Many thanks to the Kubuntu devs
I’d like to send a huge thank you to the Kubuntu team.
First, because they’re very nice people 🙂
Second, because Kubuntu is an essential part of what we provide with Mint KDE. I know some of you mistakenly think we could base on top of Neon, or simply package KDE ourselves but realistically, we cannot. Our KDE community is small, packaging KDE represents a huge commitment and because Plasma 5 is still reaching maturity it’s a continuous process which cannot get frozen for an entire 2 years. At the same time, we have high expectations, stability is important to us and if we do something it has to work. With this in mind, if it wasn’t for Kubuntu and their Backport PPA, I don’t think there would be a KDE edition in Linux Mint.
Third, because they put a massive amount of efforts into backporting Plasma 5.8, along with the new KDE apps and frameworks and the new version of Qt it depends on. This had to be done with a lot of care, a lot of testing and a lot of respect for the other components in the Xenial package base.
How to test Plasma 5.8
Plasma 5.8.4 is currently in the Kubuntu Backports Landing PPA.
If you are running Linux Mint 18 KDE and you want to help us test it:
- Open the “Software Sources” tool
- Click on the “PPA” tab
- Click on the “Add a PPA” button
- Enter “ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports-landing“
- Validate and click the “Refresh the cache” button
You can then use the Update Manager to upgrade Plasma and the many KDE components.
Plasma 5.8 in Mint 18.x
Once testing is complete, Plasma 5.8 will move towards the Kubuntu-Backports PPA and it will then be available as an update to all users of Linux Mint 18 KDE.
If necessary, we will delay the release of Linux Mint 18.1 KDE to ensure it ships with Plasma 5.8 out of the box.
Remove the PPA when you’re finished
Please remove the backports-landing PPA from your sources when you’re finished testing:
- Open the “Software Sources” tool
- Click on the “PPA” tab
- Select the lines for the backports-landing PPA
- Click on the remove button
- Validate and click the “Refresh the cache” button
This PPA is used to test new versions before they get into the Backports PPA, so things can get quite unstable in there at early stages of the preparation of an update.
(K)Ubuntu + Plasma 5.8 LTS causes dependency problems with Fcitx (input method).
(This is currently confirmed with KDE neon and Maui)
Maybe it may be necessary to build Fcitx association.
Edit by Clem: Hi, fcitx installs fine for me, with Mint 18.0 KDE + landing PPA. Which fcitx packages are you installing exactly?
Thank you so much, Clem! The upgrade and install went well and all packages seem to work as well if not better than most Plasma 5.8.4 distros I have tested. I am so happy that you and the Mint Team wait until packages are “stable” before recommending for install in Linux Mint.
Edit by Clem: Thanks. We’re not actually in charge of the KDE update here, you need to thank Kubuntu for it. I completely agree with what you’re saying though, about quality and about not rushing things, and these values are shared and important to Kubuntu too. It’s quite technical and hard to explain to users why it took so long for 5.8 to be backported, but if I had to summarize, it’s precisely because they care about stability. To give you an idea on how much they care, they came and reached out to us to invite us to test the upcoming upgrade in landing, to make sure it didn’t create regressions not only in Kubuntu but also in Linux Mint, before it was pushed towards the backports.
this is great news.
Ill wait for the lm kde with kde latest lts to try it out instead of latest manjaro.
I love LM, so I prefer to wait..
Hi.
Thanks for this news. I installed the ppa, everything works well, but inxi -Sz shows Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.6.5. So, am I really using Plasma 5.8?
Thanx
Al
I had great experiences with almost every flavor of Mint except for the latest Mint KDE with Plasma 5. I know it’s hit and miss with systems/cards/configs, but Plasma basically created a blackhole of memory and CPU use, crippling my system frequently. After I added some Widgets and got everything all fancy looking, Plasma and related procs pegged 8GB of ram on a 6-core x64 AMD Black Edition FX-6100 CPU gaming system made for Windows gaming (until recently). Literally started using swap space I think, because my monitor had my RAM use at 7GB flirting with 8GB. I replicated the problem in both Kubuntu and Mint 18 KDE (x64) as well as in my main build after a restart or two.
TL;DR – Don’t upgrade Plasma yet. If you have a stable Plasma 4, wait a few months at least before upgrading, so they can work on some of the system resource and compatibility with ATI/AMD drivers.
Just did the Plasma 5.8.4 update on Mint 18 KDE. All went smoothly, and it is very much more stable than the old Plasma 5.6. Thanks for providing the path to get there.
Exciting news! I really enjoyed the new look and feel of Linux Mint 18 KDE even if the KDE software had some papercuts. Moving towards a next KDE software release sounds promising. I’ll try to make time this week to help test.
This is great news indeed. As a loyal Mint KDE user, I’ll be looking forward to testing.
I’ve just installed the new version of KDE in Linux Mint and I will try to test it. Thank you for your hard work! I think it’s the best OS one can get in the free/open software world. Keep up the good work!
Sweet! Love the updates and continuous done with KDE! Ubuntu and LM devs rock!
I was very disappointed by Mint 18.0 because KDE no longer supports different wallpapers in each desktop. It’s my favorite functional eye-candy because it lets me know instantly which desktop I’m in. Otherwise, LXDE would work as well. I didn’t learn this until I upgraded one computer to 18. I’m leaving my others running Mint 17 — until KDE restores this former feature.
Great news! I will help testing. First impress is good. Only one Problem at the moment: Shutdown with K-Menu doesnt work anymore.
Edit by Clem: Just after the upgrade, that’s normal. Well, it could be taken care of, but it’s a known issue… you basically upgraded the session manager but you’re still running the old one 🙂 Restart the computer and this problem should go away.
Excellent news. Thank you so much to Kubuntu and Mint teams!
The best is about to get even better 🙂
Please care about amd vision compatibility.I was not able to install Mint kde 18 on my pc…TY !
Thank you Clem, Mint, and Kubuntu teams! I was hovering at the ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports-landing last night waiting for a sign…now Clem has spoken! Let’s see what lands.
Thank you Clem. As you said: after restart the problem is gone away.:)
Up and running, first test a bluetooth external speaker streaming home server, working great.
mint 18 kde plasma 5.8.4
mbp13
Installation works like a charm, well done Kubuntu/Clem.
I noticed, however, on my productive system a first bug:
On a Windows Server network drive connected by smb:/, a pdf cannot be viewed when double-clicking in dolphin. Okular starts up showing the error message: file on smb:/blahblah cannot be found.
Other file extensions (xls, etc) can be opened.
how to switch back to original linuxmint KDE version?
I want to help you test it. I am currently running 5.8.4 on Manjaro and I love it. I’ll install LM 18 KDE tomorrow, update Plasma and use it as my everyday desktop.
What is the right place for reporting the bugs I eventually find?
Edit by Clem: If they’re regressions, right here.
Great news! However –
(1) I very much miss the possibility to have different backgrounds for my 4 work spaces
(2) The version of the application starter that I have been using for years (left bottom in task bar) doesn’t work properly. It shows up only very shortly and immediately vanishes. It only works if I click on the (blue) “show work space” icon. This surely must be a bug and not a “works as designed” item.
Will this work for nVidia Graphics Cards? I have tried previous versions of KDE but it crashes and freezes with nVidia.
Edit by Clem: There’s been issues with Prime lately (Optimus dual NVIDIA-Intel laptops). Most of them were fixed and there are a few workarounds. It shouldn’t have anything to do with the DE though.. when reporting issues with NVIDIA, make sure to specify if it’s an optimus card or not.
… and – by the way – app entries cannot be sorted alphabetically, even if one selects to do so in the properties panel…
Thanks to you, the Linux Mint team, and the Kubuntu team, for keeping Linux Mint KDE moving forward. To your point, our KDE community is small, but we are dedicated. Thanks again for your efforts.
Thanks! Installation ok.
I’ve noticed an issue kalarm related:
– “the akonadi personal information management service is not operational”
and kalarm doesn’t start.
This happens after login.
But if I run kmail, akonadi service is started and also kalarm works.
Edit by Clem: Hi Luca, it’s tracked at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/akonadi/+bug/1633855. A workaround is “sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/mysql-files”.
“If necessary, we will delay the release of Linux Mint 18.1 KDE to ensure it ships with Plasma 5.8 out of the box.”
Thankyou.
Just make it so, Number One.
Really, I love LinuxMint!!
Hi Clem, running 5.8 on a virtual machine (also under mint 18). Every time I use , I get a notification of “The Window Switcher installation is broken, resources are missing. Contact your distribution about this.” Otherwise, looks good. (Windows do get switched, by the way; but the action is accompanied by the annoying message.)
@luser
Perhaps is a Widgets going crazy. Try to close every widget, check if you have a problem, and add one after another, while checking your RAM in every iteration.
Did you check, which program want’s so much RAM? Normaly this 5.8.4 should be quite bug-free, at least shoudn’t have a normal configuration have a memory leakage.
Sorry, should be “Every time I use alt tab, I get…”. I should have known not to use greater_than and less_than signs.
Thanks, and keep up the good work!
Plasma 5.8.4
Sometimes system Shut Down will remain on sddm splash screen (LM with dots underneath). This was after
rebooting after the update. Ctrl-Alt SysReq or Ctrl-Alt Backspace shut it down from there. I’ll try to
get more info on this one.
System Settings | Window Management | Window Behavior | Titlebar Actions | Wheel event
is set to
Switch to Window Tab to the Left/Right
by default. But this doesn’t seem to work, ie, there is no difference between that setting and the
“Nothing” setting. A few application will use the wheel event to switch tabs, but only when hovering
over the tab bar (not the titlebar), and they do that independently of this Wheel event setting.
Perhaps I’m just not finding an application that uses this setting.
Similarly,
System Settings | Window Management | Window Behavior | Task Switcher | Main
shows Alt-` and Alt-~ for switching windows within an application, but these do not switch tabs.
Perhaps there are other types of MDI windows in apps where this applies.
.
On the positive side:
Applications don’t flicker like crazy with Alt-Tab.
KDE doesn’t reset my desktop background to its default anymore whenever I log in.
.
Hey, do you want to know what the LM websites look like with a purple theme?
System Settings | Desktop Behavior | Desktop Effects
Choose Invert (it’s right on the top), then browse a LM website and press
Ctrl-Meta-u
🙂
more on shut down:
First, I was wrong about the key presses doing anything. I waited about a minute, and the system shut
down on its own. But it only happened a couple more times. Several other times I tried it, it shut
down or rebooted very quickly. Both cases (quick and slow reboot) happened just by logging in, then
immediately rebooting (via the menu). I tried other things, but could not pin down a specific cause.
Any suggestions on how to proceed?
on login coredumpctl says that
kalarm, kdeconenctd and kactivitymanagerd coredump
could it be doing a filesystem check on shutdown? I selected reboot from the menu and didnt think it was doing anything.. I went to a terminal and did a reboot from there.. After the graphics cleared I could see it had interrupted a filesystem check for the reboot. Could it be that the filesystems are clean at times and the filesystem check doesnt have anything to do? If you hit esc when waiting for the reboot, can you see it doing anything?
I installed the update on two boxes. On both the update worked fine.
The only issue I can see is that on one of the boxes the sddm-greeter process is using 10-20% cpu continuously.
Installed the update. Only two hiccups:
1) Out of the 4 konsole sessions that started up after reboot, the first one shows some warning: Could not start program ‘/bin/bash’ with arguments ‘/bin/bash’.
Warning: No such file or directory
But, the other 3 konsole sessions are fine.
2) A pop-up window “System policy prevents control of network connections” wants me to type in a password to enable network connections. A local user password is accepted, pop-up goes away and everything works fine.
Other than these two hiccups, everything works just fine. Thanks for your great work!
Where do I report bugs? To kde.org directly?
Al
Edit by Clem: Hi Al, we’re primarily interested in regressions related to this particular update. If you find one, please report it here.
The 5.8 “upgrade” killed many kmail dependencies having to do with the akonadi mysql PIM, can no longer run kmail. Also frustrating that Linux Mint 18 KDE doesn’t work out of the box yet(as Cinnamon does) for smartphone MTP transfers etc, still need KDE Connect as a workaround as Dolphin seems to have some background contention between mtp processes which causes them to die “unexpectedly” (kio-mtp does not help). The default camera app almost works for PTP but will not actually read or copy the jpeg files that are on the phone. Mouse trails seem to have gotten worse also.
Clem:
I tired Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” – KDE (64-bit), but had to rollback to 17.3 “Rosa”. (I’ve been a KDE fan since SuSE Linux 6.0.)
I liked Plasma 5, it seemed less bloated than Plasma 4, but the color management module (Oyranos Color Management System
Kolor-Manager?) apparently hasn’t been ported (is that the correct term?) to Plasma 5 and I could not figure out how to install a DisplayCAL ICC color profile manually. The DisplayCAL installer would fail to install the profile in “colord”. I looked and looked for a command line solution to no avail.
Not being able to fully integrate a color profile into Plasma 5 is a deal killer for production graphics work.
Just an FYI.
Thanks for all your–and the team’s–great work keeping Linux Mint alive!
Bob
Battery and brightness widget: configure power saving doesn’t display correctly but does through system settings/power management. Widget calls up incomplete window with no scroll on the right and no access below Wi-Fi, (Mobile Broadband, Bluetooth). No: defaults, reset or apply buttons.
Thanks !
Running Mint 18 KDE (upgraded to plasma 5.6.5) => 5.8.4 installation straight forward, issue with the power buttons not working. Restart and everything works fine.
No issues whatsoever. Stable so far.
@Clem, @mscroggi:
more on shut down:
I hit ESCape during a slow reboot and got a message on a text screen saying (approx.):
A stop job is running for session 2 for [my username] [seconds counting up] / 1:30
Also found this in “/var/log/syslog.1” which I beleve is from the last time I slow rebooted:
http://pastebin.com/QcJtCcAR
@Clem, @mscroggi:
more on shut down:
I hit ESCape during a slow reboot and got a message on a text screen saying (approx.):
A stop job is running for session 2 for [my username] [seconds counting up] / 1:30
Also found this in “/var/log/syslog.1” which I beleve is from the last time I slow rebooted:
http://pastebin.com/QcJtCcAR
(Didn’t have cookies allowed for linuxmint.com, so I don’t think this posted the first time. Sorry if it’s a double post.)
Edit by Clem: Hi Jesse, we’ve seen issues like these before, it’s a job still running and preventing the shutdown sequence from completing as fast as you would expect. It’s not related to this update afaik.
All is fine, but please, reduce memory usage on my HDD/USB. I have installed Linux Mint KDE on my 8 GB USB, and the system need more memory :/ :'(
After a few days of use, here’s my report:
– online accounts: the first time I tried to add a Google account I got an error: «No such object path ‘/com/google/code/AccountsSSO/SingleSignOn’». The second time it worked, but I could activate only Google Hangouts. No e-mail, no calendar and so on.
– online accounts: if I try adding a Telegram account I get this error: «This IM Account cannot be created – a Telepathy Connection Manager named ‘morse’ is missing or it cannot handle protocol ‘telegram’, Please try installing morse with your package manager.» But I didn’t find any suitable “morse” package.
– if I try installing musescore from its PPA (I need it at its latest version for my job, so it’s a critical feature for my use case) I get an error about unresolved dependencies. Depends: qtbase-abi-5-5-1. Depends: musescore-common, but it is not going to be installed.
in vbox, blincking cursor as application launch feedback, is still not working
it works with other updated plasma distro
As I already reported for LM 18.0-KDE: When I try to add an event to Korganizer, it crashes. Cannot use it therefore.
Hi, All,
Two regressions to report:
1-Digital clock applet on the bottom panel: I have mine configured to show time+am/pm and long date. Old behavior was that as I decreased the panel height, the text size would decrease proportionally so that I could have time-above-date. New behavior is that the font size does not decrease proportionally until the point at which the panel height forces the text onto a single line.
2-On one of my HP laptops, my old knotes are completely black; that is, black text on a black background. Changing the colors manually does not affect this behavior. New notes, however, appear to have the expected behavior; that is, black text on a yellow background (per my knote preference settings).
Hope this helps. Thanks to all KDE and Mint devs who continue to make this an amazing distro with an equally amazing DE!
ppa backports now has plasma 5.8.4
Running fine, and I’m looking forward to the Mint 18.1 KDE release with it’s added refinements.
Hi
I wrote some scripts in Bash and launched them using the Desktop (Mint 18). All works fine.
Today was an update of KDE automatically as suggested. So done, these Bash scripts won’t start anymore (as Link to application). When I click on the icons, I saw a little response, but the script doesn’t start anymore.
When i switch the D-Bus registration in the icon to single or multiple instances, I got an error message:
KDEInit could not launch ‘konsole’
.
What can I do?
Thanks
Al
Hi everyone,
I added a note to remind everybody to remove the landing PPA when they’re finished.
Please do remove it.
It’s very stable now with 5.8.4, but it could get very unstable in the early days when the next update is being assembled.
user@mint18 ~ $ vlc
VLC media player 2.2.2 Weatherwax (revision 2.2.2-0-g6259d80)
[00000000007ad178] core libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use ‘cvlc’ to use vlc without interface.
Segmentation fault
user@mint18 ~ $ qbittorrent
*************************************************************
Catching SIGSEGV, please report a bug at http://bug.qbittorrent.org
and provide the following backtrace:
qBittorrent version: v3.3.1
stack trace:
Segmentation fault
They both worked until the last update, yesterday.
Edit by Clem: What update was it? i.e. package name and version?
@ciacnorris
As Clem says above, you need to disable the backports-landing ppa and just use package version from the normal backports ppa.
The issue you have is due to a testing build of Qt I think.
In a terminal do:
dpkg –list | grep 5.6.1+dfsg-3ubuntu7~~xenialoverlay1~2
That should give you a list of installed packages from the testing build.
e.g. output like
ii libqt5concurrent5:amd64 5.6.1+dfsg-3ubuntu7~~xenialoverlay1~2 amd64 Qt 5 concurrent module
ii libqt5core5a:amd64 5.6.1+dfsg-3ubuntu7~~xenialoverlay1~2 amd64 Qt 5 core module
ii libqt5dbus5:amd64 5.6.1+dfsg-3ubuntu7~~xenialoverlay1~2 amd64 Qt 5 D-Bus module
ii libqt5gui5:amd64 5.6.1+dfsg-3ubuntu7~~xenialoverlay1~2 amd64 Qt 5 GUI module
…..
…..
Then in one command preferably for a smooth downgrade, do for all you get
apt-get install packagename1=5.6.1+dfsg-3ubuntu1~xenialoverlay1~4 packagename2=5.6.1+dfsg-3ubuntu1~xenialoverlay1~4 packagename3=5.6.1+dfsg-3ubuntu1~xenialoverlay1~4 ……
obviously where packagenamex is each of the listed package names (minus the :amd64 or similar part)
making sure you use =5.6.1+dfsg-3ubuntu1~xenialoverlay1~4 after each
Edit by Clem: Thanks acheronuk. There’s a simpler way. Mint supports the notion of “foreign packages”. Once you removed the Landing PPA and refreshed the APT cache, you can go to Software Sources, click on the maintenance tab, and from there you can “Downgrade foreign packages”. This will identify packages which aren’t coming from your software sources and let you downgrade them back to known versions. If you downgrade packages, make sure to select them all (or at least all the KDE one), i.e. don’t mix and match landing and backport versions… and like always when presented with the output of a command (after you click the button), do read the output coming from APT before validating. If you see any weird removals, abort before going further.
Time to time, in the absence of activity, turns the login window.
Saving option the screen is turned off.
In KMail I can not add another email account POP3.
“The POP3 mail server Unable to start”
I update to 5.8.4 from PPA, found a problem with
Login screen (SDDM) > Cursor Theme, tried many themes but only get a black X at the login screen.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SDDM#Mouse_cursor > says
Valid Plasma mouse cursor theme names are breeze_cursors, Breeze_Snow and breeze-dark. ( is this true ? )
tried these themes also but not working, hope this info helps
Tom.
Update from last post, also checked /etc/sddm.conf file for changes and file is updated with new theme when changed in settings, reboot did not help with updated theme changes.
@acheronuk
“Edit by Clem: Thanks acheronuk. There’s a simpler way. Mint supports the notion of “foreign packages”. Once you removed the Landing PPA and refreshed the APT cache, you can go to Software Sources, click on the maintenance tab, and from there you can “Downgrade foreign packages”. This will identify packages which aren’t coming from your software sources and let you downgrade them back to known versions.”
I followed that advice and in downgrade menu chose only a few mentioned libqt5… packages. But when I continued basicly my whole program list was uninstalled. But Qbittorrent works now.
Please in future make instructions more clear for those who does not work with software sources often. I am OK with testing next Plasma version, and it worked with only one flaw (Qbittorrent one) for me, but this advice simply ruined my system.
Edit by Clem: Hi Prexis, I’m sorry. It definitely should tell you if packages will be removed as a consequence and it probably did that because of a mix and match. I’ll add some info to recommend people read the output before validating the command and remove all landing packages in a go.
@Clem, Re: comment #52
I don’t remember packages and versions, I have kept updating every package the update manager told me to.
I did this LM install just to help you test KDE 5.8, so finding workarounds (by downgrading) is not my priority. Please tell me anything I can do to help you gather the informations you need to solve this problem in the distro, not only on my pc. 🙂
If you just want me to downgrade, then please tell me how to do it without having the problems arised in comment #58. Thank you very much!