Just Installed, and, well, YAWN!!

[jglen490]

Just installed 24.04 LTS, as a clean install. I kept my /home and re-jiggered the rest. I was going to use a fresh NVME drive, but I'm keeping that for something later.

Requiring Insisting on a 300MiB ESP is remarkably stupid, but I decided to not fight the dumb, and just use my time getting it all set up. I have one drive, dedicated entirely to a single instance of Kubuntu. ESP partition size 300 MiB, with7.8 MB used. At this point, it will get no further conversation.

I took the additional space for the ESP from /. So / is still around 48 GB, with a load of 8.1 GB. About the the same as 22.04.4.

/home is 852 GB, with a load of 346 GB, which was what was on 22.04.4.

The rest of the 1 TB drive has a 16 GB swap partition. The odd thing is that there is also swap file, about half a gig. Question: How do I get rid of the swap file?

The actual install went very quickly. I used the Schwarzer Kater scripts - THANK YOU VERY MUCH - to kill snaps and install FF and T-Bird to /opt. I was able to transition the configs, bookmarks, and mail boxes with little trouble. I spent a lot of time yesterday getting to know 24.04, getting themes, installing some software, making it my own. So, yeah, basically a yawner.

My HP laptop is not a gamer, so sound and graphics are as good as they can be out of the box. All is good, other than the swap file, and I'm sure there's a way to kill that, too, I just haven't found it yet.

[Qqmike]

Thanks for that boring, uneventful summary post, jglen.
I'll be watching. I'm hanging on to 22.04.
Someone here suggests to wait for 24.04.1.
It's a good excuse to wait for that as I feel a bit lazy lately to change up just now.
Thanks, again! (I also didn't know about that swap file, but recall now seeing posts referencing such.)

[jglen490]

I was thinking about waiting on 24.04.1. Then the light bulb went on (even if ever so briefly ) and I realized, that lots of people have in fact installed it and MOST of the issues are Nvidia related. My laptop with iRIS Xe is as afar away from Nvidia as it can be. So why not! The swap file is a minor thing at this point, but eventually the answer will show up; and probably with some sudo-foo magic stuff since it's the installer's fault!

[Qqmike]

Yeah, good points. 👍

[jlittle]

... a clean install. I kept my /home...

I would call that a somewhat unclean install.

Requiring Insisting on a 300MiB ESP is remarkably stupid...

You can opt out of an ESP with "manual" partitioning. The installer complains, but continues. Then, if there's another install on the machine, with GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false in /etc/default/grub run sudo update_grub there, or manually add an entry for the new install. If not, you could run sudo grub_install from "Try Kubuntu", maybe having to fix a couple of problems.

The rest of the 1 TB drive has a 16 GB swap partition. The odd thing is that there is also swap file, about half a gig.

The calamares installer always seems to create this. It causes a crash on btrfs if the file already exists.

Question: How do I get rid of the swap file?

There's an entry in /etc/fstab for it. I think you can remove the entry, reboot (or use swapoff), then delete the file.

[jglen490]

Well, I'd argue the "clean/unclean" definition, since Kubuntu does not install data, except as it relates to configurations. My /home is on its own partition, and as such once it is identified to the installer with a mount point, it is just brought into the fold as is. The OS can and does write what it wants ...

I used manual partitioning. I understand your interpretation of what the installer does, versus what it says, and what is says is far too aggressive and controlling. It should, in my opinion, present the user with facts, and an option to simply continue. I didn't need to waste time with an experiment

Thanks for the idea of using swapoff. Maybe the file space can be returned to the / partition.

[Schwarzer Kater]

The calamares installer always seems to create this. It causes a crash on btrfs if the file already exists.

Wow - I think you could be right! IIRC I pointed to one of my swap partitions during installation and I just found a swap file in / …
sudo rm /swapfile (my /etc/fstab was already modified for my swap partitions and all the other stuff, of course) - another unexpected free 512 MiB.

[jlittle]

...except as it relates to configurations...

Unclean with respect to those configurations. In the past, previous versions of KDE (perhaps before the DE became "plasma") could crash or mess up if one attempted to use previous versions' home directories. And with plasma, my plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc has become a nasty, corrupt, mess, for which the term "unclean" seems appropriate.

[oshunluvr]

Unclean with respect to those configurations. In the past, previous versions of KDE (perhaps before the DE became "plasma") could crash or mess up if one attempted to use previous versions' home directories. And with plasma, my plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc has become a nasty, corrupt, mess, for which the term "unclean" seems appropriate.

Agreed. In my mind, to be a "clean" install, one has to start with a clean home as well for the above stated reasons. Then, once configured and all desired software install, moving data (Pictures, Documents, etc.) from the old home.

After a disastrous attempt at upgrading 9.04 my habit was to always do a clean install. Since 18.04 I've been upgrading instead. I'm about ready to start over again because since Plasma 6 went live I've seen a few issues related to my home configs.

I'm going to wait until KDEneon rebases to 24.04 then clean house!

[jglen490]

Interesting. I've never had a /home problem after leaving it"as is" during an otherwise clean install. Whatever the new OS wants to write in terms of configs, etc into the existing /home, it will do. It will do that without issues, in my experience. I've done what I call a "clean install" since at least 16.04 LTS - and all I do is LTS. That shouldn't matter.

If /home causes a crash because of Plasma issues, it will crash regardless of the order of operations , i.e., leave the contents of /home in during install, or restore the contents of the old /home after install.

[Schwarzer Kater]

I also remember that I had some minor issues when Plasma 6 used the Plasma 5.27 settings (in Arch, openSUSE Tumbleweed and KDE neon) - some missing functionalities, strange behaviour of some Plasma features and the one or two odd crashes. Those problems were resolved when I started without any dot files and folders, practically without any old GUI settings. It may also have had something to do with some manual changes I made in Plasma, but I am sure not entirely.
Cache files are something I always delete from a tty anyway when upgrading the GUI - also when uprading minor versions, e.g. from 5.24.x to 5.27.x.

[oshunluvr]

Interesting. I've never had a /home problem after leaving it"as is" during an otherwise clean install. Whatever the new OS wants to write in terms of configs, etc into the existing /home, it will do. It will do that without issues, in my experience. I've done what I call a "clean install" since at least 16.04 LTS - and all I do is LTS. That shouldn't matter.

If /home causes a crash because of Plasma issues, it will crash regardless of the order of operations , i.e., leave the contents of /home in during install, or restore the contents of the old /home after install.

It's not so much as crashing, but rather some delay loading of some thing, an occasional double-splash screen, etc. Just little things that I can live with for now but don't appear on a new user account.

[jglen490]

Thank you for the clarification. Again, pretty much outside my experience, but I'll watch for those things next time