[kde-linux] plasma5 was: ME/CFS

[Duncan]

Duncan posted on Tue, 08 Sep 2015 04:13:57 +0000 as excerpted:

> I'll post back when I see whether I can actually run plasma5, now, and
> then, presuming you're either switched or attempting to switch as well,
> we can compare notes on the kde-frameworks/plasma5 side.


Well, I'm back... on kde4 again, for now.

I DID (sort-of) get a plasma5 desktop this time, including the very 
pretty wallpaper[1], the stacked-line "toolbox", and a panel, but all the 
(multi-monitor so multi-activity-area) activity-areas had a single 
message about a missing layout.js file or some such, as did the panel, 
and while I could get the add-plasmoids (aka widgets) dialog from the 
toolbox, trying to add anything failed, probably for the same reason the 
default plasmoids didn't show up.

I had moved out my user kde dir before the test, but apparently the kde4 
kactivitymanager stuff put files in the newer XDG location, so I had at 
least by name my old plasma4 activities.  It's possible the interplay 
between plasma4 and plasma5 there was what was screwing the plasmoids up 
-- why it couldn't find that file it mentioned.

I could have fiddled with it some more but after spending much of the day 
on it, I decided to roll-back to the kde4 side of the blockers instead.  
At least with only a handful of blockers between the two now, I can test 
again pretty quickly, and hopefully that missing files thing won't be too 
hard to resolve..

And the switch back to kde4 was as I expected real fast, with just the 
few blockers.  I did have a hitch with konsole as I had set USE=minimal 
on the kde4 package to avoid conflicts/blockers with the plasma5 
version.  As a result I didn't have the actual kde4 konsole executable, 
tho I could start it from the konsole-profile launcher which showed up as 
an option in krunner when I typed konsole.  However, once I remembered 
that and reverted, I got the konsole4 executable back again, and all was 
fine.

Meanwhile, the  kactivities4 package is similarly set to minimal, with 
the kde-frameworks/kactivities5 package still installed.  Pleasant 
surprise, something about the interaction there seems to be clearing up a 
long-term bug I had with kactvities4, where plasma wouldn't see my 
configured activities, apparently due to some sort of kde startup race, 
until I aborted and restarted plasma-desktop.  There's a kde bug filed, 
with a lot of other people seeing it too.  It would sometimes go away for 
a few kde starts, however, perhaps having to do with the timing of inet 
plasmoid data or something, so I won't know for sure whether it's gone 
for good for at least a few days.  But it's definitely nice to have 
plasma actually starting up with its configured activities again, instead 
of having to have a startup script kill and restart plasma-desktop, to 
get them back.  Hope the bug stays banished! =:^)  If so I can update the 
bug with this pleasant news.  Not that I suppose too many will be running 
plasma4 for long, now that support is drying up, but whatever.

---
[1] WOW! Colorful!  I LIKE it!  So much for drab and dreary!  Too bad the 
panel and windows were drab gray/white, tho of course that should be 
changeable when things are working properly, and it /could/ actually be a 
result of the same problem triggering the missing plasmoids, and thus get 
prettier when that's fixed.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman