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KindlyDoRight

Member

Registered: 2026-10-05

Posts: 14  

Devuan 7, regarding KDE Plasma 6.7.6 and SonicDE

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 (Yesterday 20:46:10)

rbit

Administrator

Registered: 2018-06-12

Posts: 161  

Re: Devuan 7, regarding KDE Plasma 6.7.6 and SonicDE

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

Member

Registered: 2026-10-05

Posts: 14  

Re: Devuan 7, regarding KDE Plasma 6.7.6 and SonicDE

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 (Today 08:23:17)