upgr., Apply (without any additional fiddling)
No errors or warnings - the key/keyring warnings and issues just vanished.
Logout, Login
No changes are detectable.

Thank You kindly for Your time & effort
W
Last edited by walter69 on 2017-09-22 09:03, edited 1 time in total.

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sunrat
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Re: Plasma 5 became disfunct - reinstall needed?

#2 Post by sunrat »

Sounds like you haven't been checking Sid update warnings. Sid has been a minefield of updates lately and you will break your system if you upgrade at the wrong time.
Get a new install image for Stretch, reinstall your system and select only KDE (if that's the DE you want).
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Those who have lost data
...and those who have not lost data YET ”
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RU55EL
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Re: Plasma 5 became disfunct - reinstall needed?

#3 Post by RU55EL »

If you do a clean install of Debian Stretch, seriously consider installing Debian stable.

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walter69
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Re: Plasma 5 became disfunct - reinstall needed?

#4 Post by walter69 »

Thank You heaps sunrat & RUSSEL - and BIG APOLOGIES!
I provided wrong info! So both answers helped!

Code: Select all

$ lsb_release -a
...
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux testing (buster)
Release:        testing
Codename:       buster
Which matches what I see happening. The installation is 'nearly' stable - just some functionality is awol since update+fiddling and cleaning up the DE situation should fix the lot.

In that new light +/ which approach has the highest chances: would You please reconsider my question?

If it doesn't work - no problem!

In the past it never mattered if I installed 'testing' or 'stable', I got either one regularly in a mess, but it was always possible to fix without re-installing the lot. This isn't Windoze after all ;)

Thank You
W

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Re: Plasma 5 became disfunct - reinstall needed?

#5 Post by sunrat »

Testing can be as bad or worse than unstable for breakages. If you get your system working properly, make a full backup before you change anything. I do a full root partition backup with Clonezilla every time I do a dist-upgrade and check warnings as well before proceeding, apt-listbugs can help with that. I have one system with sid which is working really nicely and just upgraded to Plasma 5.10, although waited several weeks to do that upgrade before reports said it seemed safe.
Still recommend a full reinstall with only KDE if you want KDE. Installing and removing Gnome is bound to leave some unwanted cruft even though it shouldn't.
I reread your post and can't quite fathom what your issue is. Could you post relevant error messages?
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Those who have lost data
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Re: Plasma 5 became disfunct - reinstall needed?

#6 Post by walter69 »

Thank You! There are no error messages! Only little bits missing & cracks in functionality in Plasma5. Gnome didn't make it again. Nicer eye-candy I can do myself ;)

I'll make an overview of it all the little bits missing & cracks I have. For that I gotta find my way around Gimp to edit screenshots. (I'm used to PaintShopPro8 [=> Wine one day :]- is there anything else re image editing I'd better consider?
Testing can be as bad or worse than unstable . . .
- That's a bad surprise to me. I'm very reluctant to go to stable. Going back isn't going forward ;)
Installing and removing Gnome is bound to leave some unwanted cruft . . .
- Just ignoring Gnome and leaving it to the side worked absolutely fine 10 yrs ago, has that become dangerous too? - Has having healthy Gnome and Plasma on the same install become dangerous? I loved flicking back and forth quickly as neither had all the functionality I needed but now I found I can turn Plasma alone into an linuxXP^3++ that just flies although I'm on antique hardware.

Thank You - particularly for : apt-listbugs

W

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Re: Plasma 5 became disfunct - reinstall needed?

#7 Post by sunrat »

walter69 wrote:Thank You! There are no error messages!

There will probably be error messages if there are errors. ~/.xsession-errors, journalctl, dmesg etc.
Testing can be as bad or worse than unstable . . .
- That's a bad surprise to me. I'm very reluctant to go to stable. Going back isn't going forward ;)
Testing is supposed to be for testing. Until it's released as the next stable, it's not really going forward. More like stepping out of an old 747 into a brand new home made gyrocopter.
Installing and removing Gnome is bound to leave some unwanted cruft . . .
- Just ignoring Gnome and leaving it to the side worked absolutely fine 10 yrs ago, has that become dangerous too? - Has having healthy Gnome and Plasma on the same install become dangerous?
Apart from having way too many similar programs, it should work. It's when you remove parts of them that problems can multiply.
I loved flicking back and forth quickly as neither had all the functionality I needed but now I found I can turn Plasma alone into an linuxXP^3++ that just flies although I'm on antique hardware.
KDE Plasma 5 plods along nicely on my Core 2 Duo E8500 w/4GB RAM. It flies on my i5 6500 w/16GB RAM! :)
Thank You - particularly for : apt-listbugs
:wink:

Your original question - to remove both KDE and Gnome to start again, you probably need to logout of graphical desktop and into console. Then purge the packages rather than remove, this deletes all the config files and stuff so you may have a clean slate (not guaranteed). Then install plasma-desktop or similar metapackage with apt and pray.
“ computer users can be divided into 2 categories:
Those who have lost data
...and those who have not lost data YET ”
Remember to BACKUP!

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Re: Plasma 5 became disfunct - reinstall needed?

#8 Post by stevepusser »

Using GIMP to mark up screenshots? You need some way to search the package database for "screenshot". If you don't want to use the command line and have Synaptic already installed, install apt-xapian-index to use the quick search functionality it installs in Synaptic; otherwise install the little publicized "packagesearch" program and use its GUI to search and install.

Saving you some time, you can install the "shutter" package and use it to take, mark up, and upload screenshots. It has quite a few GNOME dependencies, which may sour it for many light desktop users, though. We have the much lighter Ksnip in the MX Linux repos, and several users say it's now a 'must have" for them.

Hmm..let me take a couple minutes and set up Debian and Ubuntu repositories on the OBS for Ksnip and Hotshots, which is another good QT 4 screenshot program with even more drawing features.
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Re: Plasma 5 became disfunct - reinstall needed?

#9 Post by stevepusser »

Well, hotshots took a while longer for me to get in the OBS, since I had to adapt a patch for it from the Arch AUR to get it to build on gcc-5 or higher for Stretch and newer Ubuntus, but the repo is up:

https://build.opensuse.org/project/show ... shot-tools

That patch broke the build on Debian Wheezy, so I disabled it. If anyone really wants it, I can put a separate version in there for Wheezy without the patch.

The OBS seems to be having some problem; it's not providing the normal "download package" link with instructions to add the repo. A workaround is to go directly into the repository and download the debs from the folder that matches your architecture. Ignore any -dbgsym debs, you just need the main deb for the program. To get to the repo, click on your distro on the right, then on the "go to download repository" links. If the debs don't with just a click, try a right-click and "Save Link As..." or the equivalent in your browser.
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walter69
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Re: Plasma 5 became disfunct - reinstall needed?

#10 Post by walter69 »

I think I caught a bug that I can't fix with essential oils or Iodine ;)
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=872666 --- kde-baseapps -base applications from the official KDE release (metapackage)
- I don't understand much of what this page is trying to tell me :( -so this eureka assumption could be badly wrong. I'm sure though that 666 is the devil's number :(

The time frame fits with around 19.Aug and nearly all my problems are around widgets even the crashes of FF would fit in here I suppose.

So reinstall (tried it anyway + all packages I could find around libqt*, qdbus & that fixed some little bits and synaptic told me it has to download 8 packages ??? puzzled me even more for a reinstall it's usually 0) won't help as it's in sid & testing (this is very confusing - somehow sid and testing seem to have become more of a common dev playground >)

I looked at installing an older package from prev distro = stretch, but the package name got changed w. the new release and that makes it even more complicated.

I see now why you suggested to go for stable very clearly and I'm throwing the towel in. I need a machine that works. Thank You all for lifting me along on a darn steep learning curve. There is a chance now that I won't ruin a stable release.

It will be KDE and I found on Ubuntu a driver for my video card that might be the only one that actually works ok. The WIN version limped somehow on XP and the Linux/Ubuntu package I couldn't get to work on debian. So next thing is to grab another HD and install Kubuntu 17.04 ;)

----

I'm BACK!

After a short Kbuntu round-trip where I found that Ubuntu suffers by now even worse from the Windoze Disease = let's disempower the users, that locks in our business and they are stupid anyway . . . I got now a debian stretch stable w. KDE only on another partition and GRUB to choose at boot-up. In the process I found another bug that is in Debian AND Ubuntu hanging round in the install process which must be darn old, results in a web install working fine over Wi-Fi and then no internet connection. That bug is nearly impossible for developers to reproduce but I found many threads complaining about it and a solution. I don't know what to do with it yet to make that useful for others ;) . . . still leaning !

THANKS AGAIN!
W

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