Kubuntu 16.10 is out!

Sun Oct 23 21:10:39 UTC 2016

On 23/10/16 10:39, Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
> Reply inline.
>
> On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 6:13 PM, Stephen Morris
> <samorris at netspace.net.au> wrote:
>> On 21/10/16 09:34, Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
>>> Removing the -devel list since this is a support question.
>>>
>>> On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 3:12 PM, Stephen Morris
>>> <samorris at netspace.net.au> wrote:
>>>> On 14/10/16 15:29, Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
>>>>> Hi folks, I'm sure most of you have heard by now, but just in case:
>>>>> Kubuntu 16.10 has been released, along with all flavors of Ubuntu.
>>>>>
>>>>> The official announcement:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/yakkety-updates/main/dist-upgrader-all/current/ReleaseAnnouncement.html
>>>>>
>>>>> We've got an announcement on the website as well:
>>>>> https://kubuntu.org/news/kubuntu-16-10-released/
>>>>>
>>>>> Our step-by-step about installing and upgrading lacks some
>>>>> screenshots. Please feel free to help out there if you can:
>>>>> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/YakketyUpgrades/Kubuntu
>>>>>
>>>>> If you want to seed the torrents, the easiest way is to start here:
>>>>> http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969/
>>>>>
>>>>> Remember as always to report your bugs. The easiest way is in the
>>>>> commandline: `ubuntu-bug packagename`
>>>>>
>>>>> All the best,
>>>>>
>>>>> Valorie
>>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>       I have Kubuntu 16.04 LTS installed (that was installed from scratch
>>>> on a
>>>> new system) and tried to upgrade using the instructions in your third
>>>> link
>>>> above. The problem I have is that neither Muon nor Plasma-Discovery have
>>>> the
>>>> options specified in the screen shots to invoke the configuration
>>>> settings.
>>>> The only way I could find on my system to change the update settings back
>>>> to
>>>> "normal" was to use the update setting options in Synaptic and to set
>>>> those
>>>> to "Any version". Having done this Plasma-Discovery then prompted to do
>>>> an
>>>> upgrade, but when I clicked on the upgrade button it did nothing. The
>>>> only
>>>> way I could find to actually upgrade was to issue a 'sudo
>>>> do-release-upgrade' from a shell, which then proceeded to undertake the
>>>> upgrade (before switching to "Any Version" in Synaptic this command
>>>> returned
>>>> the message that there were No Releases Available).
>>> That should work, yes.
>>>
>>>>       Having done the upgrade the system quite happily booted to the
>>>> Lightdm
>>>> display manager, but was then not able to start Unity, Plasma or Gnome.
>>>> Gnome and Unity both produced a garbled graphic display and immediately
>>>> dropped back to Lightdm. Plasma produced 'Internal System Error' messages
>>>> and when I clicked on 'Details' it said that it was /user/bin/Kwin_X11
>>>> that
>>>> was failing, and, if I click on 'Ignore all future messages of this
>>>> type',
>>>> used ctrl+alt+delete to drop back to Lightdm, and restarted Plasma it
>>>> produced the same failure message, but this time is was in
>>>> /usr/bin/compiz.
>>>> I'm probably not surprised that Compiz had issues as I thought it
>>>> required
>>>> an accelerated video driver, and, from the display I was getting it
>>>> looked
>>>> like the Nvidia proprietary driver I had installed in 16.04 had been
>>>> removed
>>>> by the upgrade and it could not be reinstalled as it appeared that the
>>>> repositories did not have the necessary component to allow a reinstall.
>>>>       How do I now downgrade to 16.04, or do I need to wipe the root, boot
>>>> and
>>>> home partitions and re-install 16.04 from scratch, or can I download a
>>>> 16.10
>>>> ISO that I can burn to DVD and do a fresh/clean install from that?
>>>>
>>>> regards,
>>>> Steve
>>> Hi Steve,
>>>
>>> First, downgrade isn't supported.
>>>
>>> We haven't used Lightdm for a long time, perhaps two years? We've used
>>> SDDM since then, and that should support booting into both Unity and
>>> GNOME desktops, as well as the Plasma session.
>>>
>>> So my advice is: first try removing lightdm and installing sddm, if it
>>> is not installed. From the commandline, you can always check to see
>>> what you have installed with the command apt-cache. Like: `apt-cache
>>> policy lightdm` or `apt-cache policy sddm`. Notice that sudo is not
>>> used with this command, since it only looks up what you have
>>> installed.
>>>
>>> Then I would do `sudo apt remove lightdm && sudo apt install sddm`. If
>>> you find that sddm is already installed, instead do: `sudo apt remove
>>> lightdm && sudo dpkg-reconfigure sddm`
>>>
>>> The reason you want to chain those commands together with "&&" is so
>>> that they work sequentially, and you aren't left with no manager at
>>> all.
>>>
>>> When you run into problems, the most useful command is `sudo apt
>>> install -f`. The -f flag stands for fix, and that's what apt will
>>> attempt to do. If you have misconfiguration problems, `sudo
>>> dpkg-reconfigure -a` will try to reconfigure all, and then you can
>>> again try install -f.
>> Thanks Valorie, I'll try the fix commands and see what happens. I would
>> prefer not to use SDDM because in Ubuntu and the other distribution I use I
>> have found that it doesn't work properly and I've always used LightDM for
>> years, ever since Ubuntu standardised on that in preference to KDM and GDM.
> It did work well in the few years we used it, yes.
>
>> In my view the KDE foundation should never have replaced KDM with SDDM as,
>> in my view, SDDM does not compete, KDM is a significantly better product.
> The KDE e.V. has no say in software choice, or programming decisions.
> What happened is that KDM stopped being developed. LightDM is owned by
> Canonical, rather than being entirely Free Software. KDE devels were
> not willing to sign the required documents to be allowed to work on
> LightDM, which left SDDM as the only alternative.
>
>> If the fixes don't rectify the issue (some of my problems could that there
>> were file conflicts in a number of packages being upgrade in the process,
>> for example, I think one of the issues was with Plasma-Amity which wanted to
>> install Amity along with it but there was a file conflict between the two,
>> so I think Plasma-Amity didn't get installed because Amity was always
>> installed first) I could always erase the partitions and reinstall 16.04 LTS
>> from scratch and attempt the upgrade again after installing synaptic so that
>> I can change the update options, because the version of Plasma-Discovery in
>> 16.04 LTS (and the version of Plasma-Discovery in the other distribution i
>> use) does not provide the dialog boxes shown in your screenshots. The only
>> product I could find that provided the tabbed dialog (with the Update tab)
>> was Synaptic, but its version setting was different.
> I have no clue what Plasma-Amity is, but I'm glad you found a way to
> do what you want.
Thanks Valorie. I had to reinstall Ubuntu 16.04 as 'sudo apt install -f' 
did nothing, and, 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure' did not support the '-a' 
parameter and without the parameter did nothing.
Having reinstalled 16.04, which only installed Unity, I upgraded to 
16.10, which seemed to upgrade fine with Unity still working. I then 
proceeded to install Gnome using the gnome package which the description 
said was the full Gnome (doing this was the starting point to get my 
system back, after getting Gnome installed as set up I will then install 
Plasma).
The subsequent boot of Gnome is showing that I may not have all the 
necessary packages installed. When I start the Gnome desktop, the Top 
Bar has an Activities Menu entry instead of the Applications entry I am 
expecting. Clicking on the Activities Menu entry brings up the same 
screen as pressing 'Left-super', where from the side bar on the left of 
the display I can click on an applicatons button to bring up a 'list' of 
the applications installed, but this 'list' is all applications not a 
categorized list like the Applications Menu or the Plasma/KDE Launcher 
does. Am I missing some packages or is this the way Gnome is meant to 
function in Ubuntu?
Once I get the Gnome issues sorted out I'll then install Plasma via the 
Plasma package as a starting point to getting Plasma back. I'll query 
the multiple entries for Plasma in the Display Manager Options at a 
later date if the reinstall puts both back again.

regards,
Steve

>
>> regards,
>> Steve
>>
>>> It is certainly possible to download the 16.10 ISO and reinstall, but
>>> you will lose your unity and gnome sessions.
>>> https://kubuntu.org/alternative-downloads/
>>>
>>> As for the nvidia driver: others will have to answer.
>>>
>>> Valorie