I'll rephrase the last paragraph. It sounds stupid.

Before rebooting after updating, I wasn't able to open konsole. I tried shutting down but I was never redirected to the part where it shows that in 30s your PC will shutdown. Basically, shutdown wasn't available. I forced shutdown by the main power switch. I use LXQt currently.

I think I have the same problem.

After Plasma freezes, journalctl is full of warnings like this:

Jun 17 21:15:44 HuuHaa-3 sddm-greeter[1147]: file:///usr/share/sddm/themes/breeze/Main.qml:26:1:: plugin cannot be loaded for module "org.kde.plasma.core": Cannot load library /usr/lib/qt/qml/org/kde/plasma/core/libcorebindingsplugin.so: (/usr/lib/libKF5Plasma.so.5: undefined symbol: _ZN3KIO10OpenUrlJobC1ERK4QUrlP7QObject)

What all the messages have in common seems to be the "/usr/lib/libKF5Plasma.so.5: undefined symbol" part.

sddm-greeter is affected, too: it fails to load the configured theme (breeze) and uses some internal fallback theme instead. I can however use SDDM to launc LXDE.

From LXDE I attempted to launch a couple of KDE applications I often use:

kate: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libKF5Parts.so.5: undefined symbol: _ZN3KIO10OpenUrlJob17setRunExecutablesEb
ksysguard: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libKF5NewStuff.so.5: undefined symbol: _ZN3KIO10OpenUrlJobC1ERK4QUrlRK7QStringP7QObject

On the other hand both kinfocenter and kcalc work.

Updated kio package solved it for me. Next time, please suppress the urge to post k__ packages updates along with kio and after testing that they don't break things up! Please close this.

Thank you guys.

you are somewhat misunderstanding what parabola is, and how it
is maintained - parabola is archlinux with some relatively small
number of packages removed (IIRC about 800) - so most parabola
packages are built by the archlinux maintainers - then the ones
which were removed are replaced - whenever arch upgrades the k-
and q- libs, we need to rebuild whichever packages that were
replaced, which depend on the k- and q- libs - in this case that
one is 'kio' - the only thing that could have been done
differently, would be to rebuild 'kio' sooner than it took this
time

i should add that GNOME and KDE are quite difficult to support
in a 100% libre distro - the other DEs do not require any
liberation treatments, and are therefore much better supported
and reliable

all parabola users who prefer GNOME or KDE should be aware of
that and be prepared for some obstacles now and then - i highly
suggest keeping some other DE installed at all times, in addition
to your favorite, for the same reason i would suggest keeping
two kernel installed at all times (one LTS and one rolling) -
LXDE is excellent as a fall-back DE - it is very small and
non-intrusive; and it always works

Hey Bill, if parabola team wishes to make parabola reach maximum number of users, then it must make it stable. If a new user who wishes to use plasma (since it is available in parabola repos) arrives and he does everything right and fails to get plasma running, then you'll lose him.

Atleast you guys can do this, release all packages from arch to here by default and when you start knowing that packages like k_ or others break, you can change the release of those packages from arch to you guys (it won't reach repos of parabola directly), where 1 of parabola team members will test those packages, fix them and then the fixed version will be pushed to parabola. This would make things more stable. Plus, you'll have to fix the packages anyways, because they'll be reported. Just the timeframe will be changed. I have absolutely no problem using older versions for those days if newer version fails.

Plasma is a level above LXDE, LXQt and XFCE in terms of looks. The feel is better.

I respect Arch's philosophy that people who use must understand the system but today, GNU Libre systems reaching more people is a bigger need and for that I strongly believe installation and maintenance should be extremely simple. I recommend Ubuntu to newcomers for linux. Because all they have to do is, next -> next -> next -> Install. If they struggle with configurations, they won't ever enjoy linux. Maybe they'll switch back to Windows forever. I can never recommend parabola for them because they won't be able to install it in the first place.

Non-breaking good DE is the least that people would want. Stable packages of these are vital. Other alternative is to remove plasma altogether. Obviously, I would hate that.

i understand your frustration and i understand the suggestion - we do something like that for other libraries that once caused the same sort of temporary problems for many programs - that is accomplished by pinning packages which would be broken by a library update, to specific library versions, such that you would not be able to upgrade until all of the libraries are compatible - kio is one that we can not use that trick on though - it just took a bit longer than usual to fix it this time

WRT stability: stability is not the priority of any rolling distro though - stability is the priority of stable distros such as trisquel, hyperbola, and pureos; and that is accomplished, just as you suggested: by keeping versions of the software fixed for long periods of time, and having a group of brave volunteers testing the next versions thoroughly (for months or years) - therefore the software is always older than rolling distros; but that is a good thing if you want 100% stability - rolling distro are for people who want the latest releases of everything, even if they are buggy (and they usually are, in some way) - that is the essential trade-off that one must accept - all users of any rolling distro are the testers of all of its software - bugs appear, they get reported (usually by users), then they get fixed, before LTS distros ever see them

if your opinion is that you would prefer older versions of software, because it is more reliable that way, that is a wise observation; and it is the same as preferring to use an LTS distro, rather than a rolling distro - that is precisely why LTS distros exist - personally, i do not mind turning some people away from parabola - it is not the only libre distro - some are better suited for some people than others

in fact, i wrote the rolling-vs-lts wiki article, specifically to convince non-technical people, who should prefer an LTS distro, to use trisquel instead of parabola - i give tech support to people in the #trisquel, #dragora, #gnu, and other channels, almost as readily as in #parabola - we dont see it as a competition between libre distros - most people are just better off using trisquel; and i would like those people to use trisquel, and to be as happy with it as someone who prefers parabola (for the right reasons) would be with parabola - someone who prefers parabola for the wrong reasons;, is likely to be not as pleased with it; and someone who avoids an LTS distro for the wrong reasons, is complicating their computing experience unnecessarily

WRT DEs: the arch philosophy is not so much about technical expertise; but mainly about lean-ness and simplicity - simple things are just more reliable than complicated things - a simple, lean parabola system is very reliable - the parabola servers have been running parabola for 10 years and have never broken AFAIK - KDE and GNOME are the polar-opposite of simplicity - they are very large, power-hungry, libre-hostile, and difficult to maintain - if KDE and QT developers keep on with the trend of integrating webengine into every program, it is likely that KDE will eventually become impossible to maintain in parabola - that has been a concern for years now - it is remarkable that it still works at all today

OTOH, lightweight DEs such as LXDE and i3 may not be as pretty, but they very small, efficient, bug-free, libre-friendly, and easy to maintain - there is an elegance to that simplicity, and the reliability which is achieved by simplicity, which some people appreciate more than others - those who do not want to waste valuable CPU performance on useless eye-candy, for example

i think you hit the nail squarely on the head there - the parabola devs do not use KDE or GNOME regularly; so those bugs are found only after they enter the system, and then some users report them - i use openbox regularly - if openbox ever breaks, i will notice it within a day - but guess what? :) openbox is not going to break; and that is not because anyone prioritizes it - that is because it is simple and libre-friendly, so it requires little maintenance; and it is just not going to break - the suggestion for the parabola devs to use KDE everyday, in order to find bugs before users do, is probably not going to happen - firstly, that would be the only reason they use it; and they would not enjoy their systems as much - also, the same would need to be done for GNOME, deepin, wayland, and all permutations of other such fancy things, such as compositors, compounding the task exponentially - it is just not feasible to promise that every program in a rolling distro will work perfectly every day; and the most complex ones are the most likely to break, especially given that everything is constantly changing - even a team as large as debian can not accomplish that with an LTS distro

to avoid any major troubles using KDE, you could keep LXDE installed at all times, just in case KDE breaks - then you would never be in a position to exclaim on IRC: "help - my computer is completely unusable", just because some GUI programs are not working correctly - LXDE is very unlikely to ever be broken - so your problem could instead have been: "i can not start KDE today; but oh well, its not devastating - i can still do everything that i wanted to do with my computer today; because i have LXDE installed too - i hope KDE is fixed soon so i can switch back to (:awesome-mode:) again" - such disasters can reduce to minor annoyances when you are prepared for them

i dont intend to be too discouraging or negative; but there are different points of view regarding which aspects of the system to prioritize - its one of the reasons why there are so many distros - some distros which prioritize snazz and pizazz, such as neon, care very much that the DE is always working perfectly - that gorgeous DE is their raison d'etre - OTOH, most distros do not support as many CPUs as parabola, or multiple init-systems, or compile everything from source, and so on

the areas where parabola really shines, are the ones that most other distros do not even have - mainly because the vast majority of computer users do not care about those niche things - if we were concerned about attracting the largest number of users to parabola, we would not need any of those extra niche things, which fewer people care about - we would have only systemd and only for x86_64, just like arch - then there would be more time to keep all of the non-essentials fully polished, endowing the websites with modern-web bells-and-whistles, catering to our hourds of twitter and youtube fans, etc - it is actually quite amazing how much parabola provides, with such a small team, and very few major problems with any of it - KDE was only broken for a week - that is longer than any program stays broken usually; but its not terrible, and we expect that it would not be a disaster for anyone, if it happens again next year

"stability is not the priority of any rolling distro though". I'm not talking about stability being such that you don't make huge structural changes to code. Ofc LTS don't have that and rolling do. But obviously if a code doesn't work, then it's still in development and not fit to be released. By older, I mean 1 point release old. That's not old. That's latest. I just think 1 person in the parabola team should have kde and check things. It's not unreasonable.

I value your work ofc. I wouldn't be writing if I didn't. Proprietary blobs in OSes are unacceptable with respect to security. GNU Linux-Libre is very important for OSes in improving end-point security. Network can be made completely secure with encryption but OSes are huge issues. If you have a secure PC and you send some data to a compromised one, it's useless to protect that data. If parabola is secure, which I believe is one of the better ones out there, then spreading it more would make life difficult for backdoor exploiters. And you would be more secure if more people out there are more secure. For that you'd need ease of installation. Stability is central for that.

Having many users is not a bad thing. It's a great thing. In my view, targeting a niche is a bad thing. Every OS should target everyone as their users using compatible hardware. In my view, if you have a package out there, it should work or it should not be out there. Instead a slightly older working one is better(left hyperbola due to very old packages, it's a fantastic OS in every other sense), especially the ones without which the system won't start.

P.S. I've installed LXQt and Openbox. I hate it. It's ugly, but in such times, I'll use it. Also, my sound and wifi doesn't work at all but I haven't uninstalled parabola.

On Sat, 27 Jun 2020 17:01:49 +0000 infinite_recursion wrote:

just think 1 person in the parabola team should have kde and
check things. It's not unreasonable.

it is unreasonable though - i tried to explain that - it is not
as simple as one person using KDE everyday - there are a huge
number of combinations of DE/init/arch to consider - that
amounts to 6 completely separate operating systems to check KDE
alone: all three arches, each with systemd and again with openrc
- if you throw wayland into the mix, that number of systems
which would need to be checked doubles - then the same would
need to be done for every other DE - if you consider all of the
different DMs, we are in the realm of exponential - if one of the
team members kept up on that daily checking alone, it would be a
full-time job, and the only thing that person could have time to
do for parabola

everyone is a volunteer - the most that any users can expect
from any free software project team, is that they would do the
best that they can, given the information and resources available
- we just dont have the people-power to dedicate a someone to
maintaining KDE or even all desktops in general, not to mention,
that it would be an extremely boring job for someone to do
everyday; so it would be difficult to find someone to stay on
that job for very long - if someone (like you perhaps) wants to
volunteer to be the caretaker/watchdog of KDE, then that would
be great - we generally just wait until some user reports some
problem, then we fix that problem - for the most-used packages
that happens rather quickly - for others it may not happen at
all - there is probably always going to be some software which
is broken in parabola; but if no one uses it, then its not
really not a problem

the priority of any given package, is essentially proportional to
the number of people who would complain if it were broken, vs
the amount of work needed to maintain it - in the case of KDE,
that is a relatively low "desirability/workload" ratio, not so
much because of the workload factor, but because of relatively
few users - despite its stature in the wider *nix world, KDE is
not a popular DE in arch or parabola, for the reasons i explained
yesterday - it is not KISS, and does not appeal to the typical
archie - so it is upon the users of such lesser-used software to
keep a watch on it, and complain loudly and often, when something
is broken

On Sat, 27 Jun 2020 17:01:49 +0000 infinite_recursion wrote:

Having many users is not a bad thing. It's a great thing. In
my view, targeting a niche is a bad thing. Every OS should
target everyone as their users using compatible hardware.

we are not targeting a single niche though - that would, of
course be limiting the target audience - we are supporting
several different niches, and combinations of niches, in addition
to the standard distro, in order to support the largest number
of computers and personal tastes as possible; which increases
the potential user-base, well beyond what any other FSDG distro
does

On Sat, 27 Jun 2020 17:01:49 +0000 infinite_recursion wrote:

my view, if you have a package out there, it should work
especially the ones
without which the system won't start.

that is not what happened though - your computer did start
it was "KDE" that would not start - if the computer did not
start, that would be a top priority problem and would be
addressed immediately, displacing any other concerns of the day
it is impossible to ensure that all of the many thousands
of programs are always working perfectly - even in debian
stable, the distro with the largest team of any, one can find
many programs which are broken in some small way, or completely
broken

FWIW, "the standard parabola/arch system" is command-line only;
and that pretty much always works as expected - all graphical
applications are considered to be optional extras - i have been
working to establish "the standard parabola desktop system",
which we would put the highest priority on, along with the CLI
system; but that will be LXDE because it is the most complete
and KISS desktop with the best chance of also being always
functional - it is a perfect companion to the standard CLI
system, in that respect

that is because no one is expected to use only "the standard
system" - they are merely solid foundations, upon which to
customize - i customize my GUI system by removing most of LXDE
and keeping openbox - others may want to add things, such as
additional desktops; but there would always be at least one
working desktop and the CLI system to fall back on, when any of
the more elaborate, optional things break

On Sat, 27 Jun 2020 17:01:49 +0000 infinite_recursion wrote:

P.S. I've installed LXQt and Openbox. I hate it. It's ugly,
Only by
adding LXQt can I access my system bypassing KDE.

i suggested LXDE not LXQT; but there are dozens of other DEs -
deepin and cinnamon are two that come to mind, which exists
specifically to be "not ugly"