KDE Connect not working properly in 20.04

[Ascaris]

Hello! I've been using KDE Connect between my PCs to quickly move files around (faster than using my network file shares), share the clipboard, and open web sites on one of my other PCs. I use three PCs daily, each with one screen, as sort of a replacement for how some people use multiple screens, and KDE Connect greatly helped with that. Unfortunately, it no longer does. When 20.04 was released, I already had an installation of Kubuntu 18.04 and KDE Neon User Edition on one of the PCs, so I upgraded 18.04 to Eoan, then Focal (this was before the direct LTS to LTS upgrade was enabled), and everything worked very well except KDE Connect. Now when I pair the Kubuntu 20.04 PC with any other PC, it will automatically unpair itself if I refresh the KDE Connect list of devices on the network running KDE Connect. It also unpairs if I select suspend (sleep) mode or reboot on one of the paired PCs. It also just unpairs after a while (5 minutes?) even if the PCs are idle. It does not matter if I have the PCs connected to the router wirelessly or via ethernet, and I've tried removing the firewall from both ends (temporarily, just for the test) to make sure it was not doing something it shouldn't, and it didn't work. When it is paired, I can share the clipboard, ping, or open a web page on another PC, but file transfers do not work at all.

The progress meter appears on the target PC but never moves. This happens whether the 20.04 PC is the one initiating or receiving the file, with the other PC being Neon based on 18.04, or if both PCs are running 20.04. I tried creating a new user account and testing that, and it did the same. I even tried pairing a live session to my 18.04 Neon PC, and it did the same. Now that Neon has rebased to 20.04, the same issue is present there too. Even Mint 20 with "KDE Connect Indicator" does the same. I filed a bug over at KDE, but no word on it yet. I don't think the issue is in the KDE code, though, as Manjaro with the same versions (Plasma, framework, KDE Connect application) as Neon (and a newer Qt) works with KDE Connect flawlessly. It seems to be something in the underlying Ubuntu 20.04 base that is shared by Kubuntu, Neon, and Mint. But what?

It should not be Qt, as Neon 18.04 and 20.04 both use the same Qt version, but 18.04 works fine with KDE Connect and 20.04 does not. I prefer to stay in the Ubuntu universe and with KDE, but I don't want to go back to the bad old days of Kubuntu 18.04, with all of the rough edges that are still present there that are not in newer Plasma. If there is a workaround, I would love to know what it is! Any ideas welcome! I don't see anything obviously wrong in the log

[claydoh]

fwiw, does kde connect even support PC to PC connections, officially? I cannot find info that specifically says that it does.
I will bet it is the kdeconnect version in 20.04/KDE Neon/any recent distro that is the 'problem', not the distro.
I see the bug report, perhaps ask on their mailing list or telegram channel, etc?
https://community.kde.org/KDEConnect#Development

[Ascaris]

fwiw, does kde connect even support PC to PC connections, officially? I cannot find info that specifically says that it does.

If it doesn't, it should not show other PCs for pairing targets, let alone pair with them and offer to send files over, and it has worked well in the couple of years I have been using KDE. Whether it is official, I don't know, but I would have to conclude that it does. The phone thing is pretty heavily hyped, of course.

I will bet it is the kdeconnect version in 20.04/KDE Neon/any recent distro that is the 'problem', not the distro.

Neon 18.04 and 20.04 use the same version of everything KDE, including KDE Connect, Frameworks, Plasma, and Qt (which is not KDE's product, but it is built by them for Neon). KDE Connect works perfectly in Neon 18.04, but not Neon 20.04. Also, Manjaro is a rolling-release distro with the newest stuff (Plasma 5.19.4, Frameworks 5.72, KDE Connect 20.04, Qt 5.15), and it works perfectly fine despite being completely up to date.

I see the bug report, perhaps ask on their mailing list or telegram channel, etc? https://community.kde.org/KDEConnect#Development

I don't want to bug (heh) them too much... you know how temperamental devs can get when they feel harassed about a bug by a user.

There may be a library I can swap or a setting I can change, but I have no idea what!

[claydoh]

They most certainly do not have the same plasma versions etc

18.04 has plasma 5.12 LTS
20.04 has plasma 5.18 LTS

18.04 has kdeconnect 1.3.3 (1.3.5 via ppa)
20.04 has kdeconnect 1.4.0


But alas we are in a Kubuntu 20.04 specific forum and I think we are mixing our distros.

KDE neon has the same versions between 18.04 and 20.04. Kubuntu definitely does not.
And while the versions may be the same in Neon's releases the packaging and dependencies will have differences.


And Neon packages Qt for Neon, not KDE

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

[Ascaris]

I said Neon 18.04, not Kubuntu 18.04. Neon 18.04 uses Plasma 5.19.4, Qt 5.14.2, frameworks 5.72, and KDE Connect 20.04 (they changed the versioning schema to MMYY recently, like the other KDE applications). Just the same as Neon 20.04, until earlier today when Neon 20.04 got KDE Connect 20.08 (no fix though).

I'm using Neon 18.04 as a kind of shorthand to mean Neon based on 18.04. It's not actually part of the official title.

KDE is the developer of Neon btw.

[claydoh]

I said Neon 18.04, not Kubuntu 18.04. Neon 18.04 uses Plasma 5.19.4, Qt 5.14.2, frameworks 5.72, and KDE Connect 20.04 (they changed the versioning schema to MMYY recently, like the other KDE applications). Just the same as Neon 20.04, until earlier today when Neon 20.04 got KDE Connect 20.08 (no fix though).

Again, you posted tin the Kubuntu 20.04 section. Hence the confusion. Neon has its own section here, btw.

I'm using Neon 18.04 as a kind of shorthand to mean Neon based on 18.04. It's not actually part of the official title.

Yes, and in a Kubuntu 20.04 section on a Kubuntu forum, that will be confusing as heck

KDE is the developer of Neon btw.

Well.......not really. But that is not really important tbh.

You say you don't want to bug people, but honestly, if no one knows about this, no one will look at it. Most developers rarely if ever visit web forums or Reddit, so mailing lists, irc and telegram are the places to go. It could be something as simple as a minor difference in the build options between Neon Bionic and Neon Focal, or something different in one of the low level dependencies between the two. But unless someone who knows about these things looks at it (hopefully) we'll never know.

[Ascaris]

Again, you posted tin the Kubuntu 20.04 section. Hence the confusion. Neon has its own section here, btw.

Yes, and thanks for that bit of info (I had not noticed that Neon has a section of its own), but the problem exists also in Kubuntu 20.04, and it was the failure of KDE Connect in Kubuntu 20.04 I was talking about. I used Neon (based on 18.04) and Manjaro as examples of distros that use up to date libraries (Plasma, KDE Frameworks, Qt, and KDE Connect itself) and still have KDE Connect working, as a means of trying to get to the root of where the problem lies.

Neon based on 18.04 and Neon based on 20.04 seems like a particularly useful comparison because they both use the same versions of all of the libraries supplied in the Neon repo(s), yet Neon based on 18.04 has working KDE Connect (as does Kubuntu 18.04) and Neon based on 20.04 does not have working KDE Connect (and neither does Kubuntu 20.04). The daily build for Kubuntu "Groovy" doesn't work either, FWIW.

You say you don't want to bug people, but honestly, if no one knows about this, no one will look at it. Most developers rarely if ever visit web forums or Reddit, so mailing lists, irc and telegram are the places to go. It could be something as simple as a minor difference in the build options between Neon Bionic and Neon Focal, or something different in one of the low level dependencies between the two. But unless someone who knows about these things looks at it (hopefully) we'll never know.

Okay, I see what you are saying.

I did file the bug with KDE, and I also emailed the KDE Connect assignee (before I filed the bug; I did not know he would be the assignee at the time I sent the email) about the issue, using the email address supplied on the KDE Connect "Share and Receive" plugin itself. I know that a lot of users can be really demanding of devs, acting as though their pet bug is the only bug in existence and that the dev needs to fix it right now, and I don't want to be that person. Devs can sometimes get bogged down by people demanding things (the Mint blog has mentioned this in the recent past), and I want to make sure I'm not inadvertently crossing that line into being an annoyance.

You obviously know more than me about what the norm is, though, for bug reporting, so if you say it is something I should bring up, I can do that. Should I file a bug in Ubuntu also about it?