Fedora 22 updates for KDE Plasma 5.4.3 and KDE Frameworks 5.16.0

[Fredy Neeser]

Hi list,

The Fedora 22 update to Plasma 5.4.3 this past weekend was rather painful.
After fully applying the F22 updates from 'stable' on Nov. 13/14, with KDE
updates including

   plasma-workspace 5.4.3-1.fc22.x86_64, kwin* 5.4.3-1.fc22

(some of these arrived on Nov. 13, some others on Nov. 14),  I had an
unusable desktop
  - Wallpaper, widgets and KDE panel missing
  - A few windows appear but are not responsive
  - kdeactivitymanagerd crashes almost at every login

 with tons of crashes (highly repeatable) in
    kf5-kded
    kf5-kactivities
    plasma-workspace

First I wanted to revert the Plasma updates, but  'dnf downgrade' did not
allow me to revert to the previous version, only to a much older version --
Any idea why downgrade does not work?  - Has the previous Plasma version
disappeared?  Can this be fixed?

Then I found some discrepancies between Plasma package versions that are in
"stable" for F23 but still in "updates-testing" for F22, namely:
    kf5-kded, kf5* (stable: 5.15.0-1.fc22.x86_64; updates-testing:
5.16.0-1.fc22.x86_64)
    kf5-kactivities (stable: 5.15.0-1.fc22.x86_64; updates-testing:
5.16.0-1.fc22.x86_64)
    plasma-workspace* (stable: 5.4.3-1.fc22.x86_64 ; updates-testing:
5.4.3-2.fc22)

After locating the Plasma 5.4.3 announcement
     https://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.4.3.php

the solution was obvious:

  # dnf --enablerepo=updates-testing update plasma-workspace
  # dnf --enablerepo=updates-testing update kf5*

Apparently, muon is needed for fixing some things in apper (see above
announcement), but muon was missing entirely on my system (which was
upgraded earlier from Fedora 20 -> 22).
  # dnf install muon

At this point, Plasma 5.4.3 (including my external monitor) worked
reasonably well with a new user account, but not with my existing user
account.  So, I decided to clean up my existing user account as follows:

Logout from KDE, open a VT and backup config as follows:
  $ cd
  $ mkdir kde-old-config
  $ mv .config ~/kde-old-config
  $ mv .local ~/kde-old-config
  $ mv .kde ~/kde-old-config

At this point, Plasma 5.4.3 is stable for my existing user account (at
least as stable as 5.3.2  ...).


My main question is whether the "KDE update experience" for users of Fedora
22 "stable" can be improved in the future.  Are there any dependencies
missing between Plasma 5 and KDE Frameworks 5 releases?

Thanks,

______________________________________________________

Fredy Neeser, Ph. D.
Research Staff Member
Cloud & Computing Infrastructure

IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
CH-8803 Rueschlikon, Switzerland