Announcement

**Qqmike** · Jun 02, 2016, 09:21 AM

Good to see you again, wizard10000. Welcome back.

**Snowhog** · Jun 02, 2016, 12:22 PM

Hey Wizard10000! Wow! Almost four years since your last post (other than those you made on your return today). As you know, we (KFN) doen't discriminate against those who are using another Linux distro; one of the things that sets us apart from many/most/all the other Forums on the 'Net.

**wizard10000** · Jun 02, 2016, 12:43 PM

Originally posted by Snowhog View Post

Hey Wizard10000! Wow! Almost four years since your last post (other than those you made on your return today). As you know, we (KFN) doen't discriminate against those who are using another Linux distro; one of the things that sets us apart from many/most/all the other Forums on the 'Net.

Good to talk to you again, Snowhog - hopefully I can learn a little and perhaps share a little of what I've learned. I have missed this tight little community

**MoonRise** · Jun 02, 2016, 04:44 PM

Haven't seen that avatar in a while! Glad to see you back!

**wizard10000** · Jun 03, 2016, 05:20 AM

Thanks, MoonRise

For our studio audience there are some things with Plasma 5 that are not making me happy but it appears to me that all of them can be resolved - which is the main reason I decided to give KDE another spin. Here's my short list of grumbles -

Plasma 5.6.4 appears to be slightly less than stable on my hardware. I think I can resolve some or all of this by switching from nouveau to a closed-source video driver.
After running *box for the past four years I've really come to appreciate my most-used applications on the right-click desktop menu instead of on the panel. Found a plugin in kde-apps that looked like it would do the trick but library names are inconsistent between Debian, Arch and SuSE so I've got some dependency issues; I'll probably just end up setting up the service menu manually.
So far plasma isn't playing real nice with conky; I've made considerable forward motion in resolving this but certain actions (like working with the panel) will cause conky to disappear until you click back on the desktop.
One I haven't figured out yet - running systemsettings under kdesudo so I can set the theme for applications that run under root isn't working at all - breeze appears to be broken under the root account and I'm about to just copy KDE config from my home directory to /root to see if I can resolve the issue. Running dolphin under the root account is a little weird as well - I have no icons
Last, I'm still grumbling about dolphin deciding that dotfiles and dotfolders need to be a different color than the not-hidden files. I know how to fix it, I just haven't made the time yet

All things considered it's a pretty short list and there's nothing in there that can't be fixed; I think plasma 5 is a giant leap forward, but there's gonna be a little bit of pain involved and being on the bleeding edge does come with issues, but that's what I signed up for when I started running Sid

cheers -

**GreyGeek** · Jun 03, 2016, 06:10 AM

Thumbs up, Wiz!

I didn't like the Plasma5 metro when it was in Neon and 15.10, so I decided to try Mint KDE 17.3, my first excursion away from Kubuntu in six years. It lasted 3 months. Mint was fine over all but the deal breaker was how it handled Btrfs - not very well, compared to Kubuntu. So, I decided to give 16.04 a test run. My first shocker was when I realized Plasma 5 was more than doubling the speed of Plasma 4 on my Acer! �� Minecraft was hitting 50-60 fps compared to 25-30 in 14.04. Steams Universe Sandbox^2 is smooth as silk with full features. Under 14.04 I had to turn off particles to get the planetary orbits to stop jerking, and some simulations were impossible to watch.

Plasma 5.6 cleared up so pseudo crashes and has been stable as a rock on my Acer. And the Btrfs + Snapper combo is too powerful to do without.

**wizard10000** · Jun 03, 2016, 07:09 AM

Originally posted by GreyGeek View Post

Thumbs up, Wiz!

I didn't like the Plasma5 metro when it was in Neon and 15.10, so I decided to try Mint KDE 17.3, my first excursion away from Kubuntu in six years. It lasted 3 months. Mint was fine over all but the deal breaker was how it handled Btrfs - not very well, compared to Kubuntu. So, I decided to give 16.04 a test run. My first shocker was when I realized Plasma 5 was more than doubling the speed of Plasma 4 on my Acer! �� Minecraft was hitting 50-60 fps compared to 25-30 in 14.04. Steams Universe Sandbox^2 is smooth as silk with full features. Under 14.04 I had to turn off particles to get the planetary orbits to stop jerking, and some simulations were impossible to watch.

Plasma 5.6 cleared up so pseudo crashes and has been stable as a rock on my Acer. And the Btrfs + Snapper combo is too powerful to do without.

Well hi, GreyGeek

So far I really like what I see, and running Sid I'm still on the bleeding edge a little bit but things generally get fixed pretty quickly. I've found Unstable to be a better desktop platform for my needs than Testing ***provided one pays attention when upgrading***. I have apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges installed and have been able to head off any major breakage for a couple of years

I have seen some major improvements, some of which came in with V4.x and plasma 5 is pretty snappy; I think my issue is xrender versus GLX and if that's the case it's pretty easily resolved.

Looking forward to having this thing configurated the way I want, then we're gonna work on reducing resource use - that is of course, without giving up my wobbly windows

**dibl** · Jun 04, 2016, 02:30 PM

Originally posted by wizard10000 View Post

I'm not sure how welcome a Debian user is going to be on KFN ....

Totally welcome, according to this Debian sid user!

Yep, plasma-desktop 5 is still something less than bug-free, although this last round of updates to 5.6.4-1 has cleaned up some issues. The "kdesu/kdesudo" thing is not working correctly yet -- it does bring up the administrator password dialog, but then it fails silently. But in konsole you can "su" to root and then run any of the KDE packages, with a "dbus-launch" prefix.

My conky is in good shape. Did you rewrite it to comply with the lua scripting rules?

**wizard10000** · Jun 05, 2016, 05:35 AM

Originally posted by dibl View Post

Totally welcome, according to this Debian sid user!

Yep, plasma-desktop 5 is still something less than bug-free, although this last round of updates to 5.6.4-1 has cleaned up some issues. The "kdesu/kdesudo" thing is not working correctly yet -- it does bring up the administrator password dialog, but then it fails silently. But in konsole you can "su" to root and then run any of the KDE packages, with a "dbus-launch" prefix.

My conky is in good shape. Did you rewrite it to comply with the lua scripting rules?

kubicle posted a better fix for kdesudo than the one I did - you might look here - https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post386823. grub recovery console used to work without a root password but I had to add one with kernel 4.5 I believe. I still use sudo/kdesudo 100% of the time, though

Although I haven't rewritten conkyrc to comply with lua scripting rules it still works fine; and has worked perfectly in fluxbox and openbox. It does seem to be working a little better with recent updates, though. Clickable screenshot below

edit: Decided to post my conkyrc to see if anyone with more experience than me can see an issue.

Code:

background yes
use_xft yes
xftalpha 1
update_interval 1.0
update_interval_on_battery 5.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_type normal
own_window_argb_visual yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 200 200
maximum_width 240
draw_shades no
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
default_color cccccc
default_shade_color 000000
default_outline_color 828282
alignment top_right
gap_x 12
gap_y 42
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
# override_utf8_locale no
# Displays degree symbol, instead of &Acirc;&deg;, etc.
override_utf8_locale yes

TEXT
$alignc${font Open Sans Light:size=18}${time %l:%M %P}${font}
$alignc${font Open Sans Light:size=8}  ${time %A}, ${time %B} ${time %e}${font}
${font Arial:size=8}uptime:$alignr$uptime
cpu freq:  ${alignr}${freq 1} mhz
cpu temp: ${alignr}${exec sensors | grep "CPU:" | cut -c18-24}
cpu 0:$alignr${cpu cpu1}%
cpu 1:$alignr${cpu cpu2}%
cpu 2:$alignr${cpu cpu3}%
cpu 3:$alignr${cpu cpu4}%
cpu 4:$alignr${cpu cpu5}%
cpu 5:$alignr${cpu cpu6}%
cpu 6:$alignr${cpu cpu7}%
cpu 7:$alignr${cpu cpu8}%
memory:$alignr$mem / $memmax
$alignr${membar 3,150} ${if_existing /proc/swaps partition}
swap:$alignr$swap / $swapmax
$alignr${swapbar 3,150} ${endif}
root:$alignr${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /}
$alignr${fs_bar 3,150 /}
/home:$alignr${fs_used /home} / ${fs_size /home}
$alignr${fs_bar 3,150 /home}
${if_existing /proc/net/route wlan0}${voffset -16}
${wireless_essid} $alignr${wireless_link_qual_perc wlan0}%
$alignr${wireless_link_bar 3,150 wlan0}${endif}
${if_match "${battery_short}" != "F"}
battery:  ${battery_percent}%$alignr${battery_time}
$alignr${battery_bar 3,150}${endif}

**wizard10000** · Jun 05, 2016, 09:35 AM

Replying to my own post, here's what happened with the grumbles

Plasma 5.6.4 appears to be slightly less than stable on my hardware. I think I can resolve some or all of this by switching from nouveau to a closed-source video driver.

nvidia-legacy drivers increase my RAM usage at idle from 360mb to 600mb. grumble. Fortunately a new version of nouveau happened last night and it seems to be working okay and doesn't give me the font weirdness that Nvidia does on my high-dpi laptop screen.
After running *box for the past four years I've really come to appreciate my most-used applications on the right-click desktop menu instead of on the panel. Found a plugin in kde-apps that looked like it would do the trick but library names are inconsistent between Debian, Arch and SuSE so I've got some dependency issues; I'll probably just end up setting up the service menu manually.

The custom desktop menu at kde-apps.org worked after I figured out which libraries it needed and compiled it; problem is the menu was slow - 3 seconds or so for the menu to display. I ended up creating keyboard shortcuts for my most-used applications instead
So far plasma isn't playing real nice with conky; I've made considerable forward motion in resolving this but certain actions (like working with the panel) will cause conky to disappear until you click back on the desktop.

Still have a tiny bit of conky weirdness but it's working pretty well. It worked perfectly in fluxbox and openbox so I'm gonna blame Plasma 5 for this
One I haven't figured out yet - running systemsettings under kdesudo so I can set the theme for applications that run under root isn't working at all - breeze appears to be broken under the root account and I'm about to just copy KDE config from my home directory to /root to see if I can resolve the issue. Running dolphin under the root account is a little weird as well - I have no icons

Fixed. kubicle's help was invaluable and I ended up resolving the big font/no theme issue with root applications (except for synaptic, that is).
Last, I'm still grumbling about dolphin deciding that dotfiles and dotfolders need to be a different color than the not-hidden files. I know how to fix it, I just haven't made the time yet

Decided to just live with this for now.

**acheron** · Jun 05, 2016, 10:45 AM

Originally posted by wizard10000 View Post

So far plasma isn't playing real nice with conky; I've made considerable forward motion in resolving this but certain actions (like working with the panel) will cause conky to disappear until you click back on the desktop.

Still have a tiny bit of conky weirdness but it's working pretty well. It worked perfectly in fluxbox and openbox so I'm gonna blame Plasma 5 for this

That is long running I think.

See: https://github.com/brndnmtthws/conky/issues/145

Also seen some discussion of similar issue on Arch and OpenSuse forums, with no complete resolution for anyone I think.

**dibl** · Jun 05, 2016, 12:35 PM

kubicle's /etc/sudoers.d/ environment fix didn't work -- not sure whether my somewhat aged sid installation is at fault, or something else. I didn't persist with it, because I've long since become accustomed to opening a root konsole, and issuing "dbus-launch kate" or whatever I need.

My conky is a little more elaborate in displaying temps for the CPUs, GPU, and drives. Also the four top processes and network activity. It is very stable so I'll post the conkyrc for anyone who is interested:

Code:

conky.config = {
   alignment = 'top_right',
   background = false,
   border_width = 10,
   cpu_avg_samples = 2,
   --default_color = 'white',
   --default_outline_color = 'black',
   ---default_shade_color = 'black',
   double_buffer = true,
   draw_borders = false,
   draw_graph_borders = yes,
   draw_outline = false,
   draw_shades = true,
   use_xft = true,
   font = 'terminus:size=9',
   gap_x = 10,
   gap_y = 50,
   maximum_width = 345,
   minimum_width = 345,
   net_avg_samples = 2,
   out_to_console = false,
   out_to_stderr = false,
   extra_newline = false,
   own_window = true,
   own_window_type = 'normal',
   own_window_class = 'Conky',
   own_window_hints = 'undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager',
   own_window_transparent = true,
   --stippled_borders = 0,
   update_interval = 0.6,
   uppercase = false,
   use_spacer = none,
   show_graph_scale = false,
   show_graph_range = false,
   text_buffer_size = 4096,
   temperature_unit = 'fahrenheit',
   double_buffer = true,
   short_units = true,
   own_window_argb_visual = true,
}

conky.text = [[
${goto 105}${font UbuntuTitleBold:size=20}${color4}Hibiscus${font}

#Host: $alignr $nodename
#${font Terminus:size=8}
${font Terminus:style=bold:size=14}${time %k:%M:%S}${alignr}${time %a  %d.%b.%Y}${font}

Uptime: $uptime 
#Updates Available: ${execi 1200 apt-get update search "~U" | wc -l | tail}${font}
Conky:${conky_version}
$sysname $kernel $alignr $machine
#File system: ${fs_type}
${color light blue}
${font Terminus:style=bold:size=11}PROCESSORS $hr
#${font}CPU:$alignr ${exec cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'model name' | sort -u | cut -c 18-59}
${font}CPU1: ${cpu cpu0}% ${cpubar cpu0}
CPU2: ${cpu cpu1}% ${cpubar cpu1}
CPU3: ${cpu cpu2}% ${cpubar cpu2}
CPU4: ${cpu cpu3}% ${cpubar cpu3}
CPU5: ${cpu cpu4}% ${cpubar cpu4}
CPU6: ${cpu cpu5}% ${cpubar cpu5}
CPU7: ${cpu cpu6}% ${cpubar cpu6}
CPU8: ${cpu cpu7}% ${cpubar cpu7}
${color pink}
${font Terminus:style=bold:size=11}MEMORY $hr
${font}RAM ${alignc}     $mem/$memmax  $alignr $memperc%
${membar}
Swap:  ${alignc} $swap/$swapmax $alignr $swapperc%
${swapbar 6}
${color white} 
${font Terminus:style=bold:size=11}TEMPS $hr
${font Terminus:size=9}${color green}Core 0:     ${color white}${execi 5 /usr/bin/sensors | grep Core\ 0| paste -s | cut -d+ -f2 | cut -c1-7}${color green}    ${alignr}${color green}Core 1: ${color white}${execi 5 /usr/bin/sensors | grep Core\ 1| paste -s | cut -d+ -f2 | cut -c1-7}${color green}
${font Terminus:size=9}${color green}Core 2:     ${color white}${execi 5 /usr/bin/sensors | grep Core\ 2| paste -s | cut -d+ -f2 | cut -c1-7}${color green}    ${alignr}${color green}Core 3: ${color white}${execi 5 /usr/bin/sensors | grep Core\ 3| paste -s | cut -d+ -f2 | cut -c1-7}${color green}
${font}GPU Core: ${color white}${execi 1 /usr/bin/nvidia-settings -q gpucoretemp | grep 'gpu:0]):' | awk '{print $4}' | cut -c1-2}${color white}°C${font Terminus:size=9}${alignr}${color green}MOBO Ambient: ${color white}${execi 1 /usr/bin/sensors | grep temp2| paste -s | cut -d+ -f2 | cut -c1-7}${color green}
${font Terminus:size=9}${color green}WD1000-1:    ${color white}${execi 180 sudo /usr/sbin/hddtemp /dev/sdd | cut -c35-36}°C ${alignr}${font Terminus:size=9}${color green}WD1000-2:    ${color white}${execi 180 sudo /usr/sbin/hddtemp /dev/sde | cut -c35-36}°C
${color orange}
${font Terminus:style=bold:size=11}FILESYSTEMS $hr
${font Terminus:size=9}${color orange}/                ${color white}${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /}${color grey}${alignr}${fs_bar 5,120 /}
${font Terminus:size=9}${color orange}DATA          ${color white}${fs_used /mnt/DATA} / ${fs_size /mnt/DATA}${color grey}${alignr}${fs_bar 5,120 /mnt/DATA}
${font Terminus:size=9}${color orange}REVODATA ${color white}${fs_used /mnt/REVODATA} / ${fs_size /mnt/REVODATA}${color grey}${alignr}${fs_bar 5,120 /mnt/REVODATA}
${font Terminus:size=9}${color orange}SDA2         ${color white}${fs_used /mnt/REVODATA} / ${fs_size /mnt/SDA2}${color grey}${alignr}${fs_bar 5,120 /mnt/SDA2}
${color white}
${font Terminus:style=bold:size=11}TOP PROCESSES $hr${font}
${top name 1}$alignc${top mem 1}%$alignr${top cpu 1}MB
${top name 2}$alignc${top mem 2}%$alignr${top cpu 2}MB
${top name 3}$alignc${top mem 3}%$alignr${top cpu 3}MB
${top name 4}$alignc${top mem 4}%$alignr${top cpu 4}MB
${color yellow}
${font Terminus:style=bold:size=11}NETWORK $hr${font}
${color yellow}Down:  ${color white}${downspeed eth0} /s ${alignr}${color yellow}Up:  ${color white}${upspeed eth0} /s
${color grey}${downspeedgraph eth0 15,100 000000 ff0000} ${alignr}${upspeedgraph eth0 15,100 000000 ff0000}
${color white}${totaldown eth0} ${alignr}${totalup eth0}
${color yellow}Inbound Connections:  ${color white}${tcp_portmon 1 32767 count}${color yellow}${alignr}Service/Port
${font Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:size=8}${color white}${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 0} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 0}
${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 1} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 1}
${tcp_portmon 1 32767 rhost 2} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 lservice 2}${font}
${color yellow}Outbound Connections:  ${color white}${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 count}${color yellow}${alignr}Service/Port
${font Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:size=8}${color white}${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 0} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 0}
${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 1} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 1}
${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rhost 2} ${alignr} ${tcp_portmon 32768 61000 rservice 2}
]]

For desktop wallpaper, I'm using the Portalview Live Wallpaper python script and pulling in images from eight webcams in Europe and North America.

In dolphin, all my folders are blue. Light blue for alt-dot folders, and darker for the rest. Some of the image file icons have changed in a recent plasma update.

**wizard10000** · Jun 07, 2016, 04:45 AM

Originally posted by wizard10000 View Post

...After running *box for the past four years I've really come to appreciate my most-used applications on the right-click desktop menu instead of on the panel. Found a plugin in kde-apps that looked like it would do the trick but library names are inconsistent between Debian, Arch and SuSE so I've got some dependency issues; I'll probably just end up setting up the service menu manually.

The custom desktop menu at kde-apps.org worked after I figured out which libraries it needed and compiled it; problem is the menu was slow - 3 seconds or so for the menu to display. I ended up creating keyboard shortcuts for my most-used applications instead

Got this fixed mostly. Turned out the issue with the slow menu was pretty much resolved by rolling back to nouveau; delay is now like 250ms instead of 2-3 seconds. Nvidia's legacy drivers really, really don't like my high-dpi laptop display. I did have to dig around a bit to get dependencies resolved before I could compile it - the readme in the archive has instructions for Arch and SuSE and library names aren't consistent between distributions but I got it figured out - too bad I didn't write it down as I could have given the developer a list of libraries needed to compile on Debian derivatives. Think I'll go back and see if I can figure it out and share with the developer

But - I now have a working right-click desktop menu with my five or six most-used applications on it.

Still some niggling little issues with it, though - like the exit options (logout, shutdown, reboot, hibernate) don't work in Plasma 5.6.4 and the menu relies heavily on a kickoff favorites menu that's no longer used, so rather than add my favorite apps to the menu I had to edit ~/.config/kickoffrc but it worked.

I'm at the office now but will post a screenshot of my fancy right-click desktop menu this evening

**SecretCode** · Jun 07, 2016, 09:25 AM

Welcome (back) wiz!

... so, have we stopped burning traitors at the stake?

Announcement

taptaptaptap is this thing on? ;-]

taptaptaptap is this thing on? ;-]

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