LXQt Rolling

Development Development Testing
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Ben,

Thanks for the response. It seems I am not doing anything wrong this time, which is good. And I really appreciated your telling me how to update/upgrade Rolling.

I’m rather certain I picked all the right repos for updating, and look forward to updates.

My only complaint is that you moved my message to a closed string, so I couldn’t reply… hence this message.

I think I’m going to give 4.3 Rock Plasma a try again. I’ll keep the LXQt Rolling so long as I can keep it working. I hjust might have to report on it in next month’s Distrohoppers’ Digest (already made mention of it in this week’s Full Circle Weekly News).

I’ll keep showing up every few months until I can get some version to work for me the way I want it to. Then my posts will be more frequent… I did this with Bodhi, and eventually it got really good and I now donate to the distro. Since Mandrake was my first distro, I’m not going to give up, but I might let it go for a few months.

Moss

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My Apologies. And that was a mistake on my part. I did not even notice the thread was closed.

I am moving your original messages here below this post.

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I have installed Rolling LXQt. Installation was smooth as can be.

On boot, I get a message that my Screenshot program is way out of date, but I can’t find where to update it. In fact, I haven’t gotten any updates in 24 hours, and sudo dnf upgrade says nothing to do.

In fact, Discover says it can’t update, and is not connected to the internet (which it is – I used dnfdragora to install flatpak).

I selected all the 64-bit repos for this distro flavor (not source and not dev).

Moss

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Hello, good to hear from you! And many thanks for the feedback, this is just what we need.

Glad the installation went smoothly.

The LXQt isos are a very new effort after not building them for a while. The Alpha part is the LXQt desktop. Obviously the system and tool-chain packages for Rock and Rolling have been in use for some time and have been stable.

I will endeavor to pass your findings along to developers.

For repos the most important thing is that if you use Rolling all the OM repos should say rolling. Likewise if you use Rock all repos should say rock. (It is easy to enable/disable repos using the Software Repository Selector.)

Rock example:

$ dnf repolist
repo id                                                                                         repo name
rock-updates-x86_64                                                                             OpenMandriva Rock - x86_64 - Updates
rock-updates-x86_64-restricted                                                                  OpenMandriva Rock - Restricted - x86_64 - Updates
rock-updates-x86_64-unsupported                                                                 OpenMandriva Rock - Unsupported - x86_64 - Updates
rock-x86_64                                                                                     OpenMandriva Rock - x86_64
rock-x86_64-restricted                                                                          OpenMandriva Rock - Restricted - x86_64
rock-x86_64-unsupported                                                                         OpenMandriva Rock - Unsupported - x86_64

Rolling example:

$ dnf repolist
repo id                                                                                          repo name
rolling-x86_64                                                                                   OpenMandriva Rolling - x86_64
rolling-x86_64-restricted                                                                        OpenMandriva Rolling - Restricted - x86_64
rolling-x86_64-unsupported                                                                       OpenMandriva Rolling - Unsupported - x86_64

Note: I do not use non-free repo so that is not listed. OMLx only uses updates repos in Rock.

More info about this if interested: OpenMandriva Release Plan and Repositories

We would need for an OM developer to update that. I’ll ask or see if I can do. May be a few days until something happens.

There probably have not been any. The way OM devs have been updating Rolling mostly involves at some point in time devs decide things in Cooker are stable enough and in good shape and the literally copy Cooker repos to Rolling. This results in a lot of updates at once and then periods of time when there are only a few individual packages updated. There is a plan we are working on to change this so Rolling gets much more regular updates like people expect a Linux rolling distro to function.

So far Rolling has been reported to be as stable as Rock. As far as security Rolling would be better because it gets more updated packages more frequently.

We always announce when we do the copy Cooker to Rolling in the forum so users know to expect large upgrade. Also we do this to include any specialy instructions that may be needed.

This one is very inportant: We don’t want users to upgrade Rolling with Discover or dnfdragora as they do not use the correct command for the way OpenMandriva devs do things. You really need to upgrade like this in terminal:

$ sudo dnf clean all ; sudo dnf dsync

I hope this is helpful information.

1 Like
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Hi. I’ve been trying out various distros installed in virtual machines (using virt-manager). When I attempted to use the LXQt Rolling iso, Build ID # 935, I had some problems.

The monitor resolution defaulted to 1024x768, there were no other options in the LXQt Monitor Settings, so I had to use an ‘xrandr’ command in the terminal window to expand the screen, as some of the icons in the installer were actually off the screen at 1024x768 and were inaccessible. Placing the same ‘xrandr’ command in LXQt Autostart, should fix this issue, once the OS is installed.

The other issues I encountered were related to the widgets. The Desktop Switcher widget was listed as being in the panel, but it wasn’t displayed. I attempted to add additional Desktop Switchers, none of them displayed. Also, while on the Manage Widget screens window, the entire desktop briefly locked up.

I ended up deleting the virtual machine. If there will be another Rolling build forthcoming that fixes these widget-related issues, or if there is one already (I only found #935.), I would consider reinstalling it.

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@epp Thank you for your feedback.

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You’re very welcome.

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I also tried Build # 931 afterwards and encountered the same issues reported with Build # 935.

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It turns out that labeling the ISO’s as >alpha< was correct.

Getting things fixed in LXQt desktop packages is slow. There is no package maintainer like there is for KDE Plasma desktop. Filing bug reports might speed things up. I do not file bug reports on LXQt because I do not use it. This should be done by folks that use LXQt.

Any volunteer’s to maintain LXQt packages?

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Latest LXQt rolling ISO x86_64 HERE

1 Like
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Hi. Regarding Build # 1267, the good news is that the Keyboard Status Indicator widget now appears in the LXQt panel,

The only issues I have found so far, is that the only update repository that was enabled by default, rolling-x86_64 is out of date. The other issue is that if the repos are changed in dnfdragora, they do NOT save between sessions. I tried to get the Cooker repos to stick without success.

dnf repolist indicated it was last updated on July 17. The kernel that installed with it, is 5.17.1-desktop-2omv4050 and is dated Saturday April 9. The kernel ought to be more recent than that. Although I was able to temporarily enable the Cooker repo, there was no kernel listed there to update either.

Most importantly, with an outdated kernel that apparently can’t be updated, I can’t use it.

Sorry.

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There is an auto updater in ABF (OpenMandriva Automated Build Farm). It has been turned off for longer that we anticipated so Rolling has not been getting many upgrades and has not really been rolling. This is because developers and pooh bahs in Cooker (where the upgrades would come from) have been making some changes to tool-chain/system packages that make this unsafe and unwise right now. When the changes are made by a tiny group of all part-time, unpaid, volunteers this always takes longer than we want it to. There are always things that arise that >have< to be fixed and in this case 1000’s of other packages that had to be rebuilt for dependencies, ect.

Getting this done so we can Officially and Publicly announce Rolling is our main focus at this time. Should be soon. Turning that auto updater again will get Rolling back to rolling.

Several things:

  1. OM releases are not designed to mix repositories between different releases. If you use Rolling you should only use rolling repositories similar to this:

Screenshot_20220722_201622
Screenshot_20220722_2016222050×1164 111 KB

OpenMandriva Release Plan and Repositories are explained in more detail here.

  1. Never use dnfdragora or Discover to upgrade a Rolling system. The upgrade command they use is only appropriate for Rock users. It is OK to use either to search, install, and remove. To upgrade Rolling system open terminal and copy and paste and run this:

sudo dnf clean all ; sudo dnf dsync

(dsync=distro-sync)

dnfdragora is not a tool to enable repos in OpenMandriva Lx. That is on purpose. We have our own Software Repository Selector aka: om-repo-picker. We keep dnfdragora and Discover around mainly for Rock users.

Screenshot_20220722_194539
Screenshot_20220722_1945391282×887 197 KB

  1. For a better package manager gui see this.

If you want a more up to date kernel you can try downloading a cooker kernel from here and installing it with dnf. Select one that is x86_64 and download the kernel-desktop .rpm.

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Example of installing a newer Cooker kernel in Rolling:

Screenshot_20220722_212543
Screenshot_20220722_2125432050×1164 187 KB

Screenshot_20220722_212642
Screenshot_20220722_2126422050×1164 381 KB

Ignore the libkmod lines. That is all ancient stuff still in Linux kernel that OM devs removed because you would need really old hardware to need any of that.

Reboot for the new kernel and:

Screenshot_20220722_212751
Screenshot_20220722_2127512050×1164 99.7 KB

And kernel 5.18.13 in Rolling system. As of 2022=07-22 that is latest stable Linux kernel. Works_For_Me.

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A major issue with Build 1267 is with lxqt-panel.

When a window is open, the window information does not display in the LXQt panel, the panel is always empty. If you minimize a window, you can’t recover it because there is nothing to select.

I have Firefox (to send this) and QTerminal both open. Attached is a scrreenshot showing the empty panel. I tried all of the panel settings, nothing fixes this. The version of LXQt with the image is 1.0.0, which is now outdated. The current version is 1.1.0.

lxpanel
lxpanel1463×60 12.7 KB

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I think you are referring to the Task Manger in the Menu Panel. If you right click on the Menu Panel where you think Task Manager should be you should see Configure Task Manager and there should be a setting there that makes it work. But I have not found it yet.

That problem is not caused by the package version. Looks to me like the Task Manager is present but simply does not work. Could it be some missing package?

Note: LXQt desktop in Cooker (v. 1.1.0) and Rolling (v. 1.0.0) seem to be missing the OM configs we used to have. Do not know why.

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It seems to be missing something, at the least. I tried all of the Task Manager settings, nothing worked.

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What I have learned we need someone that knows more than I do to work on this. Most of the recent commits are from @bero. I know he just moved and is still getting settled. Plus the priority right now will be to get the Cooker packages moved to Rolling and get Rolling publicly released. But we will get to this eventually.

I think 2 bug reports are needed. One specific to task manager and one about OM specific configs having disappeared.

Edit: I know form a customer service stand point my anwer in the post is not good. But we have to deal with the resources we have not what we wish we had. Gets frustrating.

1 Like
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This is all I had time for today:

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OK, I did the other one also:

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I am learning something through this effort of making these isos available to users. They were introduced here. The first post stated:

These ISO’s are labeled Alpha mostly because LXQt desktop has not had a lot of testing.

The LXQt isos were not meant for people to use for production work they were meant as a test to see if they worked. So in the sense that it boots and installs it works, but the desktop has enough problems that most users won’t use it. There are people in developer group looking at this.

We thank all of you that reported problems with the LXQt Rolling isos. And there were significant issues. We thank all of you for reporting that the isos boot and install.

The main bug from user perspective is that the task manager does not work as reported by @epp and also here and here. The user configs reported here are very easy to workaround. But we would certainly want those fixed before releasing any LXQt iso for production use.

Apologies for any inconvenience or confusion.

Note: KDE Plasma 5 is the officially supported desktop for OMLx. As far as I know at this time all other desktops are alternative desktops. Using an alternative desktop for production implies that you can deal with problems that may arise.