KDE / Kontact for Leap 15.4

Last January I upgraded from Leap 15.3 to 15.4: new installation with the same /home
At the first it seemed, all run good. But I notice soon many “little” discomforts, most in KDE (missing or unwished/strange ikons) but also a KMail crash. As I reported this crash in bugzilla at KDE [464565], I got the answer, “Already fixed in (Kontact) 5.21.x”.

This means, I should update to a kontact version up 5.21.
But how to get this in Suse Leap?

I found these KDE repos for Leap and added them with YAST,

https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Applications/KDE_Frameworks5_openSUSE_Leap_15.4/

https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Extra/KDE_Applications_openSUSE_Leap_15.4

https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Frameworks5/openSUSE_Leap_15.4

https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Qt5/openSUSE_Leap_15.4

because I think, they should contain newer version of KDE and KDE applications as in the original Leap 15.4
… but I have doubts allowing vendor change for these repositories, because I can not see, which version I’ll get"!
I mean, from the Suse pack version number you can no more determine the relative KDE version.

So, before I cause problems, I’d like to ask the community:

  • it is safe to switch to the repositories above?
  • which version of KDE and Kontact do you get with them?

Many thanks for helps and any suggestions!

I’m using openSUSE Leap 15.4 with the KDE repos as described here:
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:KDE_repositories

Currently with KDE version 5.27.2, Kontact version 5.22.3 (although I don’t use this app).

Yes, in SDB:KDE repositories - openSUSE Wiki are listed the repos, I added.

I run zypper -v dup --allow-vendor-change and after the newstart I cannot login in KDE Plasma.
Then I made an “upgrade” with installation DVD. I had to solve some conflicts (well?). But this did not help. The Login in KDE Plasma is not possible. But sessions in IceWM.

Now I must maybe install Leap 15.4 again.

I don’t think so.

Just remove all repositories except the official opeSUSE Leap 15.4 repositories (oss, non-oss, repo-update, repo-backports-update, repo-sle-update) and then do

zypper dup --allow-vendor-change

That should give you the standard 15.4 packets.

1 Like

I’ve never had any such issue. It might have been useful to gather some more detailed diagnostic information. Did you get to the SDDM login screen?

Yes, I did. But it refused to start KDE. I suppose a problem with identical names of similar programs, which start directly after login.
Anyway, I follow the “backgrade” as suggested by susejunky and now (after a lot resetting jobs) I can work almost as usual.

It remains the question how to get the Kontact version 5.21.x or higher.
Now I’m going to try it safely with YAST GUI and than I will report here the result.

@susejunky
many thanks for let me avoiding a new installation!

Yes, he described how to downgrade. Re installation is seldom required.

You re going to need to upgrade (using the KDE repos) if you want to use more up to date KDE applications though.

I think that snapper would come in handy here, too.
I’m loving this feature as I can simply roll back to a snapshot after I fooled around until I messed things up…

Coming back to the OP’s question: am I right that for Leap there is no real staying in sync with KDE’s bugfix releases?
For example: KDE released their Plasma 5.24.7 Bugfix Release for October on Friday, 14 October 2022. According to OBS, Leap is still on 5.24.4.

Please be aware that the “backgrade” gave you all the standard 15.4 packages but it did not change any configuration files in your /home directory.

So if you run into problems with any (Plasma5)application it might be worth to set up a new user to see if the problem occurs with that new user as well.

1 Like

That is obviously for me. There was any package conflicts, which are solved with help of Yast.

Until now I have detected no issue with Plasma applications; anyway thanks for the hint.

In the next days, as soon as I have time, I’ll re-tray to update Kontact to the Version in //download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:* via Yast and I’ll report the results here.

susejunky’s remark was NOT about anything that can be resolved using YaST. It was about configuration files and the like that may still be in end-user’s home directories and that now may not be able to coexist (not be backwards compatible) with the older version.

Yes! I understood, what susejunky’s remarked. And I thought, I would have no problem with configuration files, because a login in KDE was not possible after the upgrade (# 5): no KDE start no changes in KDE config files.
My phrase “There was any package conflicts, which are solved with help of Yast” was only a comment about the “backgrade” result.

I’d like going back to my original question:
How to get a Kontakt version up 5.21?
→ Please note: I need this because the standard version on Leap 15.4 (5.19.3) has many issues solved in version 5.21.
So, I tried again the update Kontact through YAST2 from the repositories mentioned in post #1, but without allow-vendor-change option. That means, I only selected the package Kontact an the other ones related with that application (i.e.: akonadi).
Obviously a lot of dependencies was installed too.
The result of this operation was the same: PLASMA LOGIN NOT POSSIBLE
Now I have “backgrade” again and it runs as usually (= not good for my needs) .

Does it means, it is not possible to get a well running Kontakt with Leap 15.4?
It has true, what did KWizz wrote (#7) ?