Ever since the launch of Argon and Krypton, the openSUSE community KDE team didn’t really stand still: a number of changes (and potentially nice additions) have been brewing this week. This post recapitulates the most important one.

I’d like the most recent Qt, please

As pre-announced by a G+ post, the openSUSE repositories bringing KDE software directly from KDE git (KDE:Unstable:Frameworks and KDE:Unstable:Applications) have switched their Qt libraries from Qt 5.5 to the recently released Qt 5.6. This move was made possible by the heroic work of Christophe “krop” Giboudeaux, who was able to beat QWebEngine into submission and make it build in the OBS.

Qt 5.6 comes with a much improved multiscreen handling and a lot of fixes contributed by people from KDE. A certain number of issues that were plaguing Plasma users should be gone with this version. Be wary however that’s not yet released in stable form, and there may be plenty of bugs. Also, the interaction of KDE software with Qt 5.6 is not completely tested: be sure to try it, and report those bugs!.

For these reasons, Qt 5.6 is not yet in Tumbleweed (the stable release will be submitted once it is out). Therefore you will need an additional repository to be able to update, KDE:Qt56. If you have KDE:Qt55 in your repository list, you must remove it and replace it with KDE:Qt56.

You can add the repository easily like this:

zypper ar -f obs://KDE:Qt56 KDE_Qt56 # Tumbleweed
zypper ar -f obs://KDE:Qt56/openSUSE_Leap_42.1 KDE_Qt56 # for Leap

Then force an update to this repository

zypper ref
zypper dup --from KDE_Qt56

Then update from KDE:Unstable:Frameworks first, then KDE:Unstable:Applications.

A bit of Wayland in my gases, too!

Of course, this change has also trickled down to the Argon and Krypton media, which have been updated to reflect this change. But that’s not all. The KDE team is now proud to offer a Wayland-based Krypton image, which accompanies the standard one. Thanks to KIWI, making this was faster than shouting Ohakonyapachininko! Well, perhaps not, but still quite easy.

If you want to try out the Wayland base image, be aware that it is nowhere near alpha level. There is a lot going on and development is heavy, so it may be broken in may interesting ways before you even notice it. You have been warned!

Where do you find all this goodness? The KDE:Medias directory on download.opensuse.org has all the interesting bits. The three kinds of images residing there are:

• openSUSE_Argon (x86_64 only): Leap based, X11 based KDE git live image;
• openSUSE_Krypton (i586 and x86_64): Tumbleweed based, X11 based KDE git live image;
• openSUSE_Krypton_Wayland (i586 and x86_64): Tumbleweed based, Wayland based KDE git live image.

Let’s not forget about bugs!

Borrowing from my previous entry:

Chances are that you might run into one or more bugs. This is software from git, and code review/continuous integration can only do so much. What should you do in such a case?

1. (NOT recommended) Kick and scream and demand a refund ;)
2. If your bug is in the distribution stack, like drivers or packaging, file a bug on openSUSE’s bugzilla with enough details so that it can be looked at;
3. If your bug is instead in KDE software, turn to KDE’s bugzilla.

As always, “have a lot of fun!”