Can I have openSUSE Leap 42.1 with plasma 4 instead of plasma 5

Week ago I tried leap 42.1 with KDE. In my opinion the plasma 4 is still better than plasma 5. Is it possible to have leap 42.1 with plasma 4 ? And if it is, can anyone give me a step by step way to do it ?

more or less yes, but imo the best thing to do is use wolfi’s repo for plasma5 and get kde4 from the oss repo, how to do it
#1 add wolfi’s repo

zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/wolfi323:/branches:/KDE:/Frameworks5/openSUSE_Leap_42.1/home:wolfi323:branches:KDE:Frameworks5.repo

#2 then do a vendor change with wolfi’s repo

zypper dup --from http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/wolfi323:/branches:/KDE:/Frameworks5/openSUSE_Leap_42.1/

or use one of that repo’s aliases.
#3 then install the base kde4 packages from oss

zypper in kdebase4-session kdebase4-workspace kdebase4-workspace-addons kdebase4-workspace-ksysguardd kdebase4-workspace-liboxygenstyle dolphin4 kdm

do not do this from plasma 5, login to icewm or use text mode (init 3), some of the kde4 applications are gone and won’t come back but you can use the plasma 5 equivalents

edit you can install some more kde4 packages from yast

Does this mean that the KDE Application will be following KDE 4 (i.e. dolphin, kate) ? or can I choose to install KDE Application 5 (i.e. dolphin5, kate5)

If you use my repo, the KDE Applications will follow KDE4, yes. (although most of them won’t get updates any more)
So if you do that “zypper dup” to my repo, all your installed KDE applications will be KDE4 based again.

To get the KF5 versions, you need to install the packages with ‘5’ in the name like dolphin5, kate5, and so on. You can install both the KDE4 and KF5 version of an application at the same time though. KF5 applications from my repo will show up in KDE4’s (or any other desktop) application menu with an “/KF5” appended to the name.
If you prefer to only use the latest version of an application, you can switch it to the package from the standard repos. YaST/zypper or the updater won’t switch repos automatically.

Btw, there is no “KDE Applications 5”. :wink:
The current version of “KDE Applications” is 15.12(.1), and (still) contains a mix of KDE4 and KF5 based applications.

If you want to use Plasma5 as well, there’s one thing missing in I_A’s “guide” though:
In that case you’d also need the KDE:Frameworks5 repo, to get the latest versions of KDE Frameworks5, Plasma5 and related software.

If you only want to use KDE4 anyway, that shouldn’t be necessary though.

Some other notes, in addition to what I_A wrote already:

  • You need to install kscreen or krandr as well, otherwise KDE4 won’t start.
  • If you use NetworkManager, it’s a good idea to install plasma-nm (KDE’s networkmanager applet) as well.
  • There’s no point in installing dolphin4, and you shouldn’t do it. My dolphin package does contain the KDE4 dolphin and conflicts with dolphin4 on a file level.
  • You don’t necessarily need kdm either, you can use any DM (login screen) you like, even Plasma5’s sddm (strictly speaking it isn’t related/doesn’t belong to Plasma5, it’s just the one that the KDE developers recommend/support).
  • If you want an update notifier, you should install apper as well. Plasma5’s plasma5-pk-updates won’t work in KDE4.

Thank you for your thorough explanations. My conviction is final now.

You’re welcome.
Feel free to ask further questions if things are not completely clear or you have problems.

I am sorry to bother again, when I did the second step, the terminal showed this


Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Computing distribution upgrade...
14 Problems:
Problem: nothing provides libkscreen2-plugin >= 5.5.4 needed by kscreen5-5.5.4-78.1.x86_64
Problem: kscreen5-lang-5.5.4-78.1.noarch requires kscreen5 = 5.5.4, but this requirement cannot be provided
Problem: nothing provides plasma-framework-components >= 5.18.0 needed by plasma5-desktop-5.5.4-301.1.x86_64
Problem: nothing provides plasma-framework-components >= 5.18.0 needed by plasma5-desktop-5.5.4-301.1.x86_64
Problem: plasma5-desktop-lang-5.5.4-301.1.noarch requires plasma5-desktop = 5.5.4, but this requirement cannot be provided
Problem: nothing provides libkscreen2-plugin >= 5.5.4 needed by plasma5-session-5.5.4-147.1.noarch
Problem: nothing provides libKScreenLocker.so.5()(64bit) needed by plasma5-workspace-5.5.4-327.1.x86_64
Problem: nothing provides libKScreenLocker.so.5()(64bit) needed by plasma5-workspace-5.5.4-327.1.x86_64
Problem: plasma5-workspace-lang-5.5.4-327.1.noarch requires plasma5-workspace = 5.5.4, but this requirement cannot be provided
Problem: nothing provides kio >= 5.18.0 needed by plasma5-workspace-libs-5.5.4-327.1.x86_64
Problem: nothing provides kio >= 5.18.0 needed by plasma5-workspace-libs-5.5.4-327.1.x86_64
Problem: nothing provides libKScreenLocker.so.5()(64bit) needed by plasma5-workspace-5.5.4-327.1.x86_64
Problem: powerdevil5-lang-5.5.4-127.1.noarch requires powerdevil5 = 5.5.4, but this requirement cannot be provided
Problem: marble-kde-15.08.1-1.2.x86_64 requires marble = 15.08.1, but this requirement cannot be provided

Problem: nothing provides libkscreen2-plugin >= 5.5.4 needed by kscreen5-5.5.4-78.1.x86_64
 Solution 1: Following actions will be done:
  deinstallation of kscreen5-5.4.2-2.1.x86_64
  deinstallation of patterns-openSUSE-kde_plasma-20150918-10.1.x86_64
  deinstallation of patterns-openSUSE-kde_imaging-20150918-10.1.x86_64
  deinstallation of patterns-openSUSE-kde-20150918-10.1.x86_64
 Solution 2: install kscreen5-5.4.3-4.2.x86_64 from excluded repository
 Solution 3: break kscreen5-5.5.4-78.1.x86_64 by ignoring some of its dependencies


Which one shoud I choose ? Thanks before

Apparently you didn’t add the KDE:Frameworks5 repo, this is required to be able to install my Plasma5 packages.

sudo zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Frameworks5/openSUSE_Leap_42.1 KF5

I did mention this in my first reply… :wink:

I don’t want to install plasma5, that is why I didn’t add the KF5 repo that you told me in previous post. I just didn’t expect any problem, when I followed the step-by-step instruction.

But then, the terminal showed problem and asked me to choose. That is why I post the terminal output in here, with hope that you can tell me which to choose.

Anyway, without any reference to anything, for all the problem I chose “deinstallation…”, then after that I follow the 3rd instruction, with an addition from your comment, which are : kscreen, plasma-nm, and apper.

I restart, and then after a brief screen of opensuse Leap logo ( green ), the screen went black.

I did All of these from the text mode

Any suggestion is appriciated

That’s why I mentioned this as addition to the step-by-step instruction.

If you do a full switch to my repo, your installed Plasma5 packages are replaced by mine, which require KDE:Frameworks5.

Anyway, without any reference to anything, for all the problem I chose “deinstallation…”, then after that I follow the 3rd instruction, with an addition from your comment, which are : kscreen, plasma-nm, and apper.

I restart, and then after a brief screen of opensuse Leap logo ( green ), the screen went black.

Well, I notice now that those “instructions” only install kdm, but don’t switch to it.
So either try to switch to a different sddm theme in /etc/sddm.conf (e.g. “maui”), or set DISPLAYMANAGER=“kdm” in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager.

As plasma5-workspace contains the default “breeze” theme, sddm will not work without after you uninstalled that (if you didn’t change the theme settings).

Thank you very much Wolfi323. It finally worked.

Just one additional questions. Some of the applications that I downloaded (e.g. Cantata, mkvtoolnix, smplayer) isn’t the way it used to. I mean, the applications window is big and its color didn’t match the color of the deskop (the kde4) and other applications (e.g. dolphin, kdevelop, kate).

Well, those applications (Cantata and smplayer at least) are Qt5 (or KF5) based.
Normally KF5 should migrate the KDE4 settings though, but having used Plasma5 before you probably have explicit appearance settings for KF5.

Try on a fresh user accound and/or delete the KF5 config files in ~/.config/ (kdeglobals in particular).

If that doesn’t help, use systemsettings5 to configure them to your likings. But note that this will also change the KDE4 config accordingly.

mkvtoolnix is a wxGTK application, so you need kde-gtk-config (probably not installed) and can configure it in KDE4’s settings then (Application Appearance->GTK).
A problem is that GTK3 doesn’t support theming engines any more, so oxygen-gtk3 doesn’t work with current GTK3 versions.
But for GTK2 (which is what mkvtoolnix uses I think), oxygen should be fine and make them look like KDE4 applications. You need the packages gtk2-theme-oxygen and gtk2-engine-oxygen installed though.

I tried this, but didn’t work. The color is different (I am using the dark color, while KF5 is white color) and the size still relatively bigger.

I tried this, now I have two “Configure Desktop” like below

http://paste.opensuse.org/images/12740593.png

The left one ( the white ) is the one which color I want to change to the right one (The dark)

I tried this, and the size became the same with other KDE4-based application, but the color still white.

Is there a color package for KF5 , so that I can change the color of KF5-based application, Because I found no color setting in systemsettings5 (the “white” configure desktop)

By the way, thanks for helping me this far.

Ah, right. I forgot that you didn’t install Plasma5.

The “Color” systemsettings5 module is in the package “plasma5-desktop”.

You could also try to just copy over your KDE4 kdeglobals from ~/.kde4/share/config/ to ~/.config/, might work (but I’m not 100% sure).

I tried both, and the color finally matched. Thanks once again. :smiley:

Hi everybody,

my company uses OpenSuSE 13.2 on thousands of computers and we will have to switch to leap 42.x within the next year. We are satisfied with KDE3.5 but Plasma5 for me seems to be in a beta-state at the moment. In order to limit training efforts in the field, we would like a desktop that is similar to KDE3.5, xfce looks quite old-fashioned. KDE >= 4.11 looks stable and suitable, but unfortunately its expired.

My question is, would it be possible to provide a stable Repo for further leap distributions that makes KDE4 usable like KDE3.5?

I would like to criticize the following issues in plasma 5:

Desktop Activity puts the contents of ~/Desktop at the top statically, icons cannot be moved like in kde4.
separate background (pics, colors e.g.) per virtual deskops cannot be selected, only one background per VirtualDesktop.
plasma-desktoprc: PerVirtualDesktopViews=true doesn´t work. ASFAIK this feature first occurs with KDE4.7 and its quite
popular in KDE3.5. Your virtual Desktop can be identified by the background easily.
For me look&feel in plasma 5 with its b&w icons in the frontpanel (kicker) is a step back.

Who really has “the hat” on in the community and where can I make my proposals?

Well some of those are deliberate action by the KDE developers I suggest you go there and complain. There are already a lot of people who don’t like these “planed” regressions. Maybe complaint from a large commercial entity maybe would get them off their high horses. :stuck_out_tongue: