From KDE4 to KF5. The UNIX way.

Perfect Gentleman · Veteran Joined: 18 May 2014 Posts: 1249

Could someone give me the easiest, trouble-free way to move from KDE4 to KF5 and its apss?

albright · Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2015 3:44 pm Post subject:

1. install qt5 (in portage)
2. install kde framework 5 (in portage)
3. install plasma-meta (in kde overlay)

(oh ... and hold onto your butt :lol:

)
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Perfect Gentleman · Veteran Joined: 18 May 2014 Posts: 1249

is it necessary to remove KDE4 and its apps?

albright · Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2015 4:08 pm Post subject:

some yes (e.g. kwin, plasma-workspace) but mostly not, but you will have to build
some packages with the minimal useflag if I recall correctly (I'm not sure
how many packages still lack kde5 versions)
_________________
.... there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth
doing as simply messing about with Linux ...
(apologies to Kenneth Graeme)

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

Kollin · Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2015 8:43 am Post subject:

Can you help me, please, to sort out that mess :

http://pastebin.com/Dvam1Pme

emerge -pv @kde-plasma-5.3

davidm · Guru Joined: 26 Apr 2009 Posts: 557 Location: US

I would think the most trouble free way would be to completely remove KDE4 and then install some sort of kde5 meta package which pulls in plasma and the regular apps. Does such a thing exist? (I'm aware that there is no KDE5 per se but I merely mean something like the kde4-meta [kde-meta] package but only with kf5 and kde-plasma apps where applicable)

I know from when I used Plasma5 on Arch back in October-December 2014 after upgrading from KDE4 a big gotcha was that sometimes you would see weird problems due to the old kde4 config files being in place. Plus then things were a bit more raw upstream.

Here's the page on KDE removal:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/KDE/Removal

I'm not sure how it works or whether it is up to date. "This page was last modified on 29 December 2013"

To install KF5/plasma:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/KDE/Overlay#Frameworks_5
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/KDE/Plasma_5_upgrade

I also see:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:KDE/Frameworks/Plasma_5

Which suggests incomplete support?

Note: from the above it appears there is a special profile to help with using plasma which currently must be manually linked?

Anyway please let us know how this goes. I'm thinking of trying it on my production machine running ~amd64 currently with KDE4.

Kollin · Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 9:30 pm Post subject:

I had to remove kde4 completely, now i'm in process of merging kde5...
After that i'll try to install the missing kde4 apps one by one.

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Kollin · Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2015 4:24 am Post subject:

=kde-plasma/plasma-desktop-5.3.49.9999 dies with :

FEATURES="-fail-clean" MAKEOPTS='-j1' emerge -1 --quiet-build=n "=kde-plasma/plasma-desktop-5.3.49.9999"

Perfect Gentleman · Veteran Joined: 18 May 2014 Posts: 1249

Kollin · Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2015 6:51 am Post subject:

Kollin · Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2015 5:00 pm Post subject:

Clean configs (renamed kde4 directory ) made things a little better, but it hanged again(including X) and plasma crashed in the mean time.
It's a beta1 stage.
Removing and back to kde4! :wink:

_________________
"Dear Enemy: may the Lord hate you and all your kind, may you be turned orange in hue, and may your head fall off at an awkward moment."
"Linux is like a wigwam - no windows, no gates, apache inside..."

Perfect Gentleman · Veteran Joined: 18 May 2014 Posts: 1249

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

davidm · Guru Joined: 26 Apr 2009 Posts: 557 Location: US

Thanks Kollin for taking the plunge and testing the waters.

Hmmm. Back in December when I tried it on Arch it was stable enough where I could get work done at least. The problem then for me was it seemed the multi-monitor support caused a lot of freezes for me. There was about one or two crashed per day per 12+ hours of use.

If anyone else tries Plasma 5.3 from the KDE overlay please do share your experiences.

Here's an Arch Linux thread which might help show you about what to expect and some common problems:

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=184439&p=36

Even though it's a different distro it is sometimes applicable and they moved to KF5/Plasma 5 a couple months ago so we might learn from their experiences.

shazeal · Posted: Fri May 01, 2015 5:28 am Post subject:

Well I did try a full install of Kubuntu 15.04 which uses KF5/Plasma5 and well its pretty much like using kde 4.1/4.2 stability wise.
Its very buggy and a lot of things seem to break for no reason.

The biggest issue I had was that I had changed the theme, then it all got stuck and refused to let me switch themes and the current theme was corrupted.
The nvidia driver would lock up or scramble the screen after sleep. (346/349 same issue)
The nouveau driver was very slow and would lock up after 10-15 mins. (Stock kernel 3.19)
Lots of other "minor" crashes like Baloo, Akonadi, Kwin, etc.

Its really not ready yet IMO. It does look very nice though, and when it is not crashing it does work beautifully as a DE.
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yagami · Posted: Fri May 01, 2015 9:29 am Post subject:

I have been using plasma desktop for 2 months or more now, and works rather well.

I do have to use alot of git packages and dolphin, for example, is git based ( slot :5 ). This is because i made it a choice not to have any kde4 packages ( actually only recently i allowed qt4 to exist! ).

So you can get away with a pretty nice and functional desktop with only qt5 and plasma. Dolphin:5 and other packages actually work rather well ( not complete, but dolphin:5 never crashed on me yet ! ).

shazeal · Posted: Fri May 01, 2015 6:11 pm Post subject:

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

yagami · Posted: Fri May 01, 2015 8:23 pm Post subject:

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

yagami · Posted: Fri May 01, 2015 9:10 pm Post subject:

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8936

yagami · Posted: Fri May 01, 2015 9:33 pm Post subject:

yagami · Posted: Fri May 01, 2015 9:50 pm Post subject:

confirmed : recompiled everything exiv related and kfilemetadata compiled with it properly!