Heya folks! It's Friday, and that means it's time for the weekly Solus roundup!
KDE Plasma 6
This week, KDE Plasma 6 comes to the Solus stable repository, available for everyone to use! To help ensure that the updates go as smooth as possible, Plasma users should ensure that their system does not go to sleep while updates are being applied. The system should also be rebooted after applying these updates.
Plasma 6 is the latest major release of KDE Plasma. With it comes the move to Qt 6, improved Wayland support, and much, much more. If you're curious about what else Plasma 6 brings, check out their release post. Stable users will first get Plasma 6.0.3, containing many bug fixes from the initial Plasma 6 release. As with any major software release, there are going to be issues. That said, the Solus and KDE teams are doing everything they can to make sure that issues are addressed quickly. This update also includes the latest KDE Gear 24.03.1 and Qt 6.6.3.
With the new Plasma comes some new default settings:
On Solus, Plasma is still X11 by default. This release brings many Wayland improvements, however, so you may want to try it to see whether it works for you. By identifying what doesn't work, issues can be filed, tracked and addressed, to the benefit of the entire ecosystem.
Note also that we're currently in the middle of removing qt5-webkit from the repositories. Qt5-webkit is unmaintained upstream and is very insecure for applications to use. We'd kept it around in hopes that many applications would migrate to the maintained qt5-webengine. That has happened for many applications, and now it's time for the remaining ones to be removed.
All the following applications have been removed from the repository and will be uninstalled from your systems automatically:
- goldendict
- quiterss (rssguard and akregator are both well-maintained RSS readers that use Qt, please use those)
- smtube
- notepadqq
- subsurface
- trojita
- wkhtmltopdf
And finally, with the release of Plasma 6 and (and Qt6 support being added to the Breeze theme), we've begun the conversion of applications that build with Qt5 to Qt6. You will likely see many applications change slightly, visually; this is a result of the conversion process, and more applications will be switched in the coming months.
Offline updates
One pain point that always comes up with major updates such as Plasma 6 and GNOME upgrades is our lack of support for "offline updates." Offline updates are a way to safely update a system without having to worry about core libraries changing while the system is running, such as the Kernel or session management. This lack of support is why it is sometimes necessary to hard-reboot a system after updating because the usual controls no longer work.
Here's how it works with systemd:
- Updated packages are downloaded from the repository, but not installed
- A file is created to let
systemd know there are pending updates
- The user is prompted to reboot the system
- When the system next boots up,
systemd sees that updates are pending
- Instead of fully booting, the updates are installed
- The system is rebooted after the updates are complete
To address this shortcoming, @joebonrichie began exploring how we might add this support to eopkg and the Solus Software Center. Though GNOME Software and KDE Discover both support offline updates, they aren't yet ready for general use on Solus. After working out how to do this manually, Joey started working on getting eopkg to do the necessary steps.
Once this work is complete in eopkg and the Software Center, installing updates on Solus will be safer than ever. Figuring out how to do offline updates here also makes it easier to do the same thing in moss and Serpent OS, benefiting both projects.
Translations for Solus MATE Transition Tool
We're looking for translators to help us localize the Solus MATE Transition Tool. If you are reasonably fluent in a language other than English, we would love to have your help. The whole tool has about 50 individual strings that need to be translated. If this interests you, check out this post for more information.
Security updates
A backdoor was discovered in XZ tools, leading to a compromised ssh server on affected systems, possibly enabling unauthorized remote access. Linux distributions, including us, have worked quickly to mitigate the issue. For more information on this issue, see this CISA page along with the Red Hat advisory linked on that page.
Make sure you install these updates as soon as possible!
Notable updates
GNOME was updated to 45.5. This is a bugfix release, and should be a pretty safe and uneventful update for users.
QtStylePlugins to QAdwaitaDecorations
The GTK2 based style plugins are quite broken for modern Qt5 apps and do not work with Qt6 apps. Additionally, QGnomePlatform is deprecated, but it also had styling issues, especially with KDE apps heavily focused on the Breeze theme.
That leaves us with QAdwaitaDecorations, which only replaces the titlebar with one themed by libadwaita, to fit in the GNOME environment, but leaving general theming to the application and Qt stack.
Other significant updates
gstreamer has been updated to 1.24network-manager has been updated to 1.44- WirePlumber has been updated to 0.5
ibus has been updated to 1.5.29mdns now works with IPv6 networks- Waybar has been updated to 0.10
freerdp 3 has been added in preparation for GNOME 46
General updates
Due to the Plasma 6 update and the extended sync cycle, listing all the updated packages in the forum post isn't really possible; the text is far too long. Instead, the entire list has been uploaded as a public gist on Github!
That’s all for this week, folks! We'll be here same time, same place next week for another roundup of the news!
