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. 

How To Bring Back The "Leave" Option in the KDE Desktop Right Click Menu

 About a month or so ago, a KDE update removed the "Leave" option in the right click menu on the desktop for what I see as no sensible reason. It does not exactly take up much space! I have years of muscle memory of using it and it took me a little time Googling with the right search terms to find a solution, so I thought I would make a little post so more people know how to get it back. 

Right click the desktop... 

Choose "Configure Desktop and Wallpaper Settings"....

Select Mouse Options and click the configure button, 

...then click the Leave checkbox and you're done! I suppose it's simple when you know how, but still, it's just baffling as to why it was removed, anyway thanks to Steve Bolduc's Reddit post for the video of the solution, but some people, including myself, find it easier to follow written instructions with images.

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. 

 

Windows 10 - Almost The Best Version of Windows...

I use Linux for pretty much all of the time, whether it's my Mint 17.2 KDE main desktop or my HP Chromebook 14, (or indeed my Nexus 5 and Motorola Moto G) but there's one thing that I missed and that was the latest and greatest Grand Theft Auto. I decided to get a separate PC to run GTA V and Steam games, so I picked up a cheap HP xw6600 workstation (2.5Ghz quad core Xeon, 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD) that's the exact same model as my main desktop (except my main desktop now has 16GB of RAM and more hard drive space). I installed Windows 8.1 Pro, installed GTA V (using the retail DVDs) and Steam games. I then decided to upgrade to 10 mainly to try it out and get used to it since people have already started asking me whether it is any good or not, and also of course because it is a "free" update, at least as long as you update within a year. 

After many reboots, the update had finished and then I waited for the problems to start, the glitches and the crashes.  But they haven't. So far. Windows 10 boots just as fast as 8.1 did, though I have disabled the hybrid boot mode as my PC was basically hibernating and resuming, and the shutdown took far too long. It now shuts down much faster. Bare in mind I'm using an old 250GB mechanical hard disk. 

I then personalized the desktop a bit, hid the Search bar, and made Chrome default again (seriously Microsoft, it was default in my Windows 8.1 install, why change my preference? Oh yes, to promote Edge browser, which I found to be meh). I was quite happy with the result. I quite like the black taskbar and colours that use hints from my wallpaper, it actually reminds me a little bit of ChromeOS or a dark KDE theme. The login screen actually reminds me of Gnome Shell's login screen, in a bad way! Click to actually see the login box. 

As you can see the Start menu is back, and it's not bad, apart from by default it is filled with Metro tiles that I have no interest in. Even when you remove all the Tiles from the menu, it still stays the same size, wasting screen space. It should resize automatically. you have to manually resize it, like you would a window, grab one edge and drag it. All your apps are in the suitably named All Apps menu in alphabetical order. Anyway it has at least persuaded me not to install a third party start menu. I also have no interest in any of the tablet-like features and Microsoft's app store which basically seems to consist of a few Metro apps and shortcuts to web apps. I have no use for Metro apps on a gaming PC.     

Microsoft has also finally added virtual desktops by default in Windows 10, but they are pretty useless for me compared with those in most Linux desktops, since there's no configurable keyboard shortcuts for them. On KDE, I like to flick quickly between virtual desktops using CTRL + ALT + the Cursor keys. You also cannot reorder the desktops or use different wallpapers for each as you can in OSX and KDE.

Now here's the dark side of Windows 10...

Microsoft have unfortunately made Windows 10 a privacy nightmare, right out of the box. For a bit more privacy you need to disable Wi-fi Sharing, Cortana, Location, Camera Access and other stuff, by following this handy guide on ZDNet, but the problem is, even once you have changed all these settings, Windows 10 sends data to Microsoft, despite privacy settings, which is more than a tad annoying!  

Another area that is causing some problems for some is Windows forced updates which are not disableable on all but the Pro versions, which has caused some users' PCs to fall into a constant upgrade/fail/reboot cycle, though fortunately I have personally not encountered any show-stopping updates, so far. in fact i feel like I'm in the minority of users that hasn't encountered any problems, probably because all I do is play a few games on it. I have not done a fresh install so i can always downgrade to 8.1 if I need to.

Conclusion

So overall I have found Windows 10 to be the best version of Windows so far, but also the worst version in terms of privacy, or rather, the lack of it. And of course when i say "best" i mean "least worst" as after all it is still Windows, it still needs regular updates, it still needs regular scans from the built in antivirus (I am never surprised by all the zero days and security scares) and it still needs to reboot, a lot, and when you're in a hurry it just happens to configure updates on shutdown! In Linux, the only updates that need a reboot are kernel updates, and even that is unnecessary on recent Kernels.

I shall continue using Windows 10 on my gaming rig, but I shall not use it for anything else other than gaming, hence using a separate PC so I don't have to to dual boot. Perhaps one day Rockstar will embrace Steam for Linux so I can remove Windows altogether! In the meantime there has never been a better time to try Linux for those of you who haven't already.

September 2016 Update:

Several months back an update broke Windows 10 and I had to do a fresh install, thankfully this was easy though having to reinstall GTA V from all those DVDs is always a pain! Since then Windows 10 has not given me any trouble, though it still annoys me with trying to schedule updates all the time, and then taking forever to install them on shutdown/startup in that wonderful Windows way!