Enjoy Monitoring Mantic Kubuntu 23.10

[NoWorries]

I realize that Mantic is just over half way in its development, but Muon still has problems on Mantic. When I go to Settings > Configure Software Sources, enter the required password and then select Other Software, the only listing on this is cdrom(Kubuntu 23.10 . . . . .

I would like to see the other packages listed so that, if I want to remove any, I can do so very easily. I just hope this is not too much to ask at this stage.

[Schwarzer Kater]

Thanks.

Qt 6 already has been released for a while (the current version is 6.5.x) - but Plasma 5.27.x et al. still use Qt 5.
If you search for installed Qt packages you can see that only a few Qt 6 packages are installed by default yet.

[NoWorries]

It is now 3 months to go before the release of Mantic Minotaur.

Mantic updates are continuing at a great pace and we are now at the half way development point. Mantic continues to be incredibly stable and a continuing tribute to the capability of the developers.

Mantic’s advances over the last month are illustrated in the table below.

	4 Months to go	3 Months to go
KDE Plasma Version	5.27.5	5.27.6
KDE Frameworks Version	5.107.0	5.108.0
KDE Applications Version	23.04.2	23.04.3
QT Version	5.15.8	5.15.10
Kernel Version	6.2.0-21-generic	6.3.0-07-generic

You will know see that every key topic of development has been advanced in the last month. Of particular interest is the QT Version which is now at 5.15.10. I will be interested to see when QT 6 is released and this will herald the inclusion of KDE Plasma Version 6 which is either at the end of this year or early next year.

Finally once again, well done developers on a superb job at advancing Karmic!

[NoWorries]

I must say that I have been using my Sacrificial Laptop to test ideas. I have created two system partitions (ie 4) to test two Linux installations. I did try Linux Mint with btrfs Root partition and then with an Ext4 Root partition. In both cases, LM was the only one showing. I have just reinstalled Mantic and after doing this I could see Linux Mint.

From what you are saying, I believe that I would have to use my Mantic installation and copy the grub boot menu to a different location and then modify the location of the new boot menu and then reboot to check that Manitc can be booted with this new location. Following this I would have to install the other distribution with ubiquity -b option and then edit the grub boot menu with the location of the boot menu.

I must say that this sounds fairly involved and much more difficult than just formatting the Root partition as Ext4 for both installations which I know works very well at locating all distributions as well as giving the option to format the boot menu with grub-customizer. I find this option essential for my main laptop because of its 4K display. However on my Sacrificial Laptop this problem does not exist.

[jlittle]

Jlittle has some experience in dealing with this area...

I advocate for the idea of taking control of the boot, by installing grub by itself, independent of any install. I have to maintain grub myself, but this is easy and very simple. I also have to know what to change in /etc/fstab, but again this is easy and simple. The hardest part has been to stop installs messing with it. Kubuntu has been good for this because ubiquity can be run with the "-b" switch to not install a boot loader.

We just are offering a suggestion that is 5000% ideal for a testing sort of scenario.

Well put.

One may want to test the whole install process, including that of the boot loader. But IMO that's not very useful if tracking a new release, especially when the iso changes daily.

[claydoh]

it would take up more disk space

That's not quite the case.

Unfortunately, I am not convinced about the advantages of rollbacks as it would take up more disk space.

Not much, and even less if you don't hoard them I use Timeshift to create, restore, schedule, delete, and browse the content of the snapshots.
Snapshots are essentially just the changes, not full-system backups or anything like that.

I cannot see any advantage in btrfs formatting for the root partition as the partitions for Linux distributions always give access t previous kernels to boot with if problems arise

Nothing changes here at all, or isn't supposed to. But then again, your system is more complex. I think your issues are from having multiple *buntu installs sharing the same EFI partition.

Normally, each OS install has its own separate boot loader, so you would have individual grub installs for each one, with the Grub seen at boot by default being the one set in your BiOS.
*buntu don't have separate grubs, so Kubuntu/Ubuntu/Xubuntu installs all use the same exact files, names and dirs in that EFI partition, since they are actually the same OS. So if you have Lunar installed, then install Mantic, Mantic's grub files replace/overwrite the existing Lunar grub in the EFI partition, and so on. This has zero to do with btrfs since the boot files are on that Fat32 EFI partition.
otherwise, I can't explain why you see differences, though that is possibly an issue of everything, including grub, being in a 'volatile' state at any given moment in Mantic at the moment

Jlittle has some experience in dealing with this area, hopefully he can give hints.
A separate drive is ideal for this, as you can have multiple EFI partitions, and thus keep Lunar and Mantic's grub installs from overwriting each other. But that isn't always feasible or possible for everyone.

I am quite happy to have my Home partitions formatted as btrfs.

That is more than enough reason to continue doing so. We just are offering a suggestion that is 5000% ideal for a testing sort of scenario.

[Schwarzer Kater]

Thank you for this experiment with GRUB/os-prober (I think that is what is technically responsible for identifying other partitions with operating systems when you use update-grub) and the table.

To be honest I don't understand the table and its labels, though (fstab?)…
Edit: Now I do - thank you for the corrections.

[NoWorries]

BTW, wow, nine partitions - old school, lol.

If you decide to attempt BTRFS again, you only need a single partition for it. The installer will separate root from home using subvolumes on a single file system partition. With all the testing you like to do with these pre-releases I would think BTRFS would be a given. Snapshots and roll-backs would be a huge benefit.

Following your comments, I have tidied up my partitions, however I still have the old world partitions of 6 associated with Mantic, Lunar and efi and 3 related to Windows.

Unfortunately, I am not convinced about the advantages of rollbacks as it would take up more disk space. I cannot see any advantage in btrfs formatting for the root partition as the partitions for Linux distributions always give access t previous kernels to boot with if problems arise. I am quite happy to have my Home partitions formatted as btrfs.

For the problem that I consider to be related to grub and btrfs, I decided to try different combinations of Mantic and Lunar with btrfs and ext4. I use update-grub to find the partitions after this process. In all cases my Windows and efi partitions are always listed. The table below shows the results of this process for the Linux distributions using update-grub to find the partitions.

Mantic Ext4 Root	Lunar Ext4 Root
Mantic & Lunar Listed	Lunar & Mantic Listed
Mantic Ext4 Root	Lunar Btrfs Root
Mantic Only Boot time about 10 times slower	Lunar & Mantic Listed with Kernel of Lunar
Mantic Btrfs Root	Lunar Btrfs Root
Mantic only listed no access to Lunar	Not Listed and not visible

As you can see the btrfs on both Root partitions works if you only have one Linux distribution on your system. However if you have more than one, the last installed Linux distribution is only seen and accessible. From the table above, having one with btrfs and the other with ext4 does not work very well. The access to multiple Linux distributions with the old world formatting works only when both Root systems ext4 formatted.

[NoWorries]

Sorry for the confusion as the graphic of the KDE Partition Manager was for my system when it was working with the ext4 format for all Root partitions. When I had my Root partition formatted with brrfs, only the latest Kubuntu installation showed on the boot menu. The other did not show and the only way to see if it was still present was to use Dolphin to see what was gong on.

BTW the number of partitions is mainly due to my attempt to minimise the size of the Windows 10 partition which was using all of my Disk.

[oshunluvr]

Sounds like you ran into a GRUB problem not a BTRFS problem. If OS-prober didn't find your EXT4 Kubuntu install, I don't see how that could be the fault of the file system format.

BTW, wow, nine partitions - old school, lol.

If you decide to attempt BTRFS again, you only need a single partition for it. The installer will separate root from home using subvolumes on a single file system partition. With all the testing you like to do with these pre-releases I would think BTRFS would be a given. Snapshots and roll-backs would be a huge benefit.

[Schwarzer Kater]

I think claydoh suggested to install your test system(s) on a / partition with btrfs.
I am sure the btrfs fans will chime in.

I would make the EFI partition at least 300 MB nowadays (I usually use 304 or 320 MB) and IMHO your swap partition could be a tad bigger to be on the safe side - but you know your use case best, of course (I assume you don't use hibernation and use the same swap partition from the different Linux installations - which makes perfect sense).

PS: If you want to compare your test installation(s) with other distributions you can do so here
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/...f-its-siblings

[NoWorries]

I will be interested to see what you think of my disk partitions. This shows the separate root and home partitions for Kinetic and Lunar as well as Windows.

[claydoh]

Grub2 does not handle btrfs Root partitions easily

Actually, it does, just fine.
I suspect a bug in the installer, or a misconfiguration.
If you have just an EFI partition, plus a / set as BTRFS, plus swap, it will set up both @/ and @home subvolumes. You don't have/need separate partitions for these.

I am sure the gurus on the topic can point you in the right direction. Having snapshots and rollbacks for your @/ is extremely ideal for your use case here, most definitely

[NoWorries]

I have always been interested in getting the latest software installed. Recently I made a big mistake in not thoroughly checking what I do. I unfortunately accepted a pre-release frameworks update last week which, at that early stage of development, removed loads of essential files while installing the new KDE Frameworks 5.108 files. So after this oversight I didn't have a bootable system.

I responded by doing a re-installation. Because btrfs is so popular, I decided to make the system disk format btrfs instead of an ext4. After doing this, the boot options failed to show my other Kubuntu distribution but it did show Windows 10 and other partitions. No matter what I tried, I could not get more than one of my two Kubuntu distribution listed. With my limited understanding of btrfs, I finally concluded that Grub2 does not handle btrfs Root partitions easily. So I did yet another re-installation so that all my Root partitions were ext4 with btrfs Home partitions. I could now see my two Kubuntu distributions. As I have a 4K Monitor, which requires a magnifying glass to read the boot menu, I decided to install and configure Grub-Customizer. Now all is back to normal with a working Frameworks 5.108.0.

The developers continue dong a great job at advancing Mantic. The only problem is this user who is not totally with it early in the morning.

[NoWorries]

On a less negative note, when the heck are they gonna finally update the kernel here, lololol!

Yes, I am impatient. I meed the more current kernel in hopes it supports my Ryzen 5 based Chromebook, which is difficult to get working sound on before later 6.2.x.
No, the 6.2.0 in Lunar and soon to be in Jammy don't work.

Fedora as a desktop OS is a bit clunky, even for me, among other things.

I hope that you are now as happy as I am since today, my Mantic Kernel is 6.3.07 and more importantly the Qt Version is 5.15.10. So i am looking forward to great advances be developers in the coming days.