Crazy - Stretch with Plasma 5.12

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sunrat
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Crazy - Stretch with Plasma 5.12

#1 Post by sunrat »

Yes this is crazy but it worked.
Last night I installed a Stretch netinstall without desktop environment, then installed Plasma 5.12 on top of it from the NeptuneOS repository. I just installed the plasma-desktop metapackage. So far seems to have no issues after a few hours of use.
Previously I tried to upgrade an MX install in which KDE was installed from the package manager to the Neptune version. It worked to some extent but themes and window decorations were flaky.
Note that I haven't tried this on MX yet as I was up way past bedtime doing the Stretch thing. I may try it soon and will report back.
Just posting this now for anyone contemplating a Plasma 5.12 respin as it may save rebuilding all the packages considering NeptuneOS has already done it.
Disclaimer - no guarantees, YMMV, it may break stuff. Don't do it on your main system.

The repo entry is:

Code: Select all

deb https://download.neptuneos.com/repos/neptune5/repo-kde/ stretch main
Edit - best to install kde-plasma-desktop package rather than plasma-desktop. This includes kwin-x11 window manager which is needed.
Last edited by sunrat on Wed Aug 15, 2018 9:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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sunrat
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Re: Crazy - Stretch with Plasma 5.12

#2 Post by sunrat »

I just tried installing the NeptuneOS packages on a new vanilla install MX-17.1 in VirtualBox. They installed fine and Plasma started but it was close to the same result as when I tried to upgrade the KDE4 MX. Window decorations and themes were basically awful.
So I'll call it a fail for now.
Still, it all installs and runs so may be of some use for a respin. And it worked great on the Stretch netinstall.
bester69 would be proud! :alien:

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asqwerth
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Re: Crazy - Stretch with Plasma 5.12

#3 Post by asqwerth »

For a theme that looks good in Plasma (theme/look, icons, splash, login, etc) AND which has a corresponding look for gtk apps, visit the Papirus developer's github page for KDE-Arc:

https://github.com/PapirusDevelopmentTeam/arc-kde

Follow the instructions at the bottom of the page for Arc-KDE installer.

Since MX has the gtk version of Arc theme and Papirus icons are our default icons, the Plasma and gtk looks can be matched nicely.
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Stevo
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Re: Crazy - Stretch with Plasma 5.12

#4 Post by Stevo »

I was fiddling around with my proposed respin of MX with KDE this morning, and got the themes and fonts to match using Kvantum, qt5ct, kde-config-gtkstyle, and the dark Arc themes. I believe other themes that look pretty much the same in Qt will also work well. I also removed the custom 98qtconfig theme we have in /etc/X11/xsession.d which makes Qt 5 apps follow the GTK themes in xfce, which I feel is at the root cause of KDE sessions looking bad.

So there's a lot of different places for settings in my hybrid mashup: Kvantum manager, qt5ct, xfce settings, and the KDE system settings. Maybe if I get a good respin using the stock KDE, I can update from the NeptuneOS repo and do another KDE 5.12 respin.

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sunrat
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Re: Crazy - Stretch with Plasma 5.12

#5 Post by sunrat »

Thanks Stevo. I tried your suggestions above and themes seem to be eminently tweakable to obtain an acceptable result.
The main problem is actually that there are no window decorations at all!
Perhaps this should be moved to the MX Modified subforum as it's not an "official" unofficial respin. Just an experiment.

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baldyeti
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Re: Crazy - Stretch with Plasma 5.12

#6 Post by baldyeti »

sunrat wrote:The main problem is actually that there are no window decorations at all!
Hello "sunrat", I tried the neptune script as well - on a clone of my MX17 install which i do not want to jeopardise.
Their "plasma-desktop" is really minimalist, I had to install kwin-x11 manually - perhaps that is what you are missing, too ?
Their script may be fine when installing over a working copy of KDE 5.8 from stretch, but their meta-packages seem to lack some bits.
Last edited by baldyeti on Sat May 05, 2018 5:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

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baldyeti
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Re: Crazy - Stretch with Plasma 5.12

#7 Post by baldyeti »

Stevo wrote:I also removed the custom 98qtconfig theme we have in /etc/X11/xsession.d which makes Qt 5 apps follow the GTK themes in xfce, which I feel is at the root cause of KDE sessions looking bad.
Thanks to stevo's hint wrt the qtconfig script now the KDE session looks alright (before the widget-style was forced to gtk2)
Could that script be made to only override these environment variables when the chosen DE is XFCE ?

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baldyeti
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Re: Crazy - Stretch with Plasma 5.12

#8 Post by baldyeti »

Also would you have comments on leaving the neptune repo enabled (or assessing which packages it overrides and whether that might break qt5-based MX apps)

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sunrat
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Re: Crazy - Stretch with Plasma 5.12

#9 Post by sunrat »

You're a legend @baldyeti! kwin-x11 was all it needed to display window decorations.
I did a little delving and found that kwin-x11 is a recommended package and MX-17 has recommends disabled. Probably why the Stretch install worked as Debian has recommends enabled by default afaik.
These are the other package recommends for plasma-desktop package:

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bluedevil |discover muon-discover fonts-hack-ttf fonts-noto gtk3-engines-breeze kde-config-gtk-style kde-config-screenlocker kde-config-sddm kgamma5 khotkeys kinfocenter kio-extras kmenuedit kscreen ksshaskpass ksysguard
kwin
    kwin-wayland
    kwin-x11
kwrited libpam-kwallet5 muon-notifier muon-updater powerdevil sni-qt systemsettings user-manager
Mostly unneeded but I installed kwin-x11, ksysguard, and systemsettings. kde-plasma-desktop package would be better as it includes kde-baseapps, or kde-standard would install the full monty of Plasma.

There are still a couple of colour glitches but it's mainly looking good and seemingly functional.

As for leaving Neptune repos active, I'd guess it would be ok as they are built for a Stretch base. YMMV. ;)

PS - free reports 379MB used after a fresh boot. Booting the same system with Xfce used 290MB. This is in VirtualBox.
I was shocked to see a report that Ubuntu 18.04 used 1300MB after a fresh boot! :turtle:
Last edited by sunrat on Sat May 05, 2018 10:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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baldyeti
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Re: Crazy - Stretch with Plasma 5.12

#10 Post by baldyeti »

Glad to have been helpful - undecorated windows looked like we had no windows manager running and for KDE kwin it is.

Can you tell me which command you ran to get that list of recommended packages ? My apt-fu is rusty. I had installed the most useful already, but by guessing.

On my bare-metal install, XFCE reports about 370 MB, and KDE about 410 - similar to bionic kubuntu (also 5.12) The 1G+ number you mentioned looks enormous (perhaps obtained with the gnome3 desktop?) Plasma5 really is leaner than KDE4.

Right now my script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/98qtconfig is as follows:

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[ "$XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP" != "KDE" ] && {
	export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk2
	export QT_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk2
	export QT_PLATFORM_PLUGIN=gtk2
}
this way the GTK widget style is not enforced for KDE sessions

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