Has the Neon team considered working with Tuxedo as their QA team for Neon?

Thanks for looking into it. I was confident things was gonna go well, and was thrown when I encountered issues I didn’t notice on Neon Unstable.

Every mistake is preventable in hindsight. Plasma 6 itself is a rock-solid release and that’s the only thing that matters.

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I have been using Linux for over 25 years and I do anticipate risks. That’s why I was able to be back up and running within an hour or so. My point still stands. This was unacceptable for several reasons. This was not even in the realm of “understandable risks”. I was completely aware of the impending v6 release, so i was not caught unaware. That said, most users don’t look to Facebook or Kubuntu sources for advance notice of their KDE Neon system being hosed by a what was presented to users as a normal upgrade.

Stop trying to defend KDE Neon - they’re literally in the same room saying it was their fault.

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I’ve been using Neon since the day my KDE slimbook was shipped to me in 2017 or something. This was the only time I faced problems after an upgrade. It’s a pity because it coincided with the launch of plasma 6 to the public, which gave it much higher resonance, but an episode should not hide that it’s been a rock solid distro for many years.
Everything was fixed in less than 48 hours after all.

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Hey there!

TUXEDO OS project lead here.

First, I appreciate the ideas in this thread. It is always good to see how the community tries to solve things and to help make stuff better for everyone. I’d like to explain, or better affirm, a few things flying around here.

TUXEDO OS is based on Ubuntu LTS and Neon User. We backport quite a few things from Ubuntu intermediate releases (23.10 and such) but regarding the KDE stack it’s pretty much 1:1 Neon User. The main difference is our QA infrastructure added to everything software-related we are shipping:

  • regular Ubuntu package are mirrored, tested and shipped on a weekly basis
  • packages from Ubuntu security are mirrored and shipped daily
  • Neon package updates are checked daily, tested and shipped as a cumulative update. This takes 2-3 days normally

Other stuff, not related to KDE or Neon, but to draw the full picture:

  • Firefox and Chromium are packaged as DEBs, tested and shipped within 1 working days after upstream release
  • Mesa, Pipewire, Wireplumber are packaged, tested and shipped within a week as it depends on testing work load
  • Kernel and Nvidia drivers are built on their own schedule and shipped after extensive testing plus adding features via backporting or own development

Our QA structure is a combination of test being run automated and manually by humans:

  • we have a set of ca. 10 different laptop modes being tested as a reference
  • we test on real hardware, not only in virtualized environments
  • it’s always the same people that test, plus rotating staff to take a second look at the results

In the recent past, we tried to help with bug reports and QA for Neon as well. But honestly, we failed due to missing time and other priorities. The least I can promise is to take a look at how we can adjust our processes and get more QA work upstream. That includes my wish to have openQA or something similar running. But this would take time to set up with our real-hardware-tests.

I’m happy to hear any other ideas and discuss possibilities for KDE and Neon to profit from. Thanks all for your time!

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Thank you very much for this thorough explanation!

And that is exactly why I suggest TUXEDO OS to people who want to have an Ubuntu-based system with quite recent KDE stuff.

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Thank you for the clarification.
You just gained a customer here. Your low end variants have surprisingly good prices! :slight_smile:

Lots of work for you guys with that schedule!
Keep it up!

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The fact that a mistake happened with the first new Plasma release in nearly a decade is hardly a reason for anybody to claim its “unacceptable” and jump ship the second something is not perfect. And yes, it is in the realm of understandable. Especially if its been perfect for you up until now and have 25 years experience.

It is awesome that the devs are owning it, and doing everything they can to fix it, and in no way am I critical of what they have accomplished overall. If you were a kid who has only been using this for a few years, I might understand where you are coming from. After 25 years… I don’t.

Do yourself a favor and install source build. Compile your own Plasma from scratch. Then you will get a sense of just how complex it really is. These guys have worked hard and are probably exhausted. Maybe cut them some slack.

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I’m not discussing Plasma, I’m talking about Neon specifically . Read the forums and you’ll learn that the most common user complaint with Neon has been the system getting hosed with upgrades; often major upgrades, but not always. The recent disaster is not the first as far Neon is concerned. I never said my experience with Neon has been “perfect”. I, like other users, have previously had to nuke & repave for this very same exact reason; a system hosed when Neon updates because there was not enough testing and QA before release.

I’ve only seen one Dev own this and I’ve seen nothing in the way of a fix. I appreciate the level of work the devs do, but the end result is all that matters to me as a user. You can choose to not be critical if you want to do so. I choose to critique honestly when critique is warranted and it is most definitely warranted in this case.

I don’t care whether you understand where I’m coming from or not. Your opinion is pretty meaningless to me.

I don’t need to build from source to understand that KDE Neon devs do complex work, but that fact doesn’t excuse the appalling failure to do adequate testing prior to release. Rocket science is complex and difficult, too, but I don’t have to build my own rocket to understand that an exploding rocket is an abject failure.

Cut them some slack!?!? All I’ve done is make a post pointing out the failure, which had already been acknowledged by at least one dev. What got you triggered, I don’t and don’t care. Exhausted or not, hard-working or not, complex or not, failure is failure. An upgrade should be seamless and painless to the user, full stop. This was anything but and it was not the first time. Done.

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Apparently wayland doesn’t work in dual nvidia GPUs. :frowning:

Just entered a bug report about it: 482256 – wayland doesn't work in systems with dual nvidia gpus

Somewhat related, but what are the the plans for Tuxedo OS for when 24.04 comes out? Are we gonna wait for Neon User edition to switch to 24.04?

I’m not going to say you are wrong, because I can not test it.
But that 100% sounds like a incompatible nvidia config (unless you don’t use the nvidia drivers).
How do you configure nvidia to select the correct card if you have 2?
nvidia-xconfig is very usefull when creating configs. (then used by xwayland as far as I understand it)
(you should probably open up a different thread for that though)

I’m using the nvidia drivers (tested it with 535, 545 and 550). I haven’t configure anything and I’m expecting it to “just work”, like it works in x11. In any case in journal log it is clear that kwin is picking up the correct GPU, and it wouldn’t make sense in any case to pick the other one because there is no monitor attached to it.

Do not know what distro you are using, but Ubuntu LTS does not support the latest drivers, I know that.
I think they are still on 525 tbh, but I did not check.

With nvidia?
Yeah, no, probably not.

Agree, but this is Nvidia we are talking about. xD
Try setting up a config using nvidia-xconfig and see if it works.
I think you can even do it with nvidia-config, but you have to make sure symlinks and whatnot is pointing to the correct file, imho nvidia-xconfig makes all this easier.

From my experience.
I use reverse prime to get all my rendering on my CPU and call on my GPU with prime-run (I am on Manjaro, so I can use the nvidia prime drivers).

I removed my config files, just for fun to see how wayland reacts, and nope, black screen.
Adding back my nvidia config I used on x11 and everything works as normal and I can deliver democracy on Steam. :innocent:

Edit
I forgot to add, I am not on plasma 6 yet though, this is the behavior on 5.27.10

This is why, as a GNOME user, I opted to use Plasma, because you KDE developers care about users, you are humble in admitting that there is a problem and are willing to work to to fix it, for the good of users.

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For me it was the manifest, be kind and all that.
That and the fact I can make it look like windows95 with one click. xD

Yes, most likely. We will ship Ubuntu 24.04 right from the release, but TXOS will have to wait for Neon User. At least that’s the plan for now.

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Rebuilds for TUXEDO OS

  • texmaker – Live TUXEDO OS
  • nextcloud-desktop – Live TUXEDO OS
  • libjpeg-turbo – Live TUXEDO OS
  • telegram-desktop – Live TUXEDO OS
  • wine – Smaland
  • Calibre – Live TUXEDO OS
  • setzer* – Live TUXEDO OS
  • qgis – Live TUXEDO OS
  • yubikey-manager-qt – Live TUXEDO OS
  • linphone-desktop – Live TUXEDO OS
  • openrgb

I did not know!
Especially with qgis I had big Problems getting a stable running version on neon.

I think that is due to at some point regular QT based software and KDE differ too much in their QT base versions.
the problem of using LTS ubuntu base

Don’t be sorry Nate, keep up with your great work…!! :smile_cat::four_leaf_clover::sparkles::100::+1:t2:

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