LXQt and KDE respins - personal projects

[KBD]

I just installed KDE on one of my laptops and it is sweet :) Reminds me of the good old MEPIS days but with a serious upgrade :)
Thanks again Adrian.

[JayM]

I tried both of these on live USBs. I kind of liked LXQTt but I missed the MX Tweak tool. When I booted the KDE spin it seemed rather slow to me, and made me thing "Why on earth did I always prefer KDE over all other DEs? It's all eye candy at the cost of performance." I don't see any advantage to either of these DEs over Xfce, to tell you the truth. I guess I've learned to like Xfce and now I prefer it over the others. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to test these anyway, Adrian, even if only to make me appreciate even more the DE I already have. Your spins were fun to play with for a couple of hours.

[Adrian]

I pretty much have the same feelings about KDE... my needs for a desktop environment are basic (not antIX basic, but Xfce fits the bill for WIMP: windows, icon, menus, pointer type of interface) I will try to release a refreshed ISO tomorrow.

[m_pav]

On the KDE respin, hibernate was not working in VBox, and neither is it working on my wifes PC, though suspend is working. MX Tweak in Xfce modifies a file to enable hibernation, I wonder if we only need to know which file it is and make the mod for it to work? With the world going crazy on systemd, I haven't been able to find which file it is for Debian Stretch.

On another note, in keeping with standard apps across the board, print-manager is the KDE tool for print management and it installs an icon into system settings.

[m_pav]

I spent a bit more time on this KDE respin and can give more feedback.
I found the /etc/skel directory has some cruft left over from Xfce and the same goes for the /root folder. One such example in /etc/skel/.config/autostart is blueman is set to autostart, but as we're not loading Xfce, of course, it never does. Speaking of such, there is also a bit of cruft left over in Synaptic, visible by clicking the status button.

The KDE right click root actions > edit as text opens featherpad with what looks like a ghost --help-kde file that doesn't exist that must be closed without saving and then closing featherpad, which reveals a second copy of featherpad opened in the background with the file originally opened and 2 additional tabs with ghost opens, the first is caption and the second is yelling FEATHERPAD OPENED AS ROOT
I'm thinking this second background featherpad may be deliberate to serve as a warning, but done very poorly, possibly a KDE root actions developer hiccup, but the first is a real mystery. Opening featherpad as root through the F4 pull down terminal su to root and type featherpad has no such issue.

The Firefox tweak to match dark themes we enjoy in Xfce is sorely missed. I installed the kvantum package talked about earlier in this thread, enabled it and it was nice till I opened Firefox to have my eyes slapped.

[Adrian]

I found the /etc/skel directory has some cruft left over from Xfce and the same goes for the /root folder. One such example in /etc/skel/.config/autostart is blueman is set to autostart, but as we're not loading Xfce, of course, it never does.

I left those on purpose, in case somebody installs blueman for example. But it might be better to clear that...

[dreamer]

I think Xfce is the best desktop. It's so modular they don't really have to do releases. They can update a component at a time. You can replace many Xfce components with other components from for example MATE or LXDE like Peppermint OS does.

KDE is the opposite. Everything is intertwined giving me a feeling of lock-in. KDE is impressive and has a lot of functionality and settings built-in. The Plasma desktop on the other hand and especially the panel doesn't offer as much functionality as Xfce or MATE. It's interesting that the LXQT panel has roughly the same functionality as Plasma panel despite being much younger.

The LXQT panel seems to be "real" Qt, not QML or something else that requires separate theming. The Plasma panel (and desktop) is where I feel KDE lets me down. It doesn't have a standard notification area (as I understand it). A "systray" application like Xpad that works without problems in Xfce doesn't work correctly in KDE.

[Adrian]

I upgraded the KDE ISO (19.6 version) these are the changes:

- regular updates from MX pool
- updated to 4.19.0.5 kernel (patched for security threats)
- updated from Test: featherpad, qbittorrent, qlipper, qpdfview, simple-scan, smartmontools
- replaced galternatives -> kalternatives
- replaced pinentry-gnome/gtk2 -> pinentry-qt
- replaced adobe-flash-proprieties-gtk3-> adobe-flash-proprieties-kde
- installed print-manager, isomounter (BitJam's script for mounting an ISO, very convenient for examining the ISO content)
- cleared xfce items from /etc/skel
- removed config files for removed apps

I also upgrade LXQt ISO (19.6 version), changes:

- regular updates from MX pool
- updated to 4.19.0.5 kernel (patched for security threats)
- updated from Test: lxqt 0.13, featherpad, qbittorrent, qlipper, qpdfview, simple-scan, smartmontools
- installed isomounter
- removed config files for removed apps
- fixed autoupdater start

You don't need to download the entire ISO you can do the same changes manually if you want, or if you download the iso use zsync to download on the difference between this new ISO and the older.

I also added a new project on osdn.net site
https://osdn.net/dl/adrian-test/MX-KDE-19.6_x64.iso
https://osdn.net/dl/adrian-test/MX-LXQt-19.6_x64.iso

Please let me know how it works compared to SourceForge.

[mike lovin]

I upgraded the KDE ISO (19.6 version) these are the changes:

- regular updates from MX pool
- updated to 4.19.0.5 kernel (patched for security threats)
- updated from Test: featherpad, qbittorrent, qlipper, qpdfview, simple-scan, smartmontools
- replaced galternatives -> kalternatives
- replaced pinentry-gnome/gtk2 -> pinentry-qt
- replaced adobe-flash-proprieties-gtk3-> adobe-flash-proprieties-kde
- installed print-manager, isomounter (BitJam's script for mounting an ISO, very convenient for examining the ISO content)
- cleared xfce items from /etc/skel
- removed config files for removed apps

I also upgrade LXQt ISO (19.6 version), changes:

- regular updates from MX pool
- updated to 4.19.0.5 kernel (patched for security threats)
- updated from Test: lxqt 0.13, featherpad, qbittorrent, qlipper, qpdfview, simple-scan, smartmontools
- installed isomounter
- removed config files for removed apps
- fixed autoupdater start

You don't need to download the entire ISO you can do the same changes manually if you want, or if you download the iso use zsync to download on the difference between this new ISO and the older.

I also added a new project on osdn.net site
https://osdn.net/dl/adrian-test/MX-KDE-19.6_x64.iso
https://osdn.net/dl/adrian-test/MX-LXQt-19.6_x64.iso

Please let me know how it works compared to SourceForge.

I just found this KDE spin, I already have KDE added to the XFCE version, but I'm going to be giving this a try! It's downloading right now as I type this. :)

[Adrian]

Thanks, please let me know what you think. Thank you for the 5 stars on OSDN.

BTW, known issue, KDE ISO still show somewhere 18.1 Continuum and LXQt shows 18.2 Continuum -- both are actually up-to-date to 18.3 level of packages (as it shows at boot menu), but I was too lazy to track where those strings come from on a Live ISO, I think I've managed to change them once, but this time I simply gave up.