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KDE Plasma Broken after upgrade this evening

Hello! This is my first post on this forum, so if I am ignorant of anything please be gentle and educate me.

I have been using Artix as my daily driver for some time now. My last update refreshing mirrors before tonight was ~1 month ago.
Code: [Select]
sudo pacman -Syyu

Tonight, when I did  that I was asked if I wanted to replace a bunch of what appeared to be plasma packages, with packages of the same name ending in -5. Some examples are baloo replaced with baloo5, networkmanager-qt replaced with networkmanager-qt5. (all of which appear to be from the world repository, if that matters).

I checked on this forum to see if there was any announcements about this, and I couldn't find any so I assumed it was okay. I went ahead with the update and said yes, replacing any occurances it asked me to. Upon reboot, some strange things are happening:

  • When I log in, the loading screen after SDDM to launch kwin takes a long time. (It usually takes less than 1 second, but now it is taking over 10, so I am assuming something is failing to load)
  • Folder and file icons in Dolphin are pretty much gone, replaced with a default white "empty file" icon.
  • Lots of files are just straight up broken. .png files cannot be opened. When I double click on one, KDE asks me to choose an app to open that file type, despite having GIMP and gwenview installed. Opening the png in gwenview manually and nothing shows..its just blank. no pixels.
  • My desktop background is completely black. Probably related to the above.

Some things are working, like networking, and audio, and the firefox browser window I am using to type this.

Some troubleshooting I have tried:

  • I have tried deleting my .config in my home directory and no change to the broken behaviors.
  • I have tried rolling back by updating my mirrors to  the relevant repo paths for the server: https://archive.artixlinux.org/repos/2023/08/10/ and then running sudo pacman -Syyuu. All that did was cause me to not be able to log in to my system at all (Sddm fails to load kde.core)
  • I have tried reinstalling plasma-desktop plasma-framework and plasma-meta. No change there either.

I really love Artix, and I don't want to switch away from it, but this is now the second time something like this has happened in the past 6 months (an update breaking my kde). The last time I was able to downgrade all my packages using 2) (above) and sat on the downgraded version before attempting an update again ~1 month later and it was fine. It doesn't seem like I can downgrade to fix my issue this time though. Please, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Re: KDE Plasma Broken after upgrade this evening

Reply #1 –
Quote from: Woodmorning – on
I really love Artix, and I don't want to switch away from it, but this is now the second time something like this has happened in the past 6 months (an update breaking my kde).
Just my own conclusion since KDE4 : KDE is good when it works.

I have installed Artix OpenRC XFCE + Dolphin file manager on several machines since 2019 and none have crashed.
https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,5969.msg37140.html#msg37140

Re: KDE Plasma Broken after upgrade this evening

Reply #3 –
Quote from: tintin – on
I have installed Artix OpenRC XFCE + Dolphin file manager on several machines since 2019 and none have crashed.
https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,5969.msg37140.html#msg37140

I think for now I will try installing XFCE4. KDE on my system is pretty broken at the moment. I cannot open basically any file from Dolphin. Ark, for example, says it doesn't know how to open a .zip or .rar file, despite that functioning before the update.

Correct me if I am wrong, but if I wanted to try XFCE4 without doing a fresh install, I think I should just be able to do:
Code: [Select]
pacman -Syyu xfce4 xfce4-goodies

In theory, I should be able to login using the KDE session manager still.

If its still broken, I guess I will do a fresh install of XFCE4 then. I have been using KDE since I started using linux back in 2016, so I am a bit used to it. Switching really isn't ideal, but maybe I will like trying something new.

I hope someone posts a solution here soon none-the-less. I wonder if its just me experiencing this issue?

Re: KDE Plasma Broken after upgrade this evening

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Woodmorning – on
Correct me if I am wrong, but if I wanted to try XFCE4 without doing a fresh install, I think I should just be able to do:
Code: [Select]
pacman -Syyu xfce4 xfce4-goodies
Yes.
Code: [Select]
pacman -Syu xfce4 xfce4-goodies
will be enough

Quote
In theory, I should be able to login using the KDE session manager still.
Then you can choose XFCE in sddm (which I also use).

If xfce4 works, I suggest you remove plasma-desktop to see things more clearly. Your system will also become smoother.
To list installed kde packages (if your language is English) :
Code: [Select]
pacman -Ss kde | grep installed | grep world

An overview of my classic but practical desktop :
https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,8.msg21454.html#msg21454

Re: KDE Plasma Broken after upgrade this evening

Reply #5 –
I did the same yesterday evening, but, after seeing all that "replace" I went to control that was from Artix repos and not Arch repos: was all from the world repos so, I did the upgrade (after a full backup as usual) and all is right.

Are you sure that the *5 new program are from the Artix repos?

Re: KDE Plasma Broken after upgrade this evening

Reply #7 –
Quote from: francesco – on
I did the same yesterday evening, but, after seeing all that "replace" I went to control that was from Artix repos and not Arch repos: was all from the world repos so, I did the upgrade (after a full backup as usual) and all is right.

Are you sure that the *5 new program are from the Artix repos?



Yes, I am sure they were from Artix. All were originating from the Artix World repository. You can see the different packages in the package search. As an example, here is plasma-framework. There is also plasma-framework5. I am not sure what the differences are.

https://packages.artixlinux.org/?search_criteria=plasma-framework&limit=50

I was not able to roll back my system. I installed XFCE4 and XFCE4-Goodies and was able to log in through SDDM and xfce seemed to work fine. There was still some oddities going on (file icons were messed up, but at least they would open), so I wound up wiping my system clean and reinstalling everything from the latest xfce iso.

I am now up and running on the XFCE system and all is well. Unfortunately I am not sure what caused my plasma system to break. I suppose we can mark this as resolved? Maybe I was the only one affected.

I could reinstall a fresh plasma system from the latest plasma iso and see if it is stable for me if we need more troubleshooting.

Re: KDE Plasma Broken after upgrade this evening

Reply #8 –
Hello,
Quote from: Woodmorning – on
There was still some oddities going on (file icons were messed up, but at least they would open), so I wound up wiping my system clean and reinstalling everything from the latest xfce iso.
Yes, reinstalling from scratch is sometimes better.

Quote
I am now up and running on the XFCE system and all is well.
Alright ! 8)

Quote
Unfortunately I am not sure what caused my plasma system to break.
It seems to me that a few people were having issues with KDE these days.
Switching from one version of KDE to another is often a painful moment.

Quote
I suppose we can mark this as resolved?
Yes, you can edit your first message and click on the "solved" button at the bottom left + optionally add [SOLVED] in the title.