Upgrading to KDE Plasma 6.0 - a rocky start for KDE Neon User Edition

When I read about the first stable release of KDE Plasma 6, I thought I'd probably just wait awhile until I try it, but of course I forgot that KDE Neon User Edition would get it so soon.  Well, the update happened and the first thing I noticed, on my main desktop machine, was that for some reason the onscreen keyboard came up on the login screen, large and covering half the screen! To fix this I found a solution on a forum, which entails editing sddm.conf like so:

sudo nano /etc/sddm.conf

and then add 

InputMethod=

Save and exit and the onscreen keyboard shouldn't appear again on the login screen. Also it's a rather basic login screen for some reason, no matter which theme I choose. Update - switching to the default Breeze login theme fixes this.

Then I noticed that Wayland was set as default again, after I tried to login and it wouldn't work. Nvidia is the reason for this, but thankfully X11 is still an option and that works. Then on the first few logins I noticed a lot of little errors I think some parts hadn't updated, so a quick trip to Discover, the package manager to make sure everything got updated was needed. And then a day or so after i updated, there was some major bug fixes, which has made things better but i am still getting the odd Plasma crash, usually after logging in and opening Chrome for the first time. Right now the desktop seems to have has settled down and actually feels a bit snappier than Plasma 5 was. I am still getting the occasional error and a few graphical glitches, black screens occasionally., 

KDE Activity manager constantly crashed with the "kactivitymanager closed unexpectedly" error.until I found a solution,  Navigate to ~/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources and delete database, database-shm and database-wal. You will lose your favourites in the KDE menu but at least the annoying kactivitymanager won't keep crashing! Amother odd thing is that the Print Screen key does not open Spectacle anymore.   

Another minor issue is that since Plasma 6 is qt6 based, so Latte Dock no longer works, and will never be updated since it's been abandoned by the lead developer. A shame because it's been my favourite OSX-style dock for years. For now I have added another KDE panel, auto-hiding, and using the new floating panel feature. It's not exactly pretty, but it's functional. I shall miss the magnification effect from Latte, and I can't seem to get the panel to go translucent, even though I have set it to. Floating panels are default now, but to me they look odd on the normal panels so I have disabled them for those. Another minor niggle is that Dolphin always opens without the sidebar even though I closed it with it open. It used to remember my choice. 

On my main laptop, a T430s Thinkpad, the update installed more smoothly, there was no kactivitymanager errors but still have the same basic login screen and had to disable the onscreen keyboard like with my desktop machine. No graphical issues of course, because it's got Intel graphics. One thing I have noticed changed is that when I close the lid then open it again, the keyboard backlight now goes off instead of remembering which setting it was on. My laptop does not have the Dolphin sidebar issue though.

The KDE Neon developer blog has put up an apology for the number of issues with KDE Neon User Edition. Apparently the testing and unstable versions have been running more smoothly. Hopefully they'll send out more fixes soon.

You can read more about what's new in KDE Plasma 6 on the KDE website. 

Returning to Music Player Daemon - Cantata vs Mpdevil

A while ago I tried Music Player Daemon (MPD) with my music, but found it wouldn't see half my collection and I gave up on it. That was a long time ago so I recently decided to try it again to see if it had improved and also I have recently been getting annoyed with usual music players, Clementine and Strawberry. Clementine is basically no longer maintained but it's one of few players that can cope with 80 thousand tracks! And it has a nice Android app to control it from my phone. But it's got some annoying bugs that will never be fixed so I have been trying to look for alternatives. Strawberry is a fork of Clementine but doesn't fix the bugs that bother me and there's no Android app for it, so I decided to give MPD another go since I haven't tried MPD for years.

This time when I installed MPD, I made sure it ran properly as my user rather than its own user, with the config in my Home folder. And this time it seems to see all my collection, and has clearly improved since I last tried it.  I used the brilliant guide on the Arch wiki and adapted it for KDE Neon (a distro of sorts based on Kubuntu but with latest KDE). Most of the guides I used before were for Ubuntu but usually they would create an MPD user, which is where the problems had begun.  Apart from setting the music directory, I have enabled Replaygain for audio normalisation. The sound was also distorting slightly on my desktop machine without Replaygain enabled. I haven't yet worked out how to make MPD run on startup in KDE, I usually just run it in my favourite drop-down terminal, Yakuake. Edit: you can set mpd to run automatically by adding it as a service with this command: systemctl --user enable mpd.service

The great thing about MPD is it runs in the background consuming very little resources, and then you control it with a front-end of your choice, either lightweight or heavy and control it from anywhere on the local network. At first it had problems choosing the right soundcard, as I use a USB interface, but changing it to use Pulseaudio instead of ALSA fixed that. One slight annoyance with MPD is it does not remember the previously played track or playlist the next time MPD is started.

This time round, after looking round at other front-ends, I ended up choosing Cantata as it seemed to be the best of thea KDE friendly apps, it works well  apart from the 16,000 track limit on playlists is a bit annoying. I have now got into a habit of just listening to albums in full or all of one artist etc, whereas in Clementine I would just have all my 80,000+ in a single playlist on Shuffle! 

I then discovered Mpdevil, which although a fairly simple player, it looks more modern than Cantata. I have Mpdevil running nicely on my main desktop and my main laptop, both are running KDE Neon (a distro based on Kubuntu but with the very latest KDE version). I also have MPD on my old Dell Vostro, which runs Manjaro,

One very noticeable difference between the two is that Cantata has a "locate in Library" option in the right click menu whereas Mpdevil only has the option of "Show" which locates the track in the file manager which is far less useful to me. I usually want to find the album a track is from and play it. 

Mpdevil 'Show' which opens a location in a file manager

Cantata 'Locate In Library' which shows where the track is in the app.

One other thing I really like in Cantata is it's easier to find and switch between MPD servers in the settings with it's Discover button. It isn't as simple to do that with Mpdevil. 

Mpdevil is basically a more minimal player, it lacks Last.fm support and, as far as i can tell, doesn't fetch missing covers, whereas Cantata has both of those features. As far as I know, there isn't an easy way to get Scrobbling in the MPD backend itself so it's useful to have that in the front-end. If you want a great looking player and don't need advanced features, mpdevil does the job fine but if you need the advanced features, Cantata does a better job, so I will stick with Canatata for now. I am open to suggestions though for an even better KDE-friendly MPD client. 

Hello Endeavour Linux! Goodbye Endeavour Linux?

I finally got round to trying Endeavour Linux on one of my laptops, a Dell Latitude E6500. I have read good things about Endeavour, it often tops "best Arch based distro" lists and has some neat features. Things started out well with the installer working very well, choose a desktop to install and it gets on with it very quickly and efficiently. Upon first boot you are greeted with the Welcome Launcher with its useful tasks and suggestions....

However, when I then wanted to setup KDE Connect, that's when the problems began, followed by hours upon hours of Googling! In Debian and Ubuntu based distros, I've never had an issue with KDE Connect, it just works, picking up local devices and connecting fine, but not on Endeavour. I tried changing firewall settings, and tried disabling the firewall completely through various methods. 

So far I have learnt a lot about how to use the 'yay' and 'pacman' commands to install and remove software and have installed a lot of my favourite apps such as Filezilla, Strawberry music player, net-tools, yakuake etc. Using yay to install apps from AUR is useful for installing stuff that can't be had through pacman but I can't seem to get Webmin to install and run properly. Update - to get Webmin working I have had to install from the tar.gz file using the instructions here.  I've always found it easy to get webmin onto a Debian based machine. I cannot work out why else KDE Connect won't find any other devices. I am afraid that for me, is it curtains for Endeavour Linux? 

Update: I have found out that Endeavour Linux uses Firewalld for its firewall, and I have found the solution here, thanks to user "FaulesArschloch" on Reddit. 

Run these commands to allow KDE Connect through the Firewall:

    sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=1714-1764/tcp

    sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=1714-1764/udp

    sudo systemctl restart firewalld.service

Or alternatively just disabled the Firewall with 

    sudo systemctl stop firewalld.service

And you can also remove it completely with

    yay -R firewalld 

That also fixed the issue with mkchromecast not finding my Chromecasts too, but Gnomecast still doesn't find any Chromecasts, that's if it launches at all. Also BTW, as a sidenote, the equivalent to build-essential on Arch is base-devel, useful if you need to build apps from source. 

Apart from pacman and installing from aur using yay, you can also install flatpak for even more apps, install flatpak with yay -S flatpak. I found flatpak was useful for installing the ProjectM visualisation app (it's similar to Milkdrop) as for some reason the version from other sources doesn't seem to work, but the flatpak version worked straight away. If you need a flatpak installed app to access part of the filesystem outside of its sandbox, you can use Flatseal, instructions for that are here.

Another app I use a lot is Dropbox, there's no package on their site but you can make your own using these instructions and you'll need to import the gpg key from here.

Also, another slight niggle is every other boot, the login screen is at the wrong resolution, leaving black bars either side. Nothing major, just slightly irritating. 

Although I have fixed a fair few issues with Endeavour, I am still not that entirely happy with the distro yet, particularly as if I reinstall I will have to go through all these tweaks to get things perfect again. I am still having issues with Gnomecast, though at least Mkchromecast works decently well. I will persevere for now but if I cannot get everything to work, I will either pick another distro to try or go back to KDE Neon on this laptop. 

 

A Month Since I Switched To Linux

Four weeks ago I made the full switch from Mac to Linux. I have played with Linux on and off for years but had always gone back to using macOS. I think some of this was because I had the hardware to do it. However this time I made the big leap. I sold my Mac and bought a Dell laptop. There was no going back. Breaking free from Apple's walled garden approach has been a breath of fresh air in my tech life, but how has the transition from a platform I had used for 20+ years to uncharted waters gone?

Hardware wise, everything went fine. I’ve had no issues setting up and using Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon on my Dell Latitude E5410. All internal hardware works perfectly, any external drives or USB attachments work too – such as USB 3D audio stick, Bluetooth adaptor and spare WiFi adaptors – all work without having to fish around for additional drivers or services. I had one Bluetooth adaptor that was recognised by the system but failed to work. Not a huge problem just a small annoyance, but this was due to the chipset in it. My other works fine, so I am OK. Even my wireless printer – which I hadn’t give much thought about – just was there ready to be used.

One issue I had when I first started was keyboard shortcuts. My hands had gotten so used to Apple+Q etc that I had to keep reminding myself to use the Ctrl and Alt key instead, something that happened very quickly to my surprise.

A side point, I did take off the Windows key on my keyboard and remove the Windows logo from it. It bugged me seeing that little flag there each day.

Software wise, everything went fine. I checked software before I transitioned and minus a few Apple only apps I was already using cross platform tools, which I carried on using in Linux. I have had no issues day-to-day getting what I need done, which is mainly browsing, emailing, social media, music conversion, image editing and transferring files to and from my Android phone and to external backup drives.

The only stumbling block was finding a video editing tool that was easy to use that could take on the small tasks I needed to edit my YouTube videos before uploading. I have an intro I needed to drop in about 10 seconds in to my videos and I liked to snip sections out through videos, just to make them tidy (I have a habit of saying ‘um’ and rambling a bit off topic). I had intended to use OpenShot, but it is a highly unstable piece of software that also caused audio artefacts. So I switched to Kdenlive, which was much more sprightly, stable and no audio issues. Within an hour of installing it, I had gotten used to it and performed the editing I needed.

A small niggle with emailing, though more Thunderbird's fault than Linux itself. I used to use Thunderbird a lot and didn’t realise it was officially retired and only community supported. I had issues with it connecting to my Google mail servers and not wanting to send emails at times. However, using the Gmail web interface is a great alternative until I find a better email client.

Overall I am loving Linux. It is a strange feeling not to know an OS inside out. After using a Mac for 20+ years there wasn’t anything I didn’t know how to do, but with Linux its a huge learning curve, and I have had to ask my Linux guru friend more times than I would have liked or Google a few ‘how to’ issues. This will pass with more using and I am already feeling quite confident in Terminal.

Linux is far more newbie friendly than it has ever been. It is a clean, easy to use, bloat free OS that doesn’t get in the way of what you need to do. Even updates just sit patiently waiting for you to install them when it is convenient rather than popping up and getting in the way of work or waiting til you want to shut down and then installing.

I am embracing my new direction and my new non-Apple hardware. It is the best move I made since ditching my iPhone for Android a few years back. 

I can only look forward to using my computer how I want and learning Linux more and more each day.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

You Can't Do That In Linux! Oh Yes You Can.

I’ve been a Mac user for over 20 years and outside of the professional world using one at home would be met constantly with ‘you can’t do that on a Mac’.

I got used to it. While it wasn’t as true as people made out, the computing world was more geared towards Windows, especially when it came to small software and shareware. I remember trying to find Mac tools that could flash items to Nokia phones in the 90s and it was impossible.

Fast forward to now and Apple is huge and popular and there are far more macOS counterparts of Windows tools.

But with a recent move to Linux I was waiting for the ‘you cant do that in Linux’ to start, but it seems Apple aren’t the only ones who have become more popular over recent years, displacing Windows as your only option for a desktop operating system.

I found that most of the software I was using on my Mac - Blender, GIMP, LibreOffice, HandBrake, Reaper, Audacity, VLC- was also available for Linux and in some of the cases were available on Linux before a Mac port was created.

The move from Mac to Linux was painless. I haven’t found anything I haven’t been able to perform and even the Mac only Apple apps have great alternatives that often perform better and offer extra features.

More commercial packages are becoming available on Linux, with big names realising the potential of supporting it – although it seems Adobe aren’t doing so yet.

Even gaming on Linux has an edge over macOS, with more Linux ports of popular Windows games available than there are for macOS.

So the ‘you cant do that’ no longer hold water not only for macOS, but also extends to the world of Linux.

If you have the tech knowledge, want more freedom or fancy a challenge, you could break away from Microsoft Windows and macOS and use an open source operating system.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal