Upgrade to F40 is less than stellar

Ask Fedora
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1

I waited until the last moment to upgrade from f39 to f40 on my KDE system, and I sure am glad that I did. So far the problems I’ve had:

  • No soundcard until unplugging and plugging in an HDMI cable
  • Loss of mouse settings
  • Loss of monitor resolution settings

Now there are recurring problems:

  • Loss of window to desktop assignment after new login
  • When using solely an external monitor to my laptop, after signing in after screen-lock, the taskbar disappear, simply opening the laptop lid and closing it restores the taskbar.

Gotta say, this is not exciting.

2

Did you use X11 before?

3

Yes, I did.

4

Have you done the “optional” post-upgrade tasks?

Some common sources of problems with upgrades include:

  • newer kernel versions can require changes to vendor firmware or kernel command-line options on some hardware.
  • installed packages that were dropped in the updated version (often because the functionality is provided by a new package)
  • user configuration – to test, create a new user login with default configuration to see which problems are associated with your login.

There should be more details available using journalctl. It can take some work to find the entries relevant to your issues using journalctl “filters”. Use man journalctl to learn about them. The two things I find most heloful are:

  • remove the rhgb quiet from the kernel command-line so you see error messges while booting
  • run journalctl --no-hostname -b -p 3|cat to see “priority” messages in a form suitable for pasting as “pre-formatted” web-searchable text (using the </> button from the top line of the text entry panel).

It can be helpful to post the output from running inxi -Fzxx in a terminal. This provides a sanitized summary of your hardware that can be found by others with similar hardware and issues in a web search.

Finally, many linux issues are not specific to Fedora so there are often solutions in forums for other linux distros.

1 Like
6

Then I guess this is either lost configs in that transition, or features not added in Wayland yet.

For example windows cannot set where they want to spawn themselves on Wayland, the compositor needs to do that. Maybe Kwin supports that, maybe not idk I dont need that feature.

The Plasma5-Plasma6 transition was also HUGE underneath. The entire GUI toolkit was changed, this was a huge change. Extensions lost support etc, but for me also that upgrade went pretty damn smooth.

These are likely issues simply from these 2 transitions. Nothing that Fedora caused, just changes in your desktop that you need to accept.

Reading about stuff that changed, how much work went and is still going into Plasma6 and into Wayland (KWin is still one of the most competent Wayland compositors) might change your perspective here a bit.

This is not “an update that is not smooth anymore”, this is a looong awaited pretty huge rewrite of the entire desktop, and you felt a small bumps.

7

And yeah if you dont use atomic desktops you might need to do annoying manual stuff like that.

8

I have no plan to switch from KDE, so that kind of feature loss is a pretty big deal. I use desktops extensively.

The fact that there it was a huge undertaking isn’t lost on me, and admittedly, the bumps are/were minor. (The last time I tried Wayland on KDE in 2021, it suuuuuucked..)

But losing Window/desktop assignment…not cool. Hopefully the good people at KWin will show mercy and figger that one out.

9

X11 simply allowed apps everything and this is extremely insecure. Every app can spy on the other etc.

So for Wayland there needs to be a portal, a transfer agent that allows a sandboxed program to do stuff on the system in a controlled way.

Portals are a big thing and really nice. Pipewire, flatpak, snaps all use them.

To implement a portal, someone with a good starting technical knowledge needs to propose it.

As window placement control by the app is pretty important for many multi-window programs, there already is a quite old issue on this

I am not sure how the progress is on that. KWin will be probably the first wayland compositor to add that portal

So switching desktops will only make things worse. COSMIC devs may also be pretty quick, GNOME devs are notorious for debating on “the perfect implementation” and instead not implementing anything (like real fractional scaling).

KDE is your best choice here! And as a longtime KDE user myself (never switcher back even though trying a lot of stuff) I can recommend Fedora Kinoite. It is rock solid and you will get a ton of help with the little specialities it has.

10

Thanks! I’ll have a look and see what it’s all about.

11

And just to keep the list up-to-date. Today I had to reinstall my HP Printer with the HPLIP program. It works fine, now, but it’s just more salt in the wound.

12

I went back to X11. It was just too much; I need a tool that works.

I’m replying here to note that the problem:

  • When using solely an external monitor to my laptop, after signing in after screen-lock, the taskbar disappear, simply opening the laptop lid and closing it restores the taskbar.

is also present in F40/KDE.6.2.4/X11/Plasma.6.26/Qt.6.7.2.