Q4OS Forum

Clint Burtwood

Member

Registered: 2020-02-16

Posts: 23

KDE Plasma LTS

Is there/will there be a way to install Plasma 5.18 on Centaurus?

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,502

Website

Re: KDE Plasma LTS

Q4OS as Debian stable generally stays on the same package versions, now 5.14 for Centaurus. The only way would be to remove the default Plasma version and install a newer manually, however we don't support it.

Clint Burtwood

Member

Registered: 2020-02-16

Posts: 23

Re: KDE Plasma LTS

oh ok..
Well then, let's hope the elder Gods and supreme overlords of Debian would include Plasma 5.18 into Debian 10 at some point. Seeing 5.18 is a LTS release and all.. and there's been a humongous load of improvements too, and some bugs of course , which are being slaughtered at an impressive rate as we speak. I tested 5.18.2 on KDE Neon and I was very impressed.. 5.18 on Q4OS would be a match made in heaven

wove

Member

From: Minnesota

Registered: 2019-12-31

Posts: 67

Re: KDE Plasma LTS

Kubuntu's LTS releases coincide with KDE's LTS versions. Kubuntu 18.04 has stuck with KDE 15.12. I think currently with updates Kubuntu 18.04 has KDE 15.12.9. The upcomming Kubuntu 20.04 LTS is to ship with KDE 15.18 and I assume unless you enable the backports repository 20.04's entire life cycle will stick with KDE 15.18 for its life cycle.

bill

AdeyGraunt

Member

Registered: 2020-05-27

Posts: 1

Re: KDE Plasma LTS

Hi...as per my experience and knowledge there is no practical reason why one would ever want to use the LTS editions. The single difference is that the LTS edition uses Plasma LTS releases, whereas the regular edition uses whatever is the latest stable release. Meaning the LTS editions doesn't get new features in Plasma. This kind of runs counter to the idea of neon though, as is evident by the fact that *everything else* still gets new features.

wove

Member

From: Minnesota

Registered: 2019-12-31

Posts: 67

Re: KDE Plasma LTS

Updating on a very regular basis has become the norm. I personally like uptimes on my desktop to be measured in months. I like everything to be just as it was when I left, and constantly rolling updates work against that. While the systems are updated it often seems to be that little in the way of features are added to the software applications. I read at some point that one of the big updates in Plasma was a streamling of the system settings. That  is perhaps a good thing, but having used the Plasma LTS for close to 2 years, I have everything setup and have not had need to use system settings for anything in months, so I do not have any particular interest in that.

Sometimes an application comes along that I feel would aid my workflow, and if it is not available via and LTS edition, it can generally be added via a flatpak or snap, without any need to change the entire system. Of course there are times where you get new hardware and will need a newer system to support the hardware. KDE Neon is still built on Ubuntu 18.04. They  do  have the latest Plasma, but they do also have an LTS version too.

bill

tlmiller76

Member

From: AZ, USA

Registered: 2016-11-29

Posts: 455

Re: KDE Plasma LTS

Hi...as per my experience and knowledge there is no practical reason why one would ever want to use the LTS editions. The single difference is that the LTS edition uses Plasma LTS releases, whereas the regular edition uses whatever is the latest stable release. Meaning the LTS editions doesn't get new features in Plasma. This kind of runs counter to the idea of neon though, as is evident by the fact that *everything else* still gets new features.

Actually, very few regular editions use the latest plasma release.  19.10 (5.18 LTS released a few weeks before it was released) uses 5.17, 19.04 uses 5.15 when 5.16 was available, etc. etc. etc.

They use a lot newer than the LTS, but still not newest.  And LTS always has the option to switch it to KDE Neon, and get the latest version of plasma the DAY it is released, which is NOT available on the latest normal release.

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Q4OS Trinity machine - Crelander E160.  Intel Celeron N5105, 16GB LPDDR4, 512GB m.2 SATA SSD, Intel UHD graphics, Intel 7265 Wifi 5 + BT 4.x, 16" 3072x1920 LCD.

sotnas

Member

Registered: 2020-05-13

Posts: 4

Re: KDE Plasma LTS

Sorry to hijack this thread but is it possible to run KDE 5.12 on Centaurus and prevent updating for newer versions?

tlmiller76

Member

From: AZ, USA

Registered: 2016-11-29

Posts: 455

Re: KDE Plasma LTS

It might be possible, but won't be very easy.  You'd probably either need to try to manually download and install all the 5.12 packages from Ubuntu 18.04, or if that didn't work (and I doubt it would...but given 18.04 was based on Buster, it might) you'd have to actually download source code and recompile 5.12 for Buster.  Either way it's going to be a lot of work, for minimal gain since 5.12 is lacking several features of 5.14 (of course, 5.14 is lacking a LOT that 5.18 has at this point).

Last edited by tlmiller76 (2020-06-05 18:03)

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Q4OS Trinity machine - Crelander E160.  Intel Celeron N5105, 16GB LPDDR4, 512GB m.2 SATA SSD, Intel UHD graphics, Intel 7265 Wifi 5 + BT 4.x, 16" 3072x1920 LCD.

wove

Member

From: Minnesota

Registered: 2019-12-31

Posts: 67

Re: KDE Plasma LTS

Debian Buster was released in July of 2019, so I think Ubuntu and Kubuntu 18.04 were based on what eventually became Buster. Debian Buster's version of KDE Plasma and Gnome are newer than what shipped  with Ubuntu/Kubuntu 18.04.

KDE released its last update to 5.12 LTS in March of 2019 and 5.12 LTS is no longer considered supported. KDE's support of 5.14 ended with the release of 5.15, so the 5.12 LTS has more recent bug fixes and security fixes than does 5.14. Overall KDE does a somewhat poor job of promoting its LTS releases and appears to have almost no influence over what versions of Plasma various distributions decide to include. KDE Neon did continue to have an image available for Plasma 5.12 LTS even though the main downloads always linked to the latest KDE offering.

bill

tlmiller76

Member

From: AZ, USA

Registered: 2016-11-29

Posts: 455

Re: KDE Plasma LTS

I wish I had the willpower/resources to build a neon-esque repo for Debian stable.  A repository to get newer versions of KDE for stable is really the ONLY reason I use distro's other than Debian.

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Q4OS Trinity machine - Crelander E160.  Intel Celeron N5105, 16GB LPDDR4, 512GB m.2 SATA SSD, Intel UHD graphics, Intel 7265 Wifi 5 + BT 4.x, 16" 3072x1920 LCD.

bin

Member

From: U.K.

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 1,334

Re: KDE Plasma LTS

It might be possible, but won't be very easy.  You'd probably either need to try to manually download and install all the 5.12 packages from Ubuntu 18.04, or if that didn't work (and I doubt it would...but given 18.04 was based on Buster, it might) you'd have to actually download source code and recompile 5.12 for Buster.  Either way it's going to be a lot of work, for minimal gain since 5.12 is lacking several features of 5.14 (of course, 5.14 is lacking a LOT that 5.18 has at this point).

....and this highlights the big issue with Debian and Plasma.

In order to stay in the game you really need to be in a rolling release distro such as PCLOS, any Arch base, Gentoo or similar.

tlmiller76

Member

From: AZ, USA

Registered: 2016-11-29

Posts: 455

Re: KDE Plasma LTS

And all those have major issues too.  PCLOS has such small repos that it's VERY restrictive in what you can install.  Arch (which is my 2nd favorite OS) ALWAYS has broken packages due to their bleeding edge nature.  And Gentoo...who wants to set for 5 hours doing updates every time?

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Q4OS Trinity machine - Crelander E160.  Intel Celeron N5105, 16GB LPDDR4, 512GB m.2 SATA SSD, Intel UHD graphics, Intel 7265 Wifi 5 + BT 4.x, 16" 3072x1920 LCD.

sotnas

Member

Registered: 2020-05-13

Posts: 4

Re: KDE Plasma LTS

It might be possible, but won't be very easy.  You'd probably either need to try to manually download and install all the 5.12 packages from Ubuntu 18.04, or if that didn't work (and I doubt it would...but given 18.04 was based on Buster, it might) you'd have to actually download source code and recompile 5.12 for Buster.  Either way it's going to be a lot of work, for minimal gain since 5.12 is lacking several features of 5.14 (of course, 5.14 is lacking a LOT that 5.18 has at this point).

Well the reason for my question is related to the fact that 5.12 is the last version of KDE that runs on my old laptop with no issues. After that I have some troubles when I want to change my desktop wallpaper and everytime I try to change anything related to the themes I always get one of the cpu cores working at 100%.

I switched the ssd from my old laptop to another one more recent and that behaviour doesn't show itself. I thought that I may have reached the limits of my hardware for Plasma usage.

I installed yesterday Lubuntu 20.04 and I experienced the same sort of freezing of my system, for example, before the desktop is fully loaded (it takes some time for the panel to available for use). Since it's QT based there may lay the reason for such behaviour on older hardware.

My mother wants me to revive an old desktop that I left in my parents house. I'll look into installing Q4OS (probably TDE for the same reason).

I my wife's old desktop I installed Kubuntu 18.04, Peppermint 10 (based on 18.04), Q4OS 3.11 TDE, Opensuse Leap 15.1 and, yesterday, I installed Linux Lite 5.0 (based on Ubuntu 20.04).

Since Kubuntu is Plasma 5.12 and it will stop being maintained next year, it will be erased.

I'll leave Opensuse for testing purposes for some more time (it has Plasma 5.12 but it's support will end also next year, I think) and Linux Lite out of curiosity to see how it behaves (initially it used 500MB of RAM and I was a bit disappointed but after some tweaking it lies on 355MB of RAM).

So far, I have to say that Q4OS and Peppermint are the fastests OSes installed. I had MX-Linux but it used a bit more RAM and it is critical for this particular desktop as it's only equipped with 2Gb RAM.

It is a shame for me not being able to use Plasma anymore in this older hardware because their efforts to make it frugal are worth mentioning.