[Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

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[Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby acrux » Feb 18th, '15, 13:22

I have been using Plasma 5 as my main DE in my production laptop for several months already but usual warnings apply as Mageia 5 is currently still at beta 3 level. So following this howto is at your own risk! Some assumptions: fast network connection is available during Mageia install and thereafter; no KDE 4 software (as the DE conflicts with Plasma 5 anyway); to keep system clean and have only minimal set of applications then the urpmi switch „–-no-recommends” is always used.

1. Mageia 5 (beta3) network install
Desktop Selection -> Custom
Package Group Selection -> Unselect All and then select only Plasma Desktop.
Let the installation finish and boot into SDDM and then into Plasma5 if everything went OK. Be warned that this is just a plain Plasma 5 desktop – no KDE Frameworks 5 (KF5) applications yet in Mageia. Except Konsole.

2. Add Plasma5 packages
Fortunately there are some Plasma 5 applications that are available but not yet installed and what extend the current setup (adding support for Plasma 5 default font, wallpapers preview, file associations setup, power management, qt4 applications icon support in system tray etc, see also bug 13883). Open Konsole and as root:
Code: Select all
urpmi --no-recommends kio-extras powerdevil kde-cli-tools ksysguard kmenuedit plasma5-baloo oxygen-fonts sni-qt


3. Add polkit
There's currently no way to launch applications that need authentication (Mageia control Centre (MCC) etc – Plasma 5 polkit is missing in Mageia (see also bug 14910). Workaround is to use Mate-polkit which is installed anyway. Open the following file:
/etc/xdg/autostart/polkit-mate-authentication-agent-1.desktop
in your favourite editor and edit the last line to:
Code: Select all
OnlyShowIn=MATE;XFCE;OPENBOX;KDE;Old;

Log out and back in and start configuring your desktop with Plasma 5 Systemsettings application.

4. Network selection ability
Mageia's Net-Applet is not compatible with Plasma 5. To get the ability of switching network connections a workaround is to switch to networkmanager:
Code: Select all
urpmi --no-recommends plasma5-applet-nm

After the installation finishes:
Code: Select all
systemctl disable network.service
systemctl disable network-up.service
systemctl enable NetworkManager.service
systemctl enable NetworkManager-wait-online.service
systemctl enable ModemManager.service

* Modemmanager is needed if you have a mobile broadband hardware.

5. Pulseaudio support + mixer
Now it is time to reboot, but a good idea is to enable pulseaudio and sound volume control support also. As there is no Plasma 5 Kmix yet in Mageia, then we can use Pulse Audio Volume Control:
Code: Select all
urpmi --no-recommends pavucontrol


Reboot. Now you will see networkmanager applet in the system tray and you can connect to wifi networks, however there is no network traffic yet. Workaround is to configure one wireless network with MCC indicating that it is controlled by networkmanager. Then the networkmanager applet starts working OK. It is not possible to add a mobile broadband connection with the applet (seems to be a Mageia issue), but if you have a preconfigured one, the applet picks it up and you can use it.

6. File Manager
As we have (in Mageia) no Plasma 5 Dolphin yet, the only other file manager that integrates with Plasma 5 is pcmanfm-qt from the LXQt DE (with gvfs):
Code: Select all
urpmi --no-recommends pcmanfm-qt gvfs gvfs-archive gvfs-mtp gvfs-smb


7. Image viewer + snapshot
Also from LXQt DE – lximage-qt (or some other qt5 image viewer like phototonic or eyesight):
Code: Select all
urpmi --no-recommends lximage-qt


8. Other utilities & applications
Until there are no KF5 & Plasma 5 native utilities and applications in Mageia we have to "borrow". Preferably Qt5 ones like the abovementioned image viewers, transmission-qt5, qupzilla, cutegram etc. Qt4 applications like Skype, VLC etc can also put their icons in Plasma 5 system tray. As we have basic mate support installed anyway, then engrampa integrates well with pcmanfm-qt. Simply - use what you prefer...

9. Acknowledgements
The above could not be possible without the efforts of Mageia team! Special thanks to following team members: neoclust for Qt5, KF5 and Plasma 5; doctor5000 for LXQt; lmenut for sni-qt; sander85 for fixing many unsatisfied dependecies and many others.
Last edited by acrux on Feb 25th, '15, 10:04, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby Symbioxy » Feb 18th, '15, 18:43

Hi,
This is a fantastic summary, thanks a lot.

A question about:
acrux wrote:6. File Manager
As we have (in Mageia) no Plasma 5 Dolphin yet

My Plasma5 experience is only based on a Mageia 5 KDE VM on which I installed task-plasma5.
After doing so, I do have Dolphin available. Is it because I use the KDE4 one?
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby acrux » Feb 18th, '15, 21:49

Symbioxy wrote:My Plasma5 experience is only based on a Mageia 5 KDE VM on which I installed task-plasma5.
After doing so, I do have Dolphin available. Is it because I use the KDE4 one?


Should be so. It was widely used to mix Plasma 5 desktop with KDE 4 applications e.g in project Neon and in other distributions Plasma 5 offerings. But for exaple in KaOS they were separated since beginning.
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby ITA84 » Feb 18th, '15, 22:21

acrux wrote:As there is no Plasma 5 Kmix yet in Mageia


Isn't there? I don't know if everything has been ported, but I've got the systray icon and the OSD showing.
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby acrux » Feb 19th, '15, 08:54

ITA84 wrote:Isn't there? I don't know if everything has been ported, but I've got the systray icon and the OSD showing.

Hmm... Are you talking about the Media Player widget?
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby doktor5000 » Feb 19th, '15, 09:24

No, kmix is the volume control/mixer applet.
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby acrux » Feb 19th, '15, 09:50

doktor5000 wrote:No, kmix is the volume control/mixer applet.


Then that should be the KDE 4 one... You can check if you have the package kmix-4.14.3-1.mga5 installed. I guess also the qastools can put its icon in Plasma 5 system tray.
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby ITA84 » Feb 19th, '15, 17:32

acrux wrote:Then that should be the KDE 4 one... You can check if you have the package kmix-4.14.3-1.mga5 installed. I guess also the qastools can put its icon in Plasma 5 system tray.

Well, it's the KDE Applications 4.14 version, which, If I'm not mistaken, was ported to KF5, and the OSD part was also ported to Plasma 2. After a quick test, though, some things don't work as they should (KMix configuration panel is still working as a KDE4 thing), so either the version in Mageia Cauldron isn't fully ported, or there are some things still missing in the upstream software. It seemed functional and pretty well integrated for what I used it for, that's why I asked.
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby ozky » Feb 25th, '15, 08:57

I have been using Plasma 5 as my main DE in my production laptop for several months already but usual warnings apply as Mageia 5 is currently still at beta 3 level. So following this howto is at your own risk! Some assumptions: fast network connection is available during Mageia install and thereafter; no KDE 4 software (as the DE conflicts with Plasma 5 anyway); to keep system clean and have only minimal set of applications then the urpmi switch „–-no-recommends” is always used.

1. Mageia 5 (beta3) install (network install or from install DVD with network configuration)
Desktop Selection -> Custom
Package Group Selection -> Unselect All and then select only Plasma Desktop.
Let the installation finish and boot into SDDM and then into Plasma5 if everything went OK. Be warned that this is just a plain Plasma 5 desktop – no KDE Frameworks 5 (KF5) applications yet in Mageia. Except Konsole.


You can't install from dvd plasma 5 only kde4 is this point available and sddm is not used or installed by default.
This is why this is taked to only testing it maybe it will be default in mageia 6 when all apps and everything is qt5.
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby acrux » Feb 25th, '15, 10:04

ozky wrote:You can't install from dvd plasma 5 only kde4 is this point available and sddm is not used or installed by default.
This is why this is taked to only testing it maybe it will be default in mageia 6 when all apps and everything is qt5.


Yes, you are right - plain dvd install does not offer Plasma 5 as desktop environment (it does not offer for example LXQt either). So our option to install Plasma 5 is limited with network install currently. Corrected the first posting accordingly. Thanks ozky, I myself has never performed a dvd install and I assumed that the DE choice is identical there to network install...
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby ozky » Mar 1st, '15, 09:48

Kmix is already ported to plasma 5 but Mageia have not build it to Cauldron.
https://kmix5.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/ ... ameworks-5
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby ozky » Mar 20th, '15, 12:40

To legacy icons i use this wmsystemtray to get update applet and net applet working.
http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/support ... -plasma-5/
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby doktor5000 » Mar 20th, '15, 22:10

Try networkmanager and plasma-applet-nm, looking and working way better under KDE then net_applet.
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby ozky » Mar 21st, '15, 09:40

Yes i have changed too to networkmanager other icons i use that posted app.
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby acrux » Apr 9th, '15, 10:12

As of yesterday evening (April 8th 2015) Plasma 5 was removed as a selectable Desktop Environment from the Mageia 5rc network installer. Additional information in bug 15649 https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15649
It is still possible to to install Plasma 5 as a sole DE (well, with IceWM) by performing a minimal install with X and afterwards:
Code: Select all
urpmi --no-recommends task-plasma5 sddm

and then following the instructions from the top post but it is far from being that straightforward as it was...
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby ozky » Apr 25th, '15, 14:26

That's sad becase i used it little time with full install from netinstall,as minimal install used with urpmi no suggest will rip too much good stuff away from install.
Next cauldron it will be default kde and neoclust will start to port things to plasma5.
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby lightblue » Oct 20th, '15, 14:52

Hi everybody,
I'd like to ask whether this method (which is discussed in this thread) is still the best one to install and test Plasma 5 on Mageia 5 or not?
thanks
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby doktor5000 » Oct 20th, '15, 19:57

Which method are you exactly referring to? To have plasma5 as only desktop environment, on top of a custom network installation of Mageia 5?
If you mean that method, then that is the only method practical method to achieve that, logically.

If you simply want to test it, install task-plasma5 and then logout and login again.
But it's probably better to install cauldron in a VM and install plasma5 there, as plasma5 in mga5 is not intended for production and might have quite some issues.
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_5_Err ... F_Plasma_5
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby lightblue » Oct 20th, '15, 21:17

Hi Doktor,
Yes, I meant having plasma5 in my Mageia5, as it's really cool and I like it!

Recently, i have tested Plasma5 on Kubuntu 15.04 (which comes with it),
But after doing some customization and desktop tricks, Kubuntu was very unstable and crashed, and it took a lot of time to get it back to work.
i dunno whether it was the result of Plasma 5 or Kubuntu!

And now, as many of you have definitely tested Plasma5, I'd like to know having plasma5 on Mageia5 results in the same story (having an unstable environment) or not?

Thanks
Last edited by doktor5000 on Oct 20th, '15, 22:11, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: removed fullquote
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby doktor5000 » Oct 20th, '15, 22:14

lightblue wrote:And now, as many of you have definitely tested Plasma5, I'd like to know having plasma5 on Mageia5 results in the same story (having an unstable environment) or not?

Cannot comment on that, I'm still using KDE 4. You'd have to wait for the others to comment, as it seems like some of those in this thread might use plasma 5 as their main desktop, although I'm not sure whether under Mageia 5 or in cauldron.
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby acrux » Oct 21st, '15, 08:35

lightblue wrote:And now, as many of you have definitely tested Plasma5, I'd like to know having plasma5 on Mageia5 results in the same story (having an unstable environment) or not?


Well, for me it was stable enough as a DE. However, I used it with very little customization and my main programs were not the plasma5 ones (libreoffice, firefox, thunderbird). But for now the versions of KF5&Plasma5 in Mageia5 are somewhat outdated and I'm afraid, there are currently no plans to bring them up-to-date.
So I upgraded to Cauldron and using Plasma5 there...
Do I recommend to do the same? Only when you are exactly knowing what you are doing ;)
Currently there are problems starting iptables with latest kernel and kde apps update has stopped between 15.08.1 and 15.08.2 so there could be also problems related to that...
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby lightblue » Oct 23rd, '15, 23:17

Thanks for your replies Acrux and Doktor,

To give it a try, i installed task-plasma5,
but it hangs and freezes at the splash screen, where the progress bar is.
Can i do something about that?

Thanks
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby doktor5000 » Oct 24th, '15, 08:08

You did not mention whether you installed it on Mageia 5 or under Cauldron. Also, when you installed task-plasma5, it asked to remove most of KDE4 - did you answer yes to that?

And to check if there may be any missing dependencies, start a minimal display manager like IceWM and in there open a terminal and as normal user run
Code: Select all
startkde

and post the output here.
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby lightblue » Oct 25th, '15, 21:39

doktor5000 wrote:You did not mention whether you installed it on Mageia 5 or under Cauldron. Also, when you installed task-plasma5, it asked to remove most of KDE4 - did you answer yes to that?

And to check if there may be any missing dependencies, start a minimal display manager like IceWM and in there open a terminal and as normal user run
Code: Select all
startkde

and post the output here.


Hi Doktor,
You're right, my info wasn't complete.
I installed task-plasma5 on Mageia5,
I don't remember whether i removed KDE4 or not, how can i check it ?
Also startkde results in the following message:
Code: Select all
Display is not set or cannot connect to X server.

BTW, i did it in tty2, as due to an unknown issue, Terminal doesn't work in my IceWM.

Thanks
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Re: [Howto] Plasma 5 as sole DE in Mageia 5

Postby doktor5000 » Oct 26th, '15, 11:08

lightblue wrote:I don't remember whether i removed KDE4 or not, how can i check it ?

Please show the output of
Code: Select all
rpm -qa | grep kdebase4 | sort


lightblue wrote:Also startkde results in the following message:
Code: Select all
Display is not set or cannot connect to X server.

BTW, i did it in tty2, as due to an unknown issue, Terminal doesn't work in my IceWM.


You cannot run it directly without an X server running. In IceWM the terminal launcher might not work, but the start menu should, where you can run a terminal.
Or use any other desktop environment, like LXDE or LXQt or XFCE or so ...

You could also try to run it from a tty via
Code: Select all
startx startkde
but then you have the problem that you can't copy the output anywhere.
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