KDE5 - a few minor glitches

English Open Chat
#1

I am a long time but very dumb SuSe user, posting here to mention a few minor glitches I am seeing running KDE5 plasma, frameworks, actifactors, whizzbangs and what-nots (?) under openSUSE 42.2 with nVidia graphics drivers.

I am hoping to elicit chit-chat that might confirm and clarify these issues and help a very dumb user formulate sensible questions for technical advice or bug reports.

Here is the list so far:

  1. Qprint - print margin settings for text editors (eg. kate, kwrite) are not persistent. Default 4.26mm is ridiculous for text documents (may be OK for code). Causes 10 extra keystrokes every print job.

  2. Panel clock widget - unable to copy and paste date-time to clipboard - more keystrokes.

  3. Krusader (Version 2.6.0) - right-click ‘create new’ function does nothing (though F7 & Shift F4 do work) - no problem, but looks bad.

  4. Kaffeine (Version 1.2.2, KDE Development Platform 4.14.25) crashes with DVB-T - out of my depth with this.

I am aware that the QT print margin issue existed with KDE4 and was fixed, I understand, with input from openSUSE developers. I need help to write a well informed (technical) bug report that may prompt and simplify a similar effort for the benefit of the few oldschool users still drafting and printing plain text documents.

The cripped panel clock is a new one to me. I presume it is known (confirmation?). Just a minor pest, but looks bad and should be fixed.

I rely on Krusader for FM (KDE connect excepted - shame about that). Glitches like this need to be flagged. I want Krusader to look good. Is it just me?

The Kaffeine DVB-T errors have me perplexed - multi-task desktop DVB-T is a best use case for Kaffeine, as some KDE developers do seem to know - the primative VLC channels.conf ‘playlist’ and prescribed frequency dvb-t setups no longer work here, other projects are dead, and I can’t find anything else that is useful. I think Kaffeine 1.2.2 is still the KDE4 version (the KDE nomeclature has me confused). However, under openSUSE 42.2 and 13.2 it often fails on start-up channel selection (no video) and always fails on channel change (crash, locked system, wait, wait, hard delete) but the same version runs fine under 13.1. Under 42.2 I have VLC-beta but have plain VLC installed under 13.2 - both crash in the same way.

Version 2.0.5 is now out there, updated for KDE5 with VLC (thanks MC). I tried a build-service “version 2.0.4” but it failed just as badly (albeit, with VLC-beta installed here). I see unresolved KDE bug reports about channel change causing crashes with version 2 but no similar reports about version 1. I do not know if version 1.2.2 uses gstreamer or VLC.

I know I could/should research and check multi-media system files and perhaps try version 2 with plain VLC installed and the recommended strace nVidia work-around executed, but I’ve almost reached my ‘dumb user’ red line and I’m hoping for more informed feedback before opening a ‘technical advice’ post about this can of worms.

I’m using openSUSE 13.1 for my daily work for now, but the dogs of time are nipping at my heels.

Thanks for reading. Hope you too are having fun!

#2

Yes, but, first, the bad news: AFAIK the KDE folks haven’t, yet, committed to address this issue in KDE Plasma 5 – they’re experiencing some quite major issues with the Qt5 WebKit printer support.I’ve seen that, the Plasma 5 Kontact has an interim fix which forwards the print jobs to Konqueror.

I’ll think about writing a KDE Bug Report requesting that the KDE folks address this issue in the work to be done in the area which deals with print jobs.

Yet another KDE Bug Report possibly needed.

Yet another KDE Bug Report possibly needed.

Unfortunately, the Kaffeine version currently shipping with Leap 42.2 is the KDE4 Plasma version – which is no longer supported by the KDE folks.
There is some hope with Tumbleweed and Leap 42.3 (KDE: Extra repository) where a version 2.0.?? of Kaffeine is being offered – which, AFAICS, is a KDE Plasma 5 (KF5) version.
[HR][/HR]Please reply indicating whether or not you fell a couple of KDE Bug Reports should be raised, or not.

#3

Re this:

Unfortunately, the Kaffeine version currently shipping with Leap 42.2 is the KDE4 Plasma version – which is no longer supported by the KDE folks.
There is some hope with Tumbleweed and Leap 42.3 (KDE: Extra repository) where a version 2.0.?? of Kaffeine is being offered – which, AFAICS, is a KDE Plasma 5 (KF5) version.

FYI, i use TW, & do have Kaffeine installed. It’s:


Version 2.0.12
KDE Frameworks 5.36.0
Qt 5.9.1 (built against 5.9.1)
The xcb windowing system
#4

Thanks. Well formed bug reports for 1, 2 & 3 seem useful. See recent post in Applications about 1. I would be grateful if a user with more technical skill than me were to submit them. Item 4 is a can of media worms. MC has already done a lot of work to port to KDE5. A bug report about channel change crash has already been submitted. Best wait I think.

#5

If by technical skill you mean “software developer speak” then, OK. :wink:
But, next week – I have some serious activity planned for this weekend . . .

#6

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=355190

  1. Krusader (Version 2.6.0) - right-click ‘create new’ function does nothing (though F7 & Shift F4 do work) - no problem, but looks bad.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=383544

I’m using openSUSE 13.1 for my daily work for now, but the dogs of time are nipping at my heels.

Yeh… I can relate to that. :wink:

#7

Thanks. Are you using Nvidia graphics drivers? Does TW Kaffeine manage dvb-t adequatly?

#8

Thanks to Tannington we know that good bug reports have already been submitted for items 2 & 3 on my list (sorry, I really should have checked that).
There seems to be good progress on fixing the digital clock copy/paste date/time function in future KDE5 and the issue with Krusader ‘create new’ has been identified.

#9

No, nowadays i only use the integrated Intel GPU,

Before i migrated my Tower from Maui to oS TW a few months ago, i originally did have my dedicated NVidia GPU installed in my Tower, & i used it. However i used to have too-frequent major system freezes & crashes . All troubleshooting i did failed to uncover the root cause, so one investigative step was to revert from NVidia to Intel * & evaluate any differences. With that change, the symptoms went away. Given i’m not a gamer, i found to my surprise that the integrated Intel GPU still did a fine job, indeed there were a few daily usage traits it specifically handled better than the NVidia. So, out of laziness/pragmatism, i chose to continue using Maui with only the Intel. Once i decided, later, that i wanted to change to oS TW, i chose to initially still leave the NVidia GPU out of my Tower, to see if TW would be happy. I’m pleased to say that TW has been entirely happy with “just” the Intel, so the NVidia GPU remains in my desk drawer.

Can’t comment on “dvb-t” … don’t know what that means. Pls note that whilst i do indeed have Kaffeine installed, i don’t actively use it. Mostly my multimedia needs are well served by Clementine & VLC for internet music streaming [or occasionally playing my on-HDD old music collection], SMPlayer for my old on-HDD videos, but most of all my browser for on-demand video streaming. Hence, i’m afraid that i won’t really be much further use to you for Kaffeine.*

#10

Returning to the “few minor glitches” theme for a moment…

This one…

http://paste.opensuse.org/view/raw/b8b58821

…really bugs me.

There are a plethora of fonts installed by default on Leap/TW and the above happens (and has happened for a long time) whenever one tries to disable any. Looks bad, or does it just look bad :stuck_out_tongue:

There is also the problem with the mouse kcm, since the move to “libinput” it’s about as much use as an ashtray on a motorcycle. So, in my own case

Created due to no working Mouse KCM to enable control of Acceleration

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-mouse.conf

              Section "InputClass"
                Identifier "Logitech USB Laser Mouse"
                MatchIsPointer "yes"
                Driver "libinput"
                Option "AccelProfile" "flat"
                Option "AccelSpeed" "-0.4"
              EndSection

Yeh… I know linux is all about learning to “do it yourself”, but is this the type of thing a novice user wants to be faced with?

There’s quite a few more, but I won’t go on.

And, please, don’t get me wrong, I think the developers in general do a great job and we owe them a lot of thanks. :wink:

#11

Thanks - I think the issues I have with Kaffeine may be nVidia related. I understand your choice to stick with Intel graphics - my laptop is Intel only for similar reasons. Sorry for using jargon: DVB-T Digital Video Broadcast - Terrestrial, aka old school wireless TV. I use it so I can watch ‘Playschool’ while pretending to work. Best use case for Kaffeine, there may be better options for video playback. I tend to use SMplayer for that.

#12

Well, obviously, I think it is OK to discuss “minor glitches” in chit-chat. Sometimes it leads to better understanding or even positive solutions. I agree that open-source free software developers deserve respect and support from users - that’s the deal. We are building a model ‘sharing’ economy here, and it is big.

#13

Just as a follow up. A commit to fix the issue has been pushed into branch ‘master’.

https://commits.kde.org/krusader/3ec61a42eaf842a4ceec11aed5cf6c6154f7cd07

#14

The most reliable way that I’ve found to disable fonts related to languages I can’t read is to perform some “magic” in the font configuration located in “/etc/fonts/”:

  • /etc/fonts/local.conf:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<!-- /etc/fonts/local.conf file for local customizations -->
<fontconfig>

  <rejectfont>
    <pattern>
      <patelt name="family" >
        <string>Arabic Newspaper</string>
      </patelt>
    </pattern>
  </rejectfont>

.
.
.

<!--
  <rejectfont>
    <pattern>
      <patelt name="family" >
        <string></string>
      </patelt>
    </pattern>
  </rejectfont>
-->

</fontconfig>
  • /etc/fonts/disabledfonts.xml

<disabledfonts>
  <font family="Arabic Newspaper" weight="80" width="100" slant="0" scalable="false" langs="ar,pa" path="/usr/share/fonts/misc/.arabic24.pcf.gz" foundry="Arabic"/>
.
.
.
  <font family="Serto Urhoy" weight="80" width="100" slant="0" langs="en,syr" path="/usr/share/fonts/truetype/.SyrCOMUrhoy.otf"/>
</disabledfonts>

[HR][/HR]The KCM “Fonts” module (running as the user “root”) used to do a good job at disabling “not needed” fonts but, it’s currently (Plasma 5) not as reliable as it used to be.

#15

DVB-T – codec licensing issue – Packman – the legal way to do it:

  • Take a look at the products offered by “Fluendo” – the “GStreamer” folks – MP3 codecs legally shipped with openSUSE.

<https://fluendo.com/en/products/multimedia/oneplay-player/>
Yes, yes, I suspect that, “ONEPLAY” Player may not be able to handle DVB-T but, given that the Fluendo codec pack includes the MPEG-2 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codecs used by DVB-T, Kaffeine can then hook into to those codecs and, job done . . .

#16

However it shouldn’t be necessary to use “magic”, there’s no getting away from the fact, the Font Management kcm in Plasma 5 is seriously broken, and to a new, or even not so new, user, it looks bad.

When attempting to either Delete or Disable/Enable any of the System Fonts there is (on my own systems, both TW and Leap) an approximate 50% chance one will get the “Backend died, but has been restarted. Please try again…” error.

Couple that with the approximate 10% chance of it being followed by “Updating font configuration. Please wait…” Which omits the important part, "… forever, as “System Settings has just hung…” The only way out of that is to kill the process.

I’ve pruned the, not inconsiderable, quantity of fonts installed by default using a combination of complete removal of some font packages, and perseverance with the Font Management module.

#17

Yes, I agree, for 99% of the humans on the planet earth, a GUI solution is always the easiest way to maintain systems.

But, only for the case of perfect, error-free, systems – we’re not there, yet . . .

Therefore, “good-old-fashioned system administration” with a text editor is, IMHO, still the most reliable way to provide solutions which behave consistently.

  • Which is why the ‘/etc/fonts/local.conf’ file is used to consistently, despite patches and upgrades, disable the “not used” and/or “unwanted” fonts.
  • The ‘/etc/fonts/disabledfonts.xml’ is only a “helper” for things like the KCM Fonts Manager to correctly indicate which fonts have been disabled.
#18

Unfortunately, the Kaffeine version currently shipping with Leap 42.2 is the KDE4 Plasma version – which is no longer supported by the KDE folks.
There is some hope with Tumbleweed and Leap 42.3 (KDE: Extra repository) where a version 2.0.?? of Kaffeine is being offered – which, AFAICS, is a KDE Plasma 5 (KF5) version.

KDE: Extra has KDE4 version 1.2.2 which I have now installed (thanks to this thread) because the KDE5 version conflicts with LXQt which is my preferred desktop.

#19

Revisiting the Qprint – Qt5 WebKit printer support – issue:

I’ve gone through the Kontact modules and, there’s only one which doesn’t handle printers correctly – KMail – it apologises for the fact that it needs to use an external Web-browser (Konqueror – which cannot handle HTML formatted e-Mails . . . )

All the other Kontact modules print directly to a printer accessible to the system being used – with the ability to choose the desired printer and, the ability to print to a file.

I suspect that, a high priority KDE Bug Report is needed to resolve this anomaly in the behaviour of the various Kontact modules. >:)[HR][/HR]Now the margins issue:

  • KAddressbook uses default print margins of 2.00 mm;
  • KOrganizer Calendar uses default print margins of 3,53 mm;
  • KOrganizer Tasks use default print margins of 3,53 mm;
  • Akregator apologises for the fact that it needs to use an external Web-browser;
  • KOrganizer Journal uses default print margins of 3,53 mm;
  • KNotes uses default print margins of 3,53 mm.

So, it seems that, each KDE application has to choose a default margin value.

  • Okular uses 0 mm and has been the target of more than a few Bug Reports for that reason.
#20

Thanks to all who have joined this chit-chat thread. Quite illuminating. Most of these glitches pesrsist but work is proceeding on some of them. Recent updates (not sure which, exactly) have solved the problems with Kaffeine - DVB-T. Still a bit unstable but mostly working fine. Probably time to start migrating from openSUSE 13.1.