I’ve installed KDE on Qubes 4.2 (with all the latest updates) but have encountered a lot of bugs. Here are the ones I haven’t been able to solve yet (some others I’ve already figured out):
My keyboard layout switcher only affects dom0. Guest qubes remain in English only.
Sometimes, when I open applications from a qube (Konsole, Firefox, etc.), they don’t appear on the screen. Everything seems to be running, but the windows aren’t shown. Switching to Xfce, opening the apps there, and then switching back to KDE helps temporarily. It’s a floating issue.
Tray icons look terrible and unusable. The Wi-Fi icon is just a white square, Clipboard and Disk Usage icons are black (invisible on the dark panel), and other icons, like Whonix, look ugly. This is a minor issue though.
These are the issues I’ve encountered in just the first couple of hours.
Are there any active KDE users here?
I wonder whether KDE is ready to use in Qubes and there are people who use it regularly.
If such people are here, could you give me some hints on how to fix these problems, especially the keyboard layout switching?
Hi! Yes, I think there are many of us, because it’s rich in functionality, and it used to be the default in Qubes OS (and I’ve not seen a good argument why it shouldn’t be the default again). There’s this long thread all about KDE where all bugs you mentioned are discussed:
You can find mentions elsewhere in the forum too, but perhaps the thread is easier to search through.
In that thread I posted something related to the first and the third bug you mention: KDE - changing the way you use Qubes - #204 by StanleyQubrick
Later I found that neither Fcitx5 nor ibus work as well and smooth as I thought they would (limitations on when global hotkeys can be detected) so I configured a different thing instead. So for the 3 bugs you mentioned:
Keyboard layout switching: Depending on which features you prefer, there are a few ways to solve this (there are tradeoffs). I’d recommend one method where you can configure a different global hotkey for each keyboard layout - it works reliably and without looking for visual feedback from a tray icon or whatever. You don’t get a tray icon at all (or maybe someone can suggest a separate program just for that) but you just press the desired keyboard combination at any time and you can just start typing in the corresponding layout. In this method the layout is controlled by setxkbmap (which is already installed in templates) and in the template you install the package sxhkd for configuring hotkeys (you can do without it, but you get very limited options for hotkeys from just setxkbmap) and you create and put one config file (~/.config/sxhkd/sxhkdrc) in each qube or template where you would like to be able to switch layouts. If you choose this method, let me know if you need instructions for this.
The other method that I think would still be preferred by some is Fcitx5, as I mentioned in that thread. It has a working system tray icon and other features, but it doesn’t behave well if you want to change layouts quickly, independently of the user interface of various software. You need to click a text field (and only text fields! No drop-down menus, for example ) where you’re going to type before you can switch layouts, which, as far as I understand it, is a case of bad design (affecting much of Linux, not only Qubes) leading to more and more idiotic things. But if that quirk and chore doesn’t bother you, I guess it’s fine.
I think you may have bumped into the issue of the KDE Plasma+Wayland session being the new default in KDE, while being completely unsupported and broken on Qubes OS (not opening some windows). When logging in, you need to make sure you select Plasma/X11 session, rather than Plasma/Wayland or XFCE, and then this choice gets remembered. Also, logging out of your KDE Plasma session and logging back in unfortunately leads to multiple issues, so I’d reboot Qubes OS before logging into KDE Plasma/X11 again.
The network tray icon and any other system tray icons based on Gtk3 are known to appear as white squares on KDE on Qubes OS. If you end up with more than one or two such icons after you install software maybe my suggestions and script from the other thread can help somewhat.
For the qui tool icons that are black on transparent background I can suggest changing the theme so that the system tray is not that dark, or searching for general KDE Plasma solutions or workarounds for this situation of black icons in dark themes.
I can vouch for this. Many KDE users who (generally) see the issues
you’ve raised as trivial compared to the functionality that KDE brings.
But every one has their own levels of what they will put up with. I dont
recognise your issue 2 and I suspect the X11/Wayland choice might
resolve it.
There’s a FAQ on keyboard switching which you might find worth
reading. It’s not a KDE issue.
I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
IIUIC switch from KDE to XFCE was done because KDE moved to Wayland and Wayland support in QubesOS is still not much ready (there is XWayland, but that’s not the same).
No, the switch was done because Joanna thought that KDE was bloated and
ugly. (Never was “the eye of the beholder” more apposite.)
Wayland was not an issue.
I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
I don’t think that such a comparison is relevant. And if you mean “dealing with KDE’s issues on Qubes OS will still probably take less of your time than alternatives” that would not necessarily be a sign of good software Especially when currently users would need to know to search or ask beforehand to get an idea of what they would be getting into, which is an issue in itself. The way I would look at it is that each unaddressed issue leads to some loss of potential users (not to mention time, etc.)
Anyway, while the serious issue with the keyboard layout seems to be actually not rooted in KDE packages, I think that the issue of the Wayland session being the default should also be taken seriously. It’s just a bad initial experience to be greeted with a non-functioning system, and it’s confusing, too. I bumped into it when I did an in-place upgrade from Qubes OS 4.1 to 4.2 (with many other issues along the way) and at first I didn’t notice, and I was surprised not that there was a new option in the drop-down menu, but that, at the same time, the new option would be the default one, even more so despite the fact that normally the last selection is remembered. After I had logged in I couldn’t tell exactly why (if I recall correctly) no qube window would open, while dom0 applications would open, and I had no obvious indication that this was Wayland and not X11.
So I’m sure that, if the situation is still the same, changing the default option (or alternatively, removing the Wayland option) would save in aggregate many user-hours of confusion, uninstalling, looking up, etc.
) where you’re going to type before you can switch layouts, which, as far as I understand it, is a case of bad design (affecting much of Linux, not only Qubes) leading to more and more idiotic things. But if that quirk and chore doesn’t bother you, I guess it’s fine.
Especially when currently users would need to know to search or ask beforehand to get an idea of what they would be getting into, which is an issue in itself. The way I would look at it is that each unaddressed issue leads to some loss of potential users (not to mention time, etc.)