Devuan 7, regarding KDE Plasma 6.7.6 and SonicDE

KindlyDoRight · 2026-10-06 20:24:22

rbit, I would like to volunteer some of my time testing ISO installers, particularly for the KDE Plasma and SonicDE install paths for Virtual Machines.
(It's important to me, and I've become acquainted with some of the various underpinnings of Plasma.)

Coming from Debian, I've noted that each of their install paths (netinstall, KDE live, DVD) produce very different results.
And, I have found that only the "netinstall" path has produced a reliable, consistently working installation.

I would like to help reduce the friction and pain points of a providing a successful and fully functional installation of Devuan 7 KDE/SonicDE.
Debian is roughly eight months from its typical two year release cycle.
Becoming gradually acclimated and situated now seems like enough lead time for me to be of some assistance to Devuan 7's launch.
(I'm not acquainted with the other DEs.)

If I should find that some portions of testing present a technical skill gap that I cannot grasp, I will be kindly straight-forward about it; and I will assist where I can.

Question: Is Devuan considering shipping KDE Plasma 6.7.6 (for X11) and/or SonicDE ?
I would like to see both offerings be successful during this time of KDE's transition away from X11, and of SonicDE's nascent beginnings.

And I have plenty of DDR5 for a suitable ram disk, for repeatedly downloading and testing installations (without wearing out an SDD).
I don't have enough spare hardware to do a variety of bare-metal installs. But I am willing to set aside one Dell laptop for vetting out wifi, bluetooth, and other "portable" nuances.

P.S. I saw golinux's plea for volunteers, and I totally get it. (pls, point/steer me in the right direction.)

Last edited by KindlyDoRight (2026-10-06 20:46:10)

rbit · 2026-10-06 21:42:53

I'll upload a new freia netinstall to https://files.devuan.org/user/tempforever/ soon (after it's done building), if you want to test/report any problems with KDE specifically that's fine.
The desktop options are part of tasksel/tasksel-data. It should be possible to patch in additional things such as SonicDE, I'm not all that familiar with it.

[edit]
plasma in freia is currently at 6.7.4
sonicde is not yet in the debian repo
It'd be possible to add an outside repo to the installer, but that seems a bit unconventional

[edit2]
following https://github.com/sonicde-debian/debian I am not even able to install sonicde on freia (testing), as it depends on sonic-win, which depends on an unknown package qt6-base-private-abi

KindlyDoRight · Yesterday 08:15:40

rbit, I've run through the default install path for freia (OpenRC) using a KVM VM. I saw several items (Quality of Life, a shutdown hang for anacron, Discover update, etc.)

I want to be helpful, and not cause friction while doing so.
So... let me address one item only, so that I may learn how to "dance the dance," and not step on toes.

#1 - Quality of Life - VM install:

When installing a desktop environment (in a VM), it is expected for screen-resizing and cut-n-paste to work between Guest and Host.

a) in default installer cases, qemu-guest-agent and spice-vdagent should be automatically installed in a VM,
for the desktop end-user. (it is the expectation that it should just work; no friction)

b) However, when DevOps wants to manually install a desktop from the command-line (apt install kde-standard),
neither of these two packages should be installed. Guest and Host isolation should be the default. And acceleration should not be presumed.
The end-user is typically a system administrator.
(there are some beneficial GUI apps and layouts that help admins more quickly than using only the "keyhole view" of a terminal).

I myself use both: the first one (a), for workstation and development VMs and for family VMs on laptops.
the second one (b), for production server VMs.

AND... (I don't want to say this very often, if at all)... "Debian 13 does" install qemu-guest-agent and spice-vdagent for a VM installation, the default path.

-- I do understand that the Devuan distro is following the code base of the upstream Debian distro. And for sustainability, is endeavoring to keep the maintenance burden as low as possible.

rbit, I do not need to have this Quality of Life implemented (I know how to setup the environments I need).
The purpose of this specific example is to peacefully learn how to "dance the dance" properly, and to actually be helpful (without friction).

P.S. I don't use any cloud services, nor do I use AI. So, that is an unusual perspective for today.

Last edited by KindlyDoRight (Yesterday 18:09:49)

KindlyDoRight · Yesterday 10:04:13

Discussion, at large.

I would like to also address the "Title Concern" of this particular "topic" (KDE Plasma 6.7.6 and SonicDE).

Like the majority here*, I've been in IT for decades and have learned to look and plan ahead, to see trends and adjust accordingly, and to see the ending of things and migrate prior to incurring disruptions. (*forgive me for this initial perspective that VUA - 'Veteran' indicates a long length of experience).

From my particular vantage (or lack of vantage) point:
I'm perceiving that Debian 14 Forky is not likely to ship the KDE Plasma 6.7 series, but rather only the Plasma 6.8 (Wayland only) series. For me (and my particular work-flow requirements, with X11), this marks the end of my journey with KDE Plasma... and especially with Plasma continuing to become more tightly bound up with IBM's SystemD.

SonicDE (with X11) is the KDE Plasma fork of the 6.7 (X11) series. But it is nascent (freshly born). I greatly value the tremendous workmanship and workflow that KDE Plasma has provided me. And I understand and fully appreciate their choice of not supporting multiple display architectures.

With these things being acknowledged,
I would like explore the notion (not proposal) of Devuan 7 shipping with KDE 6.7.6, even if Debian 14 does not.
Is such a thing even viable?

I would also like to explore the notion of Devuan 7 shipping some form of SonicDE, even if Debian 14 does not.
Is it ridiculous, just too soon to adopt, or just simply too great of a weight?

I myself can remain on Devuan 6 with KDE Plasma X11 (via Virtual Machines) for a great length of time.

But, for bare-metal, with the Linux Kernel constantly dropping 'legacy drivers' of more than 3-5 years of age...
eventually, I cannot (in this manner) build out new workstations and physical servers (yes, with GUI on-premise, admin support).

So, I do lament my predicament. And I open this floor to professionally explore the notions of having KDE 6.7.6 and SonicDE (or not).
My soul is not partial to the IBM/Redhat GTK unilateral design choices and heavily constrained workflows.

And so, yes, personally... I'm searching for a viable long-term solution (once again).

Last edited by KindlyDoRight (Yesterday 10:14:53)

rbit · Yesterday 15:55:09

First, since I neglected to say this earlier, thanks for your willingness to help

KindlyDoRight wrote:

a) in default installer cases, qemu-guest-agent and spice-vdagent should be automatically installed in a VM,
for the desktop end-user. (it is the expectation that it should just work; no friction)

That sounds like a reasonable expectation. The more things that "just work," the better, IMO. Obviously, advanced users can remove / customize things however they want. So for this particular example, there would need to be some way for the installer to detect that it's being run inside a vm. Some questions: would it make sense to install qemu-guest-agent inside a gui-less guest (no desktop)? What about spice-vdagent? Personally I prefer virtualbox -- I tried the switch to qemu for about 3 weeks and then switched back. Unfortunately the two do not like to play together either -- when running vb I can't use kvm with qemu. Anyway, that's a bit beside the point, other than to say I don't have a lot of qemu experience.

KindlyDoRight wrote:

I would like explore the notion (not proposal) of Devuan 7 shipping with KDE 6.7.6, even if Debian 14 does not.
Is such a thing even viable?

I believe it would be viable IF someone were to fork kde 6.7.6 and maintain it for devuan. That someone is not me.

KindlyDoRight wrote:

I would also like to explore the notion of Devuan 7 shipping some form of SonicDE, even if Debian 14 does not.
Is it ridiculous, just too soon to adopt, or just simply too great of a weight?

This one seems like "too soon to adopt." From https://github.com/orgs/Sonic-DE/discussions/28 "we don't currently have packagers for the Debian family of distros"

KindlyDoRight · Yesterday 17:36:30

(A1) some way for the installer to detect that it's being run inside a vm

# it must be "KVM" to qualify for either agent
lscpu | grep -i "^Hypervisor vendor: *KVM$"

(A2) make sense to install qemu-guest-agent inside a gui-less guest (no desktop)?

No, not automatically. Because this presents a security concern on web-facing servers, and it should only be done with deliberate intent and understanding. (For internal-only, company servers, it's a nice feature to utilize for a suite of headless VMs.)

(A3) What about spice-vdagent?

No, because any relevant capability is satisfied with SSH.

(B1) fork kde 6.7.6 and maintain it

Yeah... that's way outside my scope and availability also.

(B2) SonicDE... too soon to adopt.

I figured that was the case.

But, instead of merely wondering about it, I'm now better informed. I appreciate it.

So for now, I will patiently wait it out with Devuan 6-KDE Plasma 6.3.6, and see what transpires when Devuan 8 eventually rolls around.

KindlyDoRight · Yesterday 18:00:15

#2 - Discover Update Issue

I don't know if 'freia' has support for 'Discovery Update' yet. But both it and apt update are reporting 2 updates are available.
The Issue
The Discover 'Updates' tab hangs when 'Fetching updates...'
The rest of the application is fully responsive. Just that one tab is affected.

sudo apt upgrade works properly.

Reopening Discover afterward states, "Update Issue There was an issue during the update or installation process. Please try again later."

Technical Details: The name org.freedesktop.fwupd was not provided by any .service files

#3 - Shutdown Hangs (OpenRC), waiting for anacron

This occurred only once, after the initial installation and login (Wayland).
Upon shutdown, the various system messages rolled by, and then paused on
"Stopping anac(h)ronistic cron: anacron"

I will keep an eye out for this issue. It required a hard reset.

[EDIT:] happened a second time when doing an initial shutdown, of a fresh install of LXQt excalibur 6.1.2 (stalled for 90 seconds, then finished)

Last edited by KindlyDoRight (Today 17:02:42)

KindlyDoRight · Yesterday 18:07:29

#4 - spice-vdagent: copy-paste from Guest to Host (Wayland)

Cannot copy-paste from Guest to Host. But, copy-paste from Host to Guest does work.

qemu-guest-agent/testing,now 1:11.1.2+ds-1 amd64 [installed]
spice-vdagent/testing,now 0.23.0-4 amd64 [installed]

AH! This first testing is under Wayland. Retrying under X11... X11 doesn't load.

I need the secret handshake, to approve copy-paste operations under Wayland

web search recommended this: ...how-to-copy-paste-in-Wayland... wl-clipboard
Console window A:

wl-copy "This is the text I want to copy"

Console window B:

wl-paste
-OUTPUT-
This is the text I want to copy

Even with this technique, I can copy from Host to Guest, but not from Guest to Host.
I need the top-secret handshake -- wayland-data-control -- and the manual

Apparently, spice-vdagent only works with X11.
https://discuss.kde.org/t/copy-past-fro … yland/6187

Spice agent for Linux (Wayland forks)
https://github.com/bjthompson805/spice-vdagent-wayland
https://github.com/v-dermichev/wayland-vdagent

-- You will copy everything by hand, and be happy.

Last edited by KindlyDoRight (Today 08:45:36)

KindlyDoRight · Yesterday 18:24:00

#5 - KDE on X11, Post SDDM Login: (session failed) black screen

[Edit] Fixed: with devuan_freia_7.0-202610080327_amd64_netinstall.iso
-AND- copy-paste fully works between Host and Guest in X11 session.[/Edit]

Logging in with an X11 session fails.

DOH! Why? [facepalm] Duh! Because Plasma is transitioning to Wayland only.

TTY1 is active -- apt list xorg
xorg/testing 1:7.7+26 amd64
xorg is Not Installed

Installed package 'xorg' (with its dependencies).
Switched back to TTY2, and issued the polite guest 'reboot' from the host.
The stalled guest responded and rebooted cleanly.

Login to Plasma X11 session still fails after installing xorg.

Resolving an X11 session login is not likely worth pursuing IF debian is only going to ship with Plasma 6.8 (Wayland only)

Last edited by KindlyDoRight (Today 08:45:12)

KindlyDoRight · Yesterday 21:02:33

Attempting to install SonicDE on Devuan freia

very, very low non-priority - just a passing interest to see what I could see.

rbit, I'm missing a specific version of one dependency.
sonic-win:amd64 Depends on qt6-declarative-private-abi (= 6.10.2)

Freia is using the 6.11 series.
I was able to locate, download, and install Ubuntu's "libqt6core6t64_6.10.2+dfsg-7_amd64.deb"
But sudo apt-get install sonicde sonic-archive-keyring is still wanting "(= 6.10.2)".

I understand the nature of the request, but these waterways are unfamiliar to me.

Debian/Devuan Repository for SonicDE
https://github.com/sonicde-debian/debian

Last edited by KindlyDoRight (Today 05:48:51)

KindlyDoRight · Yesterday 21:40:47

#6 - Installed LXQt (X11): logged-in session 'auto' logs out

[Edit] Fixed: with devuan_freia_7.0-202610080327_amd64_netinstall.iso [/Edit]

LXQt Desktop > Login Screen > type User&Pwd > press Enter

Within 124 ms (had to video it), the system session messages scroll across a standard console screen (no GUI), then it stops and presents a standard Linux cli prompt.

Then (with no notifications), LXQt instantaneously spawns/launches/re-materializes the SDDM login screen.

The last three session initialization lines:

[   99.318890] elogind[2057]: New session 7 of user sddm.
[  124.390897] elogind[2057]: New session 8 of user kindly.
kindly@Devuan7-testing:~$

Last edited by KindlyDoRight (Today 07:20:27)

KindlyDoRight · Yesterday 22:07:27

#7 - Installed XFCE: login produces an error

[Edit] Fixed: with devuan_freia_7.0-202610080327_amd64_netinstall.iso [/Edit]

Login screen: type User <Enter>, Pwd <Enter>.

Error message: Unable to contact settings server Failed to execute child process "dbus-launch" (No such file or directory) [Close]

TTY1 - sudo dmesg|less - 92ms, and no errors logged.

For my own sanity, tomorrow, I'm going do these last two tests (#6 & #7) using Excalibur, just to verify my testing environment.

Last edited by KindlyDoRight (Today 07:32:46)

rbit · Yesterday 22:50:14

#2

KindlyDoRight wrote:

Technical Details: The name org.freedesktop.fwupd was not provided by any .service files

This can be resolved by removing plasma-discover-backend-fwupd. Next iso will include this fix.

rbit · Today 02:56:26

#5, #6, #7
all of these can be fixed by: apt install dbus-x11
will make a fix for this and update the netinstall soon - I'll publish it in the normal spot so the iso mirrors pick it up, probably tomorrow

#3 (openrc shutdown hang) I have not been able to replicate yet (not for lack of trying).

KindlyDoRight · Today 07:34:33

#5, #6, #7 are fixed by devuan_freia_7.0-202610080327_amd64_netinstall.iso

Last edited by KindlyDoRight (Today 08:36:21)

KindlyDoRight · Today 07:41:46

#8 - LXQt (X11) in VM: Does not support spice-vdagent copy-paste

Cannot copy-paste between Host and Guest in either direction.

note: VM guest screen resizing is supported by qemu-guest-agent.

#9 - XFCE (X11) in VM: Does not support qemu-guest-agent screen resizing

Does not resize guest window when host window is resized.

note: copy-paste is fully supported between Host and Guest in both directions by spice-vdagent

KindlyDoRight · Today 08:21:47

#10 - Quality of Life, VM install: logical SWAP partition

In a VM, the SWAP partition type should not be "Logical", but rather "Primary".
(I think this is appropriate for non-VM installs also, -AND- also for auto-creating the /home and other partitions in a VM.)

In the default install path, "Guided - use entire disk"
Partitioning scheme: "All files in one partition (recommended for new users)"

Reason: KVM/Qemu has a variety of libvirt tools for managing QCOW2 disks.
For data recovery, fuse-mounting, conversion, resizing, and (my favorite) virt-sparsify.

- The painless and most reliable use of these tools is with ext4 primary partitions inside the VM.
- When these libguestfs tools become 'confused' by an anomaly with LVM (logical), then these tools will have spurious results -- indicating 'success,' but actually ignoring the logical partition and its content, -OR- (sometimes) aborting the procedure (with an error code), but without any helpful error message.
- [ext4, primary partition] is the single-most resilient format to recover from when a wide variety of data, user error, or disk failure occur. The tools discoverable by the new user for 'ext4' are numerous and mature.

- (Yes, I fully acknowledge that other formats and schemes can utterly prevent all kinds of data errors and loss, and have far greater innate resiliency - absolutely. But, one MUST be informed and trained on how to use such schemes beforehand, in order to benefit from them... when the point of failure actually occurs.)

- [ext4, primary partition] gives the brand new user the very best chance of success for recovery -AND- for gaining confidence and beneficial Linux experience.

Last edited by KindlyDoRight (Today 08:40:58)

KindlyDoRight · Today 15:27:45

Testing Devuan excalibur 6.1.2

devuan_excalibur_6.1.2-20261002_amd64_netinstall.iso

Vetted out a few installations (in a VM). Terse results provided here (with separate issue posts, as needed):
Note: My tests are always with OpenRC, (because I pivot to Alpine when I need 'tiny').

[KDE Wayland:]

Discover (first launch) displayed popup "updating freia"
Taskbar, active thumbnails: hover-popup shows distorted images for opened Discover and Konsole apps

btw, thank you for getting the package lists working in Discover. it's really appreciated.

[KDE X11:]

Taskbar, active thumbnails: hover-popup shows the app Icon (cleanly), instead of its content (This is the default behavior for Devuan, but Debian shows content by default)

[LXQt:]

The SDDM and desktop are WAY superior in Excalibur than with Freia. Freia has regressions with LXQt.
Initial shutdown stalled for 90 seconds on, "Stopping anac(h)ronistic cron: anacron" (other msgs then scrolled by, but caught me off guard (something was missing? next time, I'll video it.)

[XFCE:]

Install appears to be fine. (but, not acquainted with XFCE)

[General:]

NTP time sync. This really should be installed by default. There are three offerings. I use and recommend NTPsec (ntpsec.org), simply because it is complete. It does one thing, and it does it well. apt show ntpsec.
sigh... Yes, I am willing to help you test and configure the *new* section of installation code required to properly support any NTP installation setup (whichever one is selected).

Last edited by KindlyDoRight (Today 17:50:41)

KindlyDoRight · Today 15:53:46

#11 - HIGH: Quality of Life, General Install

The installation NEEDS to write the GRUB, user data, etc. to disk
BEFORE declaring "Installation Complete" "... Make sure to remove the installation media, ..."
"Please choose <Continue> to reboot"

I personally have "removed the media" (yeah, more than once), prior to rebooting.
This results in a FAILED installation, which must be repeated (but from a non-pristine disk state).

-OR- change the message to "DON'T REMOVE THE MEDIA! First, choose <Continue> to actually finish the installation. (it will reboot momentarily)"

Last edited by KindlyDoRight (Today 17:54:10)

KindlyDoRight · Today 17:47:00

rbit, my general intent is to be available to do testing for a few hours each Tue, Wed, and Thu... other obligations permitting.
I'll check in next Tuesday.

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2026-10-06 20:24:22