Let Testing Snowball with Kubuntu 19.10 Eoan

[NoWorries]

Since Disco was only released on the 18th April, I was surprised to see eoan-desktop-amd64 available for download from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/daily-live/current/. I could not resist the temptation to install it on my Laptop in its own partition. So I now have Disco and Eoan on this Laptop.

It was good to see all the labels correct during the installation which went smoothly and all applications are working for me as they did on Disco. That is, LibreOffice Impress still messes up showing embedded videos and Kdenlive has limitations which make it unusable for me. I still have another Laptop with the previous LTS, Bionic 18.04 and this does not have the problems that I have with Disco and Eoan.

Currently the Info Centre shows the latest, ie



So I hope you are able to successfully download this new LTS and participate in its progress by the great team of developers.

[NoWorries]

Oops, I made a big mistake, as this is not an LTS but the LTS version will come next year. Anyhow 19.10 is progressing nicely and the main difference since the above post is that the Info Centre, KDE plasma, is now at 5.15.5.

I did have problems with Kdenlive and I have finally worked out how to get it to work correctly. What I mean by this is, keyboard actions such as Shift+R to do a cut and then move the cut clip with my mouse, did not work.

Being on a UHD display, I used a non-unity value for Scale Display in "Display and Monitor" of "System Settings". With say, Scale Display = 1.5, Shift+R sometimes works, but dragging with a cursor will either not work or the adjacent clip will move! If I keep Scale Display=1, every keyboard and mouse action works as it should. For example, I can change monitor resolution, have different resolutions between my laptop and an external monitor as well as set the font DPI to a higher value.

I am not sure if this problem should be filed as a Kdenlive bug or not. Please let me known if you think this is worth a bug report.

As a final comment, LibreOffice Impress with an embedded video is still very unimpressive. I have previously reported this problem before 19.10 was released.

[NoWorries]

Kontact had been working extremely well for me since I first installed 19.10. However for several days now, Kontact does not start and what I get when I launch it from the command line is:

:~$ kontact
kontact: malloc.c:2392: sysmalloc: Assertion `(old_top == initial_top (av) && old_size == 0) || ((unsigned long) (old_size) >= MINSIZE && prev_inuse (old_top) && ((unsigned long) old_end & (pagesize - 1)) == 0)' failed.
KCrash: crashing... crashRecursionCounter = 2
KCrash: Application Name = kontact path = /usr/bin pid = 5052
KCrash: Arguments: /usr/bin/kontact 
Alarm clock

Am I the only one with this problem or have others encountered this problem?

[NoWorries]

Kontact now works for me and has done so for just under a week. So I am very pleased to have it working again.

I have used Kontact since 2004, and it contains a lot of information on my appointments and activities which I sometimes refer to. I often wonder, if the length of time I have used Kontact through all its version updates, is my undoing. I decided to start Kontact at the command line, and I was surprised to get a list of files in .local/share/akonadi/file_db_data that it could not find even though it appeared to be working. The list I stored in Kate was 375 lines long! An example of a few lines at the beginning is:

:~$ kontact
org.kde.pim.kidentitymanagement: IdentityManager: There was no default identity. Marking first one as default.
kf5.kxmlgui: this does not work on a KActionCollection containing actions!
kf5.kservice.services: KServiceTypeTrader: serviceType "KOrganizer/Part" not found
"http://www.kde.org/dot/kde-apps-content.rdf"
"http://www.kubuntu.org/news/feed"
org.kde.pim.kidentitymanagement: IdentityManager: There was no default identity. Marking first one as default.
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/69/4569_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/66/4566_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/65/4565_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/57/4557_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/56/4556_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/53/4553_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/50/4550_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/46/4546_r1" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/42/4542_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/41/4541_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/37/4537_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/34/4534_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/32/4532_r1" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/28/4528_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/27/4527_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/24/4524_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/70/3970_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/69/3969_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/68/3968_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/67/3967_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/66/3966_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/65/3965_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/63/3963_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/62/3962_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/61/3961_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/60/3960_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/59/3959_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/57/3957_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/55/3955_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/53/3953_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/51/3951_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/50/3950_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/49/3949_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/48/3948_r1" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/47/3947_r1" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/46/3946_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/44/3944_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/36/3936_r1" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/32/3932_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/30/3930_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/29/3929_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/25/3925_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/22/3922_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/13/3913_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/10/3910_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/09/3909_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/07/3907_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/02/3902_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/01/3901_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/00/3900_r1" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/99/3899_r1" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/97/3897_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/96/3896_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/94/3894_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/93/3893_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/87/3887_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/86/3886_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/84/3884_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/83/3883_r0" "No such file or directory"
org.kde.pim.akonadicore: Failed to open external payload: "/home/aurora/.local/share/akonadi/file_db_data/78/3878_r0" "No such file or directory"

I found that I had many files with "r1" instead of "r0". So I took on the mammoth task of changing all the offending file names to what Kontact was wanting. After many hours with KRename I was able to get the following output from a command line startup of Kontact

:~$ kontact
org.kde.pim.kidentitymanagement: IdentityManager: There was no default identity. Marking first one as default.
kf5.kxmlgui: this does not work on a KActionCollection containing actions!
kf5.kservice.services: KServiceTypeTrader: serviceType "KOrganizer/Part" not found
org.kde.knotifications: env says KDE is running but SNI unavailable -- check KDE_FULL_SESSION and XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP
org.kde.pim.kidentitymanagement: IdentityManager: There was no default identity. Marking first one as default.
"http://www.kde.org/dot/kde-apps-content.rdf"
"http://www.kubuntu.org/news/feed"
kf5.kxmlgui: 0x55a93757e0d0 deleted without having been removed from the factory first. This will leak standalone popupmenus and could lead to crashes.
kf5.kxmlgui: 0x55a9375797b8 deleted without having been removed from the factory first. This will leak standalone popupmenus and could lead to crashes.
kf5.kxmlgui: 0x55a93757d0c8 deleted without having been removed from the factory first. This will leak standalone popupmenus and could lead to crashes.
kf5.kxmlgui: 0x55a93757a1d8 deleted without having been removed from the factory first. This will leak standalone popupmenus and could lead to crashes.
kf5.kxmlgui: 0x55a937561ce8 deleted without having been removed from the factory first. This will leak standalone popupmenus and could lead to crashes.
kf5.kxmlgui: 0x55a937579e18 deleted without having been removed from the factory first. This will leak standalone popupmenus and could lead to crashes.
kf5.kxmlgui: 0x55a937585700 deleted without having been removed from the factory first. This will leak standalone popupmenus and could lead to crashes.

Not being familiar with the way Kontact works, I am wondering if these messages are to be taken seriously or not. Is there something I need to do to stop these messages?

I would also be like to know if anyone else gets this type of output when starting Kontact at the command line. I should also point out that I do not have Kmail installed and that may be contributing to the messages I get.

Another problem that I have with both Kontact and KOrganizer is the space above and below text which I have not found a way to fix. What I mean is this:



I am not sure if this is related to using a UHD display. Scaling to a lower resolution makes no difference. Once again if someone knows how to fix this I would like to know.

All the above is a list of annoyances which will make this a great distribution when resolved. Keep up the good work!

[NoWorries]

I have previously complained about LibreOffice Impress with embedded videos not working correctly, ie

As a final comment, LibreOffice Impress with an embedded video is still very unimpressive. I have previously reported this problem before 19.10 was released.

As I want to use this version as much as possible during its development, I have now found a way to install LibreOffice Impress 6.1.6.3. I followed the procedures in https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/...parallel/Linux and did not finish the steps to completely replace the currently installed LibreOffice 6.2.4.2. I created another icon and located the shell script "simpress" for LibreOffice Impress 6.1.6.3.

With this approach I can still check on LibreOffice updates to see when embedded videos are fixed and in the meantime I can use the 6.1.6.3 version of Impress.

[NoWorries]

It is now 2 months since Kubuntu 19.04 was released and work started on Eoan. I have found it very stable and in fact use it all the time. A little while ago I found the following comment regarding ubuntu-19-10 at https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/05/...lease-features. It stated:

"Because this is the last short-term release before the next long-term support (LTS) release is due, Ubuntu devs will opt to introduce major changes now. That way, any implementation or usability issues can be found and ironed out well ahead of next April."

The release dates for Kubuntu 19.10 are:

Feature Freeze: August 22, 2019
Beta Release: September 26, 2019
Final Freeze: October 10, 2019
Final Release: October 17, 2019

The current Info Centre state of my system is:



The only listed item that has not had a significant version upgrade since my first Info Centre that I started with this post listing above is, Qt Version which is still at 5.12.2 The progress and remarkable stability is really outstanding and you can also enjoy this if you don't mind lots of updates each day.

Well Done Developers!

[NoWorries]

I noticed that with KDE Plasma 5.16.1 and KDE Frameworks 5.90.0 there is more support for Wayland. So I decided to have another go at trying Wayland out and I now have it working.

I wasn't sure which packages to install when I used Synaptic with Wayland in the search box. My initial selection resulted in not being able to login, so I had to return to my Plasma desktop and have another go at installing more Wayland related packages. My additional packages let me login but I then couldn't Logout. After more trial and error I ended up with the packages listed below.



If anybody is familiar with Wayland, I would appreciate knowing what extra packages I should install.

Now that I have used it frequently, I can report on what problems I have found. The most outstanding problem is with System Settings > Display and Monitor. I have a UHD Laptop with a UHD external Monitor. Both of these were Scale 2x. I found with this setting Kdenlive works well. However, I can only change the resolution on the External monitor. My Laptop monitor, which I consider to be the primary display has no resolution option. I suspect that this is the reason why both my Kubuntu Default Panel and my empty panel, were on the external panel and nothing was on my Laptop. So I have now populated my Laptop screen with the Panels that were there before I tried Wayland and even though I removed the panels on my external monitor they are back again. The panels on my Wayland external monitor are identical to the laptop screen on my plasma desktop.

The only applications which I have had problems with is LibreOffice 6.2.4.2. Impress doesn't show anything on the external monitor when I start a Slide Show. I find that LibreOffice 6.1.6.3 Impress works as it should for a Slide Show. Another "feature" of LibreOffice 6.2.4.2 Writer is that when selecting Menu items, they sometimes appear on the other side of the Writer window. I have also had a number of instances when Writer crashes. Calc has similar features and I have experienced cell contents disappearing when I click on them. I should point out that I have not experienced any problem with LibreOffice 6.1.6.3 which I have also installed on my system.

Another problem area is with an Empty Panel > More Settings > Windows can Cover. An application can cover it, but if the cursor is moved to the screen edge of the Empty Panel, is does not show the Empty Panel.

Also, Spectacle launch does not show the window. The Spectacle Window is shown when the mouse is clicked and then Area can be selected. There only three options, ie Full Screen (All Monitors), Current Screen, Window Under Cursor.

That is all that I have currently found to not work correctly with Wayland. I have found ways to work around limitations, particularly only using LibreOffice 6.1.6.3.

I am certainly very impress with the rate of improvement in Wayland and I suspect that it will be ready for serious use when Kubuntu 19.10 is released.

[Don B. Cilly]

So, 19.10 has Plasma 5.16. Wow.
I thought only Neon Unstable had that.

On that, I have:
Kernel: 4.18.0-21-generic x86_64 bits
Plasma: 5.16.80 (Qt 5.12.3)
Frameworks: 5.60.0

So, (only slightly) newer Plasma but an older kernel.
So much for bleedin' edge :·)

[Snowhog]

Bleeding edge refers to the KDE packages, not the base kernel.

[Don B. Cilly]

Yeah, well, who cares, I am not going to install - or even try - something called Eoan Ermine anyway
Let me guess. They absolutely couldn't think of any other adjective beginning with E?

Actually I'm really happy with Neon Unstable... for the moment anyway.

[NoWorries]

Good to hear from a happy Neon member.

This morning my Plasma was updated to 5.16.2 so Eoan is still in the catchup for Plasma. I also do not like the name "Eoan" and often have to check that I have spelt it correctly!

One of the reasons I like the Kernel which is now at 5.2.0-6 is that, as I take my laptop with me, I can often get close to 9Hrs on battery. This is something which I couldn't get with the 4 series kernel.

[Don B. Cilly]

Well, the more I use it, the more I like it, actually.
I installed it because it had Plasma 5.16 which would solve my clock problems
It looked, felt and behaved like a Kubuntu 18.04 except... the clock looked good ;·) and... it was updating almost constantly.

But.
On 18.04, it was quite troublesome to get rid of update notifications, and even then - I have a Conky with top processes - it was updating the xapian index (which I find most annoying) every half-hour or so.
Even purging, blacklisting, nuking and thoroughly exterminating Discover didn't get rid of that.
And.
It was still running unattended upgrades.
Now, I may be paranoid, a control freak and even totally insane - I'm a sailboat captain, so... but I don't want unattended upgrades.

Whereas, on Neon-unstable.
It took me five minutes to get rid of the notifications.
It doesn't do unattended upgrades.
It never updates the xapian index (except just after updates or package installs).
As it mostly updates the same packages over again, updating every few days or so is not that bad.
I didn't even have to get rid of Discover, I use that or Muon for updates and they're both OK - they do the job.

Other than that, I don't really see any difference from K18 - I'm not an advanced user.

[acheron]

So, 19.10 has Plasma 5.16. Wow.
I thought only Neon Unstable had that.

On that, I have:
Kernel: 4.18.0-21-generic x86_64 bits
Plasma: 5.16.80 (Qt 5.12.3)
Frameworks: 5.60.0

So, (only slightly) newer Plasma but an older kernel.
So much for bleedin' edge :·)

That version number actually means you are on what will become Plasma 5.17, so yes it is the bleeding edge even if number is only a small apparent bump.

This morning my Plasma was updated to 5.16.2 so Eoan is still in the catchup for Plasma.

Only compared to the unstable master branches of Plasma development, which you could never expect to find in Kubuntu development release, outside of adding a PPA with git builds.

I also do not like Eoan and often have to check that I have spelt it correctly!.

I am still mistyping it every so often in changelogs and git branches! :cry

[Don B. Cilly]

On neon:
not@all:~$ which unattended-upgrades
not@all:~$
not@all:~$ locate unattended-upgrades
not@all:~$

On K18:
not@all:/media/not/K18/usr/bin$ ll unatt*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 81388 Apr 29 12:13 unattended-upgrade*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 Apr 29 12:13 unattended-upgrades -> unattended-upgrade*

[verndog]

Good to hear from a happy Neon member.

This morning my Plasma was updated to 5.16.2 so Eoan is still in the catchup for Plasma...

Catch up to what exactly? Do you even notice any difference from one minor KDE update to the next? I don't.