KDE Plasma becoming more stable for each version?

M

Monti

Hi!

My good old FreeBSD machine went dead (with Xfce) a little while ago, so at the moment I am using a machine with Devuan and KDE Plasma 5.8.3 which, when it comes to stability, I am not satisfied with.

Concidering the evolvement of KDE Plasma I am wondering if you guys who have been running FreeBSD with KDE Plasma for a long time would say that KDE Plasma has become more stable for each version up to 5.18.4.1?

The reason for asking is that I would like to continue with using KDE Plasma with my new FreeBSD setup, but KDE Plasma has to be more reliable than the 5.8.3 version on the computer I am using now.

Thanks

Monti
 
Hello,

I switched to x11-wm/xfce4 with x11/sddm login manager because latest x11/kde5 was not stable, it was fast and looking amazing in dark theme with deskutils/latte-dock but there is a bug in the internet browser which is installed by default that you can't close the open tabs with the closing icon and some times windows are flicking and becoming empty which was forcing me to restart the machine, keyboard layout is very bad when it comes to keys shortcuts for your native language, so x11-wm/xfce4 with x11/plank and some customization get the job done.

Good luck!
 
in linux plasma is definitively getting better, still i am struggling to make it work correctly in a desktop with relatively old specs (intel i5 ivy bridge).
 
This is very strange, I run KDE5 and FreeBSD 12.1 on my Thinkpad x61 with a Core2Duo (this x61 is almost a 15 years old model), and I got fine performances with it. The only problem I ever had with KDE5 on that machine was about UTF8 support, but I found a solution quite quickly by searching the FreeBSD forum. Maybe in your case you got some underlying process that drains your performances off. For instance, Baloo (file indexer) can be a common problem with KDE, but you can disable it from the KDE settings quite easily, but I think you can get the same problem from the Gnome 3 counterpart, it is called Tracker if I remember correctly. But in both case you can disable it, better use locate command, it is a lot faster than those.
 
Dogers said:
This is very strange, I run KDE5 and FreeBSD 12.1 on my Thinkpad x61 with a Core2Duo (this x61 is almost a 15 years old model), and I got fine performances with it. The only problem I ever had with KDE5 on that machine was about UTF8 support, but I found a solution quite quickly by searching the FreeBSD forum. Maybe in your case you got some underlying process that drains your performances off. For instance, Baloo (file indexer) can be a common problem with KDE, but you can disable it from the KDE settings quite easily, but I think you can get the same problem from the Gnome 3 counterpart, it is called Tracker if I remember correctly. But in both case you can disable it, better use locate command, it is a lot faster than those.
Click to expand...
i'm struggling since last week to manage to get NTFS usbstick working with dev/udev think, i've installed bsdisks fuse-ntfs and of course made fuse_enable="YES" and fusefe_enable="YES" in respectivley /boot/loader.conf and /etc/rc.conf without success.
FAT32 ubsticks works perfectly .
 
Sorry for my late reply.

I have done some digging around and read that the KDE Plasma team are very active/responsive in making KDE Plasma a very stable desktop system.

Second I have also read that when it comes to system resources the KDE Plasma is now down to same levels as Xfce.

Both these things are very interesting I think. So I'll try and see how things work out.
 
tuxador said:
i'm struggling since last week to manage to get NTFS usbstick working with dev/udev think, i've installed bsdisks fuse-ntfs and of course made fuse_enable="YES" and fusefe_enable="YES" in respectivley /boot/loader.conf and /etc/rc.conf without success.
FAT32 ubsticks works perfectly .
Click to expand...
Ended up using dsbmc and it works perfectly with NTFS external disks.
 
Monti said:
Sorry for my late reply.

I have done some digging around and read that the KDE Plasma team are very active/responsive in making KDE Plasma a very stable desktop system.

Second I have also read that when it comes to system resources the KDE Plasma is now down to same levels as Xfce.

Both these things are very interesting I think. So I'll try and see how things work out.
Click to expand...

I think you'll be happy with it. I gave Plasma a try when it first came to ports on FreeBSD (5.12?) a couple years ago and wasn't impressed. But today it is very robust. I switched my desktop back to FreeBSD in December and I tried XFCE and wasn't too happy, came back to KDE Plasma. It definitely has improved as it has aged. I think the only problems I have now are problems that I had on FreeBSD with any other DE (such as mounting USB devices can be troublesome unless I drop to a terminal and switching audio devices, which I always have to do with sysctl). It doesn't feel sluggish like it used to pre-5.10(ish) for me (which I used on Linux since it didn't exist on FreeBSD at the time).
 
Thank you for your comments stratacast1 ! That is good to read and also what I was hoping for. Since you wrote 5.10(ish) I am looking forward to try it out ?

Yes, amongst other things I've had auto mounting of USB devices in mind. So I am already psyched up ?
 
I have always had a really bad experience with large desktop environments. They generally work but have so many little issues. Some of the more common ones I have noticed include:
  • Lots of core dumps left around the home directory
  • Missing icons
  • Volume slider that is unlabeled and does nothing
  • Brightness slider that flicks around
  • Admin Tools (like network config and user management) that basically do nothing
  • Errors with session managers / keychains on suspend / resume.
So much stuff was basically broken that the functionality that was actually working was equivalent to just running a simple window manager like OpenBox.

But I wonder if now they are focusing so much on simply getting Wayland working, they are not packing in more (potentially incomplete / broken features) so things are settling down and getting more robust (with standard X11).

I still feel that if we stuck with Gnome 2 in our ports (and ignored Gnome 3), we would potentially have a fairly rock solid and working setup. I just hope when KDE 6 comes out, this release of KDE plasma (that is getting better) isn't just immediately discarded for a half-working (but more "modern") alternative.
 
kpedersen said:
I have always had a really bad experience with large desktop environments. They generally work but have so many little issues. Some of the more common ones I have noticed include:
  • Lots of core dumps left around the home directory
  • Missing icons
  • Volume slider that is unlabeled and does nothing
  • Brightness slider that flicks around
  • Admin Tools (like network config and user management) that basically do nothing
  • Errors with session managers / keychains on suspend / resume.
So much stuff was basically broken that the functionality that was actually working was equivalent to just running a simple window manager like OpenBox.

But I wonder if now they are focusing so much on simply getting Wayland working, they are not packing in more (potentially incomplete / broken features) so things are settling down and getting more robust (with standard X11).

I still feel that if we stuck with Gnome 2 in our ports (and ignored Gnome 3), we would potentially have a fairly rock solid and working setup. I just hope when KDE 6 comes out, this release of KDE plasma (that is getting better) isn't just immediately discarded for a half-working (but more "modern") alternative.
Click to expand...

I think I saw many core dumps even in WMs. When I had i3, I had just about the same amount of dumps as I do now. Missing icons hasn't been an issue for me (as far as KDE goes), I have no experience with your other issues as I control my volume via a DAC, and the others seem to be pretty laptop related and network/user management I believe as far as FreeBSD goes, has been a CLI-only experience for me. I also just prefer it so I'm not a good candidate for network/users on a desktop. People program around Linux too much sometimes...or specific Linuxes.

I too hope they'll keep KDE5 around for quite some time once KDE6 comes out. IMO, KDE5 didn't really get totally rock solid until maybe 5.14. And 5.18 has been excellent for me
 
kpedersen said:
Well I think that is kinda it. If I end up barely using most features of a DE... Why run one?
Click to expand...

Touche! I end up liking the feel of KDE anyways. Though I did use i3 for a while and didn't find it lacking what I needed. My only thing was I couldn't get a keyring to work...someone answered that for me on a thread I started, so maybe one day I'll retry that since I do miss tiling windows as a first class citizen
 
amr said:
Hello,

I switched to x11-wm/xfce4 with x11/sddm login manager because latest x11/kde5 was not stable, it was fast and looking amazing in dark theme with deskutils/latte-dock but there is a bug in the internet browser which is installed by default that you can't close the open tabs with the closing icon and some times windows are flicking and becoming empty which was forcing me to restart the machine, keyboard layout is very bad when it comes to keys shortcuts for your native language, so x11-wm/xfce4 with x11/plank and some customization get the job done.

Good luck!
Click to expand...
  • the new revision (5.20?) has many bug fixes and should be more stable. I'm more or less pleased with 5.18.
  • browser (konqueror) does not close tabs: Yes, this is contra-intuitive, because if there is a close button on each tab, you still have to press the close button far right of all tabs. Solution: disable "show close button on tabs"
  • flickering windows: set the compositor (systemsettings->harware->screens & monitors) to conservative values (OpenGL 2.0 or XRender) and/or set the AccelMethod of the video driver to EXA, UXA or glamor (load glamoregl) e.g. in /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/intel.conf
  • keyboard shortcut: I can not comment except they work ok for me. Configuring this can be a taunting task.
  • if XfCE fullfils your needs, stick with it. if you miss this or that, you may want to give the new KDE version a 2nd try. Yes, KDE does suffer from featuritis to some extend... ;)
 
I installed Plasma 5 on FreeBSD-12-RELEASE (in VM) some time at the end of last year. It was not really usable due to black windows plaguing FreeBSD Plasma release. It seemed that this was quite problem then irrelevant of installation type (VM or hardware). This was not a big deal for me as I use mostly Openbox.
Yesterday I tried Plasma installation again in fresh VM.
Black windows issue is gone, but sddm did not install sddm.conf, some icons are missing and a lot of memory in use. Some components can be probably removed, so I will try to slim Plasma a bit and see if this affect stability.
Additional issue with FreeBSD in VM is slow switching between terminal windows.
For now however I will just stay with openbox particularly considering memory use (which is still pretty high considering small memory footprint of openbox).
 
  • no sddm.conf -> there is a problem of your VM config? Did you verify the checksum of your install medium?
  • high memory usage: when there is memory available, FreeBSD and espc. KDE uses it. Doesn't mean it can not run with much less. E.g. KDE had a "VM usage sprint" a decade ago or so. I could use it with 512MB RAM. Very basic usage: 368MB. When an app needs memory, FreeBSD's buffers & caches and KDE steps aside.
 
mjollnir said:
  • no sddm.conf -> there is a problem of your VM config? Did you verify the checksum of your install medium?
  • high memory usage: when there is memory available, FreeBSD and espc. KDE uses it. Doesn't mean it can not run with much less. E.g. KDE had a "VM usage sprint" a decade ago or so. I could use it with 512MB RAM. Very basic usage: 368MB. When an app needs memory, FreeBSD's buffers & caches and KDE steps aside.
Click to expand...

- I always check downloaded iso checksums, but this has nothing to do with the issue. KDE/Plasma/sddm were installed over the net (pkg instal ....) so checksums are irrelevant.
- Actually KDE does not use a lot of memory (ballpark of Xfce4). It should be 500MB or less. Systems installed in VM for some reason are using less memory than the same OSes installed on the hardware.
My laptop has 32GB of RAM but usually I have more than two VM clients running.
In VM FreeBSD without GUI uses ~260MB of RAM. By comparison OpenBSD in VM (resolution 1920x972) uses (with Xfce4) 255MB of RAM. So RAM usage of FreeBSD without GUI is similar to RAM use by OpenBSD with GUI.
I am not trying to say what is better, just making an observation and when few VM are running amount of memory taken matters.
 
I can only guess on this: buffers & caches? AFAIK FreeBSD takes what is available (up to a configurable amount) but decreases buffer & cache RAM usage when an app needs the memory. In a virtual machine, FBSD should be smart enough to know there is already a filesystem cache and block device buffer below, so it does not need to duplicate that (only very small buffers & caches). You have to load the guest drivers in the guest machine, though! If your OpenBSD guest has these but the FBSD guest does not, it's clear OpenBSD will behave much better... RAM usage is not what the system actually needs to run. It's what it takes when available.
Besides that, when you do not have a sddm.conf automagically after installing that port, s/th went wrong. Maybe the configuration of your VM is bad at some subtle point.
 
uninstalling sddm, claning pkg cache and installing again did not work.
By the way
pkg clean is not working eather
system reports that xGb was cleaned but /var/cache/pkg remains untouched and all files are still here
 
Well, it's obvious that s/th has basically gone wrong with your installation... Consider setting up a fresh VM and install FBSD again? Consult the handbook ("FreeBSD as a guest in ...").
 
Hello,

I've tried the latest kde5 plasma and it works better now, here is my kde5 version
Code: 
$ pkg info kde5
kde5-5.19.3.20.04.3
Name           : kde5
Version        : 5.19.3.20.04.3
Installed on   : Tue Jul 21 13:35:24 2020 EET
Origin         : x11/kde5
Architecture   : FreeBSD:12:*
Prefix         : /usr/local
Categories     : x11 kde
Licenses       : LGPL20
Maintainer     : kde@FreeBSD.org
WWW            : https://www.kde.org
Comment        : KDE Plasma Desktop and Applications (current)
Options        :
        KDEADMIN       : on
        KDEEDU         : on
        KDEGAMES       : on
        KDEGRAPHICS    : on
        KDEMULTIMEDIA  : on
        KDENETWORK     : on
        KDEPIM         : on
        KDEUTILS       : on
        PULSEAUDIO     : off
Annotations    :
        repo_type      : binary
        repository     : FreeBSD
Flat size      : 25.1KiB
Description    :
KDE is a powerful Free Software graphical desktop environment for Linux
and Unix workstations.

This package does not contain anything by itself -- it is a
"meta-port" that depends on other KDE packages.  Its sole purpose is
to require dependencies so users can install this package only and
have all the KDE stuff pulled in by the port/package dependency mechanism.

x11/kde5 contains current KDE Frameworks, Plasma Desktop and Applications.

WWW: https://www.kde.org
 
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