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KDE Discover gets update to prevent you breaking your Linux system

By - | Views: 59,733

I must say, I appreciate the attention to make things not only simpler but less breakable lately. First we had APT being patched to stop users removing essential packages, now the KDE Discover software manager gets a similar upgrade.

Developer Nate Graham has written up another great "This week in KDE" blog post, going over changes and improvements coming to the next release of Plasma and the various applications. One small change really caught my eye though! Discover now has a new way to ensure you keep a working system, with an updated mechanism to detect important packages getting removed and give you a friendly warning on it free of too much technical jargon.

Picture Source - Nate Graham

Graham's comment underneath "Hopefully this is Linus-Sebastian-proof", heh. I hope many more application developers are looking at the way Discover and APT are evolving to ensure things are a bit more idiot-proof.

Another change to make things look a bit friendlier in Discover is that previously, if you had issues upgrading, it would instantly shove a load of technical details in your face. To normal consumers, that's clearly not going to do much to help and could probably scare them away. Now, instead, it will provide a very clear and friendly message, with the option to get more details to report the issue.

Picture Source - Nate Graham

Plenty more upgrades to Plasma are in the works too, like the newer KWin Overview effect gaining the ability to display search results from KRunner, which brings it another step closer to the GNOME Activities Overview feature, which I did always find thoroughly useful.

There's plenty more fixes in the full post.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: KDE, Misc, Open Source
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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Arten Nov 23, 2021
Quoting: PoliticsOfStarvingI think since of the defensiveness people have around these charges is just how knee jerk they are.

We wait sometimes 9 months long for certain bug fixes -_-
We make feature requests in the hope we'll see new features added in the next few years.
We patiently wait for Wayland to mature...

But then a Windows-centric YouTube celebrity had a relatively minor problem compared to what we're used to, and we start to see just how quickly things can change for us.
Add to this:
That person is not even a Linux user.
They're not going to be a Linux user.
To a lot of us the problem could have been easily avoided in the first place. (The "problem" wasn't a problem, so to speak).

The arguments or responses I'm seeing made in here is very much understandable given the circumstances.

It's a matter of principle which gets people backs up.

For Luke he may stay on linux for work. He has been on mint before and left because have some problems which has been resolved...
slaapliedje Nov 23, 2021
 
sudo apt update                                                                                                        
Hit:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye InRelease
Get:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates InRelease [39.4 kB]
Get:3 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security InRelease [44.1 kB]
Get:4 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports InRelease [43.7 kB]
Get:5 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security/main amd64 Packages [94.0 kB]
Get:6 http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security/main Translation-en [59.6 kB]
Get:7 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main amd64 Packages.diff/Index [63.3 kB]
Get:8 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main Translation-en.diff/Index [27.4 kB]
Get:9 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main all Contents (deb).diff/Index [63.6 kB]
Get:10 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main amd64 Contents (deb).diff/Index [35.3 kB]
Get:11 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/contrib amd64 Packages.diff/Index [4,995 B]
Get:12 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main amd64 Packages T-2021-11-22-2006.12-F-2021-11-12-2001.29.pdiff [24.2 kB]
Get:12 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main amd64 Packages T-2021-11-22-2006.12-F-2021-11-12-2001.29.pdiff [24.2 kB]
Get:13 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main Translation-en T-2021-11-22-1406.11-F-2021-11-13-2001.35.pdiff [15.0 kB]
Get:13 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main Translation-en T-2021-11-22-1406.11-F-2021-11-13-2001.35.pdiff [15.0 kB]
Get:14 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main all Contents (deb) T-2021-11-22-2006.12-F-2021-11-13-1401.28.pdiff [298 kB]
Get:14 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main all Contents (deb) T-2021-11-22-2006.12-F-2021-11-13-1401.28.pdiff [298 kB]
Get:15 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main amd64 Contents (deb) T-2021-11-22-2006.12-F-2021-11-13-2001.35.pdiff [12.5 kB]
Get:15 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main amd64 Contents (deb) T-2021-11-22-2006.12-F-2021-11-13-2001.35.pdiff [12.5 kB]
Get:16 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/contrib amd64 Packages T-2021-11-15-2014.49-F-2021-11-15-2014.49.pdiff [257 B]
Get:16 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/contrib amd64 Packages T-2021-11-15-2014.49-F-2021-11-15-2014.49.pdiff [257 B]
Get:17 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main amd64 Packages [138 kB]
Get:18 http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports/main Translation-en [102 kB]
Fetched 1,066 kB in 25s (42.5 kB/s)
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
36 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.

sudo apt upgrade                                                                                                       ─╯
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  bind9-dnsutils bind9-host bind9-libs dnsutils ffmpeg ffmpeg-doc gir1.2-javascriptcoregtk-4.0 gir1.2-webkit2-4.0
  libavcodec58 libavdevice58 libavfilter7 libavformat58 libavresample4 libavutil56 libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18 libldb2
  libpostproc55 libpq5 libsmbclient libswresample3 libswscale5 libwbclient0 libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 node-tar openjdk-11-demo
  openjdk-11-doc openjdk-11-jdk openjdk-11-jdk-headless openjdk-11-jre openjdk-11-jre-headless openjdk-11-source
  python3-ldb redis-server redis-tools samba-libs tzdata
36 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 373 MB of archives.
After this operation, 1,827 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]


Not sure exactly how this is a 'wall of text'. Now if he'd done apt update;apt upgrade like any web site should show for installing Steam, it wouldn't have been a problem. With an 'upgrade' it'll only say 'Kept back' or 'Upgraded'. If he did a dist-upgrade, or an install with conflicts, it'll warn about any removals and ask. In this particular instance it really did give a warning that he was about to bork his system. People have argued about 'potentially harmful' not being strong enough wording. But it's accurate. It only is potentially harmful to the system, he could hae recovered. It wasn't like it was 'oh my god, if you do this, you're going to have to boot from a live system and repair or start a new install!'

Anyhow I mostly posted this to show you can shorten your commands to just 'apt' instead of 'apt-get' :)
Beamboom Nov 23, 2021
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI started somewhere around the turn of the millennium--not sure which side, might have been '99 or so. My first distro was Red Hat.

Hey thanks for that rundown! And I see nothing in this story that indicates that your kind is what I had in mind when I said "not for everyone". Quite the contrary. You've had issues and overcame them. Of course, it always sucks when something breaks - and especially when you have no idea why. It's like that for everyone.

But you've overcome the obstacles and I am pretty sure you also have learnt from it. And you kept going. That's what a Linux user IS, in my book.

The only point you might disagree with me on here, is that I think it's a GOOD thing to have a system as open as Linux. I will defend the right of this OS, of all the alternatives out there, to be a bit different. To demand - even expect - something of the user. Not in regards to the amount of knowledge - but the willingness to obtain that knowledge.
Like you have, by sticking to your gun.
Purple Library Guy Nov 23, 2021
Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI started somewhere around the turn of the millennium--not sure which side, might have been '99 or so. My first distro was Red Hat.

Hey thanks for that rundown! And I see nothing in this story that indicates that your kind is what I had in mind when I said "not for everyone". Quite the contrary. You've had issues and overcame them. Of course, it always sucks when something breaks - and especially when you have no idea why. It's like that for everyone.

But you've overcome the obstacles and I am pretty sure you also have learnt from it. And you kept going. That's what a Linux user IS, in my book.

The only point you might disagree with me on here, is that I think it's a GOOD thing to have a system as open as Linux. I will defend the right of this OS, of all the alternatives out there, to be a bit different. To demand - even expect - something of the user. Not in regards to the amount of knowledge - but the willingness to obtain that knowledge.
Like you have, by sticking to your gun.
But it's not '99 any more. If I started today, I wouldn't have had to do any of that stuff. And I wouldn't have done it, because I only did it because I had to. I wasn't on a voyage of discovery, I was just trying to un-break stuff.

Not saying I gained zero knowledge. But on average, I'd rather have been gaining other knowledge instead. I'm an artsie--by preference, not because of aptitude. I was actually a seriously massive math whiz in my youth, without even trying; showed pretty good aptitude for programming too. But I went into English Lit and so forth because that's what I like.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 23 November 2021 at 8:50 pm UTC
Beamboom Nov 23, 2021
Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut it's not '99 any more. If I started today, I wouldn't have had to do any of that stuff. And I wouldn't have done it, because I only did it because I had to. I wasn't on a voyage of discovery, I was just trying to un-break stuff.
But that's how you learn!!

And also, back in that era the Linux desktop were in a totally different and extremely premature state. Remember that we didn't even have a unison clipboard across applications? Some applications used this clipboard, others used another solution for it and some simply didn't have it implemented. Same with drag'n'drop. :D

So the problem back then were that shit didn't really work properly at all, especially on the graphical user interface side of things. They were downright horrible. The package management and the repositories too were a completely different story.

But today things work! And work really well. Just with not too many crutches or rescue parachutes. Lean and mean, and with all power to the user.

I like that. As you've probably figured out by now. :)


Last edited by Beamboom on 23 November 2021 at 9:53 pm UTC
Purple Library Guy Nov 23, 2021
Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut it's not '99 any more. If I started today, I wouldn't have had to do any of that stuff. And I wouldn't have done it, because I only did it because I had to. I wasn't on a voyage of discovery, I was just trying to un-break stuff.
But that's how you learn!!
I don't care!
You learn lots of ways. I learn many things by reading books.
slaapliedje Nov 24, 2021
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut it's not '99 any more. If I started today, I wouldn't have had to do any of that stuff. And I wouldn't have done it, because I only did it because I had to. I wasn't on a voyage of discovery, I was just trying to un-break stuff.
But that's how you learn!!
I don't care!
You learn lots of ways. I learn many things by reading books.
Wish I could make you read the Pathfinder 2e books for me so I wouldn't have to read them myself. 😜
Purple Library Guy Nov 24, 2021
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut it's not '99 any more. If I started today, I wouldn't have had to do any of that stuff. And I wouldn't have done it, because I only did it because I had to. I wasn't on a voyage of discovery, I was just trying to un-break stuff.
But that's how you learn!!
I don't care!
You learn lots of ways. I learn many things by reading books.
Wish I could make you read the Pathfinder 2e books for me so I wouldn't have to read them myself. 😜
Sorry, filled up recently on D&D 5th edition. I was amazed . . . it's actually got less skills and day to day utility magic, you know, for doing non-kill kind of stuff, than later bits of old school AD&D 1st edition. In other ways I was surprised just how little has changed. Rules a bit more consistent, a couple of interesting new character classes and mechanics, fighters get a few tactical options, multi-classing is basically dead because it was OP as hell, some quirky flavour lost, but basically, it's still D&D.
slaapliedje Nov 24, 2021
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut it's not '99 any more. If I started today, I wouldn't have had to do any of that stuff. And I wouldn't have done it, because I only did it because I had to. I wasn't on a voyage of discovery, I was just trying to un-break stuff.
But that's how you learn!!
I don't care!
You learn lots of ways. I learn many things by reading books.
Wish I could make you read the Pathfinder 2e books for me so I wouldn't have to read them myself. 😜
Sorry, filled up recently on D&D 5th edition. I was amazed . . . it's actually got less skills and day to day utility magic, you know, for doing non-kill kind of stuff, than later bits of old school AD&D 1st edition. In other ways I was surprised just how little has changed. Rules a bit more consistent, a couple of interesting new character classes and mechanics, fighters get a few tactical options, multi-classing is basically dead because it was OP as hell, some quirky flavour lost, but basically, it's still D&D.
Ha, I only started buying PF2e books because Humble Bundle had a cheap physical copy of the Bestiary. Trying to convince someone else to GM Pathfinder, he asked if we could just do 'Homebrew' now to me that means either A) Programs for computers past their prime, or B) just make up your own rules, which then why use PF2e? But he meant for the Campaign setting.

Now in my mind, D&D and Pathfinder are both very much tied to their campaign setting(s). With their races or ancestries, whatever they want to call them. And their classes, etc. The entire way the games work seem very much built to exist within certain realms. Now could you use the systems to make up your own worlds and such? Sure... but GURPS in it's very nature is great at such things, as it's built more as a framework / tool kit for role-playing, vs something like D&D and Pathfinder, where their logic and consistency isn't exactly tied to any sort of realism, ans fit much better within their own realms. It's like trying to imagine doing something realistic and science-y with Spelljammer. :P

Sorry, I know this is WAY off topic!
Purple Library Guy Nov 25, 2021
Quoting: slaapliedjeSorry, I know this is WAY off topic!
No doubt. For the record, though, I totally agree with you.
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