Hey everyone. I installed Fedora KDE two days ago, however I immediately ran into a pretty severe issue with KDE Discover.
I am unable to install certain applications, for example Krita, Kdenlive and KMyMoney from the main menu. The installation process immediately fails with “transaction failure” with the following terminal output:
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
PackageKit error: PackageKit::Transaction::ErrorTransactionError "Transaction failure" "Transaction failed: "
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
org.kde.plasma.libdiscover.backend.packagekit: percentage cannot be calculated
What apps I can install through Discover seems completely random. However, I can install the affected apps normally via dnf.
Same here on a fresh install of Fedora KDE 44.
Discover seems to be fine with flatpaks, snaps, but some rpm packages refuse to install.
Specifically packages associated with KDE, so stuff like Krita, Kate, Kdenlive etc.
Using PackageKit to install them through the terminal (pkcon install krita) works just fine.
I couldnt find issue or any related issue like this anywhere else, so i asked Copilot in the dnf5 Github repo about any fixes, it told to run the following commands
dnf5 clean all
dnf5 makecache
along with
remove broken dependencies
correct repo metadata
make sure the package exists and is installable
if package is missing or conflicting, resolve that before retrying
I think killing any other package manager might give some hopes?
This topic seems to be the same as Discover Update Issue on certain Apps, but will reply here as I’m having the same issue, and this thread is more visible from my Google search.
For context, I am just trying out Linux (desktop) coming from Windows, and so my system is a fresh install, plus dnf update then dnf upgrade. Rebooting didn’t help. I went out of my way to cerate this account (hello world!) to report how horrible my out-of-the-box experience is so far. (In fact, this is the 2nd issue I’m facing. I just worked around a completely different problem by quite literally reinstalling Fedora. Talk about stability.)
In my case, I’m trying to install Kdenlive from Plasma Discover.
For posterity, I’m reporting how far my troubleshooting went, as well as details of my system by the end.
What I checked so far, to no avail
I started monitoring my system logs as I retried to install the application. Here’s what it showed (essentially the same as in the topic description).
$ jounalctl -f
Oct 12 14:19:17 fedora systemd[1804]: Started app-org.kde.discover@9355521daaaf412bb4897515126da537.service - Discover - Software Center.
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora PackageKit[8036]: new install-packages transaction /129_cbcaabba scheduled from uid 1000
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora PackageKit[8036]: install-packages transaction /129_cbcaabba from uid 1000 finished with success after 37ms
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora PackageKit[8036]: uid 1000 is trying to obtain org.freedesktop.packagekit.package-install auth (only_trusted:1)
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora PackageKit[8036]: new install-packages transaction /130_ecdbbcbc scheduled from uid 1000
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora PackageKit[8036]: uid 1000 obtained auth for org.freedesktop.packagekit.package-install
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: PackageKit error: PackageKit::Transaction::ErrorTransactionError "Transaction failure" "Transaction failed: "
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora plasma-discover[3432]: percentage cannot be calculated
Oct 12 14:19:20 fedora PackageKit[8036]: install-packages transaction /130_ecdbbcbc from uid 1000 finished with failed after 469ms
From the logs, I assume the root cause has something to do with PackageKit, which I learned is what Discover uses under the hood.
I learned to mess around with PackageKit. Doesn’t seem to do anything.
$ pkgcli refresh
Refreshing software list [████████████████████████████████████████] 100%
✔ Package metadata refreshed
$ pkgcli update
Starting [████████████████████████████████████████] 100%
No packages require updating # ok, so skipping upgrade then
$ pkgcli monitor
# --- snipped; only shows a prettified version of the logs above
$ pkgcli repair
Starting [████████████████████████████████████████] 100%
✔ System repaired successfully
At this point, unless maybe I analyze source code then I have no leads. I tried to dnf clean all; apparently there is no cache to even clean as stated in its output.
About my system
With a few irrelevant info about my potato PC redacted, here’s what I’m running on:
I got to the bottom of this. Commenting my conclusion first, then troubleshooting that lead to it.
Bottom line
If your apps fail to install from Discover with nothing but the useless “Transaction failure” message, then give up Discover and install your apps directly from the command line.
In my case, to install Kdenlive, I ran dnf install kdenlive. I’m sure pkgcli install kdenlive works too.
Poof, Kdenlive installed. Problem solved. Nothing else can be done otherwise at the moment.
The old version of Kdenlive has dependency issues for some reason, regardless whether your system is updated or is fresh out of the box.
How I arrived at the root cause
I temporarily enabled verbose logging for the packagekit.service. (Note about ExecStart quirk.) Got the idea after looking at the debug-logging action from source code.
sudo systemctl edit packagekit.service # set ExecStart=/usr/libexec/packagekitd --verbose
Attempting to reinstall Kdenlive from Discover with verbose logging enabled shows that PackageKit tries to install Kdenlive, and fails.
Oct 13 14:30:49 fedora packagekitd[38643]: 14:30:49 PackageKit-DNF5 Resolving package ID: name=kdenlive, version=25.12.3-1.fc44, arch=x86_64, repo=fedora
Oct 13 14:30:49 fedora packagekitd[38643]: 14:30:49 PackageKit-DNF5 Resolved transaction has 0 packages
I wondered what Kdenlive version PackageKit sees. Turns out it sees an old version from the fedora repository, and a newer version from updates.
Why does PackageKit via Discover install an old Kdenlive version? I don’t know. All I noticed was that the same old Kdenlive version is being displayed in Discover.
At this point, I’ve boiled the problem down to PackageKit installing Kdenlive from the fedora repo instead of the updates repo. To verify this, I tried replicating the issue.
# force kdenlive to be installed from the "fedora" repo, not from "updates"
$ sudo dnf config-manager disable updates
# install the old kdenlive version
$ pkgcli refresh
Refreshing software list [████████████████████████████████████████] 100%
✔ Package metadata refreshed
$ pkgcli resolve kdenlive
Starting [████████████████████████████████████████] 100%
▣ kdenlive 25.12.3-1.fc44.x86_64 [fedora]
$ kgcli install kdenlive
Running [████████████████████████████████████████] 100%
Error: Transaction failed:
Replication success. In other words, PackageKit has some problem installing the old Kdenlive version from the fedora repostiory. What problem specifically? I don’t want to know.
Oh wait, is this a PackageKit problem in particular, or does dnf suffer the same problem? I asked myself. Only one way to find out.
$ sudo dnf install kdenlive
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Failed to resolve the transaction:
Problem: package kddockwidgets-qt6-2.4.0-6.fc44.x86_64 from fedora requires qt6-qtbase(x86-64) = 6.10.2, but none of the providers can be installed
- cannot install both qt6-qtbase-6.10.2-2.fc44.x86_64 from fedora and qt6-qtbase-6.11.2-3.fc44.x86_64 from @System
- package kdenlive-25.12.3-1.fc44.x86_64 from fedora requires libkddockwidgets-qt6.so.3()(64bit), but none of the providers can be installed
- installed package kf6-kmime-6.31.0-1.fc44.x86_64 requires libQt6Core.so.6(Qt_6.11)(64bit), but none of the providers can be installed
- conflicting requests
- problem with installed package
You can try to add to command line:
--skip-broken to skip uninstallable packages
Aha! The root error finally showed up. I’ll stop my digging deeper at assuming that this is a dependency issue.
This has been a wild ride for me as a new Linux desktop user, having to read manual pages and without any AI assistance. Good thing I am familiar with these stuff for a living. :^)
The versions in the fedora repo on F44 are built against Qt 6.10.
When you do a new install of F44, then sudo dnf upgrade, you’ll get the latest KDE bits, including an upgrade of Qt to 6.11. So nothing Qt-based in the fedora repo is installable anymore.
I see. Although I’m having a hard time tying together how this info can help me avoid future problems of the same kind. Sounds like a paradox, in a sense that we want to keep our system updated but at the same time stuff can break. I assume “don’t dnf upgrade” isn’t the solution. So I wonder, is there anything else I, or the next non-technical person, could have done?
Understandable. Anyway I’m satisfied with the workaround (for now!) and am happy to make my own little contribution to move this outstanding issue. I thought I was screaming at the void. So I appreciate you for looking into this!
This one is a bit insidious. When first reported, it was a fairly minor irritation (you could just install the outdated version of the app in Discover, then immediately upgrade it). The Qt version bump has made it more severe, because now there’s no way of doing the initial install in Discover.
So I appreciate you for looking into this!