antix 23 beta + plasma

[Member tlmiller76]

So, I know this seems like an odd thing, but I’m a big fan of runit, and a big fan of plasma. So with Void dev’s basically going to “install it from Flatpak” for anything and everything, I’m looking for something that uses runit (true runit) to replace it.

So I’ve been trying out the beta of 23. I used the “software installer” in it to install the package KDE-lite (also tried the standard install) and switch to SDDM during the installation. Everything boots up just fine, able to login to SDDM, and the plasma desktop is there. That’s where everything stops working. Clicking the menu just brings up an error, as does trying to go into edit mode on the desktop, or really trying to do anything (krunner works, however, so you can manually launch apps that way)

Wondering if there’s anyone who actually uses plasma on antix, and have it working on the beta that there might be a few packages that aren’t marked as dependencies that I needed to install? Obviously I realize that if it’s actually plasma that’s broken with the changes to remove systemd that it’s going to be a low priority to fix, but figured I’d ask if anyone figured out anything.

I threw it on a VM to play with so if any information is needed I should be able to provide.

Not sure if it’s of any help, but I also tried adding the devuan repos instead of debian on a different VM since obviously devuan is systemd-free, and after installing plasma on that one, same exact issues. I did not keep that VM around, however.

• This topic was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by tlmiller76.
• This topic was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by tlmiller76.

[Member tlmiller76]

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Here’s the error on the start menu.

Attachments:

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   ksnip_20230327-131333.png
   

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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I don’t know how to get this working.
Would either Dolphin Oracle or maybe Adrian from the MX Linux project have any suggestions for Tim?

He’s a long time friend and he’s a big Plasma fan and also likes runit as he explained.

While Plasma is not our priority maybe it could be handy as an option for people who have newer stuff and want to look at our great experience and environment

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Brian Masinick

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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Kinda similar breakage I experienced when I unpinned systemd in a beta test run and did a dist-upgrade.

Seems systemd defaults to using /usr/bin and would not launch anything in /usr/local/bin. So for example. antiX control center would quit launching anything.

I have no clue though why /usr/share/plasmoids would be empty or blocked though. I am not the sharpest pencil in the cup lately.

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[Forum Admin dolphin_oracle]

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remove whatever metapackage you used for install. for instance, for kde-standard, then

sudo apt remove kde-standard

then reinstall with the recommends treated as depends

sudo apt install --install recommends kde-standard

and reboot.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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dolphin_oracle wrote:

remove whatever metapackage you used for install. for instance, for kde-standard, then

sudo apt remove kde-standard

then reinstall with the recommends treated as depends

sudo apt install --install recommends kde-standard

and reboot.

@tlmiller76 – This comes from someone who is very familiar with the specifics.

Thank you Dolphin Oracle. My best to you and yours, and also our mutual friends who work on the MX Linux project!

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Brian Masinick

[Member tlmiller76]

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dolphin_oracle wrote:

remove whatever metapackage you used for install. for instance, for kde-standard, then

sudo apt remove kde-standard

then reinstall with the recommends treated as depends

sudo apt install --install recommends kde-standard

and reboot.

That did indeed work. I actually have no idea what the software installer chooses when you select “kde-lite” as there is no meta-package called that, so I just installed kde-standard and will manually clean out what I don’t need.

Do you happen to know what is being blocked with how the software installer is installing that you need to specify –install-recommends?

[Forum Admin dolphin_oracle]

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its not so much blocked as the debian maintainer has done more fine-grained packaging and some things that should be depends are recommends. I don’t know which, but I did redo the mx versions of the KDE installer in packageinstaller to install recommends. Remember, debian installs recommends by default, so often these kind of missing bits can be cleared up by installing the recommended packages.

[Member Robin]

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dolphin_oracle wrote:

some things that should be depends are recommends.

I’ll never get the idea behind this. If a program fails, if the respective “recommendation” isn’t installed since it is actually a dependency, why this is declared as a recommendation and not as a dependency? A recommendation is defined as something you can freely decide to install or not, it won’t keep the program from working if not present. What kind of stupidity is it to reverse this behaviour?

This way you can never know whether a recommendation is actually a recommendation, or a disguised dependency.

Windows is like a submarine. Open a window and serious problems will start.

[Member Xunzi_23]

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The original poster stated.
Everything boots up just fine, able to login to SDDM, and the plasma desktop is there.
krunner works, however, so you can manually launch apps that way.

Seems menu etc in Debian KDE are regarded as user choice, having seen how fast and light a minimal
(but functional) plasma desktop can be without all the eye candy.
Seems reasonable thinking.

Depends vs. Recommends Can be pretty confusing at times, to me anyway.

One often met example.
Libreoffice needs Java JRE for some functions but that is also a user choice. Maybe as
many differnt JRE are available. Sometimes makes life harder for new users though.

In many other cases System d is a depend but after doctoring the deb not needed.
In a dev discussion the statement came, everybody does that…

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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dolphin_oracle wrote:

its not so much blocked as the debian maintainer has done more fine-grained packaging and some things that should be depends are recommends. I don’t know which, but I did redo the mx versions of the KDE installer in packageinstaller to install recommends. Remember, debian installs recommends by default, so often these kind of missing bits can be cleared up by installing the recommended packages.

I don’t care if the person is the Debian maintainer or not, regarding the difference between depends and recommends is quite different, even if the mechanism is wired in their case so that the behavior is the same.

No wonder with certain meta-package configurations they behave differently than the usual documented way.

Recommends are NOT automatically installed unless the preferences are tampered with. At least to me, that’s why the Plasma meta-package is working a different way than the preference explanation describes.

No wonder many people have a fit about not only systemd but many other mechanisms! They no longer work the way the documents describe and the original designers engineered.

Dolphin Oracle, thank you for your description and explanation. It not explains what is happening, it also shows that some engineers alter the behavior in ways that *could* be argued as defective. Other than my comment here, I’m not taking it any further. Getting into a debate about it would only help if I had enough remaining skills to fix it myself. I think I understand it, but I have neither the energy nor the desire to take on a team that’s already divided large groups over using an overly complicated and multiple features init system instead of a simple, fast parallel forking init system.

I’ve been a big Debian fan and user for a long time but that doesn’t mean I agree with 100% of the decisions the team and developers have made. Nobody is perfect, neither am I.

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Brian Masinick

[Member Xunzi_23]

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Having used KDE, recommend for those interested, a trip to
https://wiki.debian.org/KDE

Excerpt:
There are different options to install the KDE Plasma Desktop in Debian:

How to install, Package Description

KDE (Full release of workspace, applications and framework)

Paket: kde-full (5:142) Which is a metapackage. And probably what a normal user expects.

The standard/upstream release

KDE (A common set of packages for a smaller, more flexible KDE environment compared to kde-full)

kde-standard package

Debian’s selection of common KDE packages

KDE Plasma Desktop

kde-plasma-desktop package

Minimal desktop. Above packages depend on this.

KDE Plasma Task

task-kde-desktop package

Debian’s selection of applications for a KDE desktop
This is what is installed on a freshly installed KDE system.
It includes a few non-KDE applications: firefox, gimp, orca

{i} Watch out for recommended packages (i.e. optional packages dependencies) !
They are installed by default but you might or might not want to install them.
apt option –no-install-recommends and aptitude option –without-recommends can help with this.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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In the “olden days” I used to frequently use KDE. However the more I used my system the more I realized that I really didn’t need (or want) what a full desktop environment provides so I would often use IceWM because even a long time ago it was still easy to manually edit the files, such as the toolbar, the preference and even the menu, if desired.

Also a long time ago Fluxbox was one of the default window manager offerings and I suggested that we keep it but provide IceWM as the default. Since then we’ve also added JWM, another very easy window manager to use and configure, plus herbstluftwm, a handy, “different” tiling window manager for those who prefer a different interface and style.

KDE Plasma has done some very good things and they do offer a range of features. The lightest configuration isn’t too much heavier than a modest Xfce configuration and I have installed it recently on Endeavour OS just to see how it is doing and I have also used it with Open Mandriva and openSUSE.

My conclusion is that I still don’t need it but I will say that it retains it’s reputation as the most flexible, configurable desktop environment, potentially the most beautiful if you want to embellish it.

I installed it, not because I need it, simply because it’s a significant step in the Linux ecosystem toward a customizable desktop and arguably the most flexible one IF you actually need one. I don’t, but I still am a geek so I experiment from time to time. 😁

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Brian Masinick

[Member tlmiller76]

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dolphin_oracle wrote:

its not so much blocked as the debian maintainer has done more fine-grained packaging and some things that should be depends are recommends. I don’t know which, but I did redo the mx versions of the KDE installer in packageinstaller to install recommends. Remember, debian installs recommends by default, so often these kind of missing bits can be cleared up by installing the recommended packages.

Ah, that’s very helpful. Thanks much!!!

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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@tlmiller76
Are you using plasma X11 or plasma_wayland?
Once antiX-23 is released, you would probably be best starting with antiX-core or antiX-net

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

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