Enjoy Monitoring Mantic Kubuntu 23.10

[NoWorries]

The manifest file, located in the same directory as each iso image also lists all the actual packages that make up the ISO's OS image. For example, this is the current daily ISO's list.

Fun fact: the 'minimal' option in the installer actually is a similar but small list, used to uninstall software from the live image after it has been copied to the drive. So, the minimal option takes longer to install.

The site manifest site lists every nut and bolt installed by Mantic. Post Gnome reference:

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/09/...inimal-mistake,

basically referred to application files and the list that I gave was only for the application files. This was to show that Kubuntu 23.10, by comparison, has all the basic applications required for testing the system capabilities by an inquisitive user.

[claydoh]

But you don't need to actually run or install the OS to find out what is (or isn't) there. By then, it sort of becomes obvious if you don't have Libreoffice ot thunderbird.......
Simpler to download and open a text file, hit ctrl-f, and type thunder, libreo or something

[NoWorries]

How I Installed Grub Customizer on Mantic.

I firstly downloaded the latest build by:

wget https://launchpadlibrarian.net/570407966/grub-customizer_5.1.0-3build1_amd64.deb

I then removed all the characters in the deb image name such as - and _ by preceding then with \

After this change QApt Package Manager would install the package. I then found that Grub Customizer was in the System list and would run. An example of the menu that I have on Mantic is shown in the graphic below.



I much prefer this layout to one with a tiny list of options on a black screen which is what I get with my UHD screen. Having this capability also allows me to try other distributions on my Lunar partition.

[NoWorries]

[NoWorries]

I am now enjoying the final month before the release of Mantic Minotaur.

If you, like me, enjoy updates, you will have been heightened by all the numerous updates and the associated enhancement of Mantic. We are now in the final month of development before Mantic’s released on the 12^th October.. The significant advances over the last month are illustrated in the table below.

	2 Months to go	Penultimate Month
KDE Plasma Version	5.27.6	5.27.7
KDE Frameworks Version	5.109.0	5.110.0
KDE Applications Version	23.04.3	23.08.0
QT Version	5.15.10	5.15.10
Kernel Version	6.3.0-07-generic	6.3.0-07-generic

A month ago I had problems with using staging-frameworks, so I now do not use staging frameworks or staging plasma. From the above list you can see that Plasma, Frameworks and Applications have all been significantly advanced. So my ASUS Laptop, which has an NVIDIA card with nouveau drivers, has the same Info Center. Also, my ASUS Laptop with LO Impress for projections has no white line on the right and bottom edge of the screen. So I use it for any presentations that I am required too do.

My HP Laptop has an AMD video card. For this system to correctly display LO Impress videos on the projection screen, I had to remove LibreOffice-kde5. The only problem being the white line on the bottom and right edge of the projection screen. These white lines are a previously reported LO bug and they claim that it has been fixed. One application that I have found not working in Wayland is Kazam. I have since found that it works very well in X11. Looks like if an application fails in Wayland, I need to check it in X11

All aspects of the Mantic desktop improvements are great and I am so pleased that I now have Grub-Customizer working on Mantic. I look forward to further refinements by the developers in this final month. Looks like we now have KDE Plasma at version 5.27.8.

[DavidCoe]

This is the third Kubuntu release I've started tracking at late-alpha stage and, once again, been very pleasantly surprised at how usable it is! Yes, there are daily updates (sometimes quite large ones - plasma jumped to 5.27.8 over the weekend and the kernel to 6.5.0-5 last night). By and large, these proceed smoothly. So far, none have 'borked' my machines.

Two nice touches on Mantic. The latest clean install has taken debian-testings's shift to google noto as the default set for the extensive 'non-english' fonts and (hurrah) it can be removed/replaced/tuned without scrambling plasma. Secondly, for the first time in years, the kernel update-initramfs no longer produces that long diagnostic list of missing AMD modules. I don't think it's just cosmetic - things appear more stable/understandable for suspended sessions on my relatively-new Ryzen 5900HX.

Well done everyone - brava, bravo! Will keep reporting in if anything of note turns up. I run a modest MPI cluster and the Ryzen mini even has one of those nice Coral Edge TPU's on-board so (for my curiosity) new 'things' do get exercised.

Best regards

David

[NoWorries]

LibreOffice Impress and Wayland are not compatible. When I do a projection using Wayland with Impress and have the related LibreOffice Writer document loaded, I find that when I hit the ESC key on the presentation, both documents exit. When I restart, LibreOffice goes into a recovery mode for both Impress and Writer documents.

If I restart in X11, I do not go into recovery mode and both files are loaded and behave normally. That is, a projection using Impress, returns to the Impress document and does not exit as it does when I use the Wayland desktop.

Has anyone else experienced this problem with Wayland and, if so, where should such a "bug" be reported on this eve of the release of Mantic.

[GreyGeek]

I am running Wayland on Debian 12.
I opened Impress and chose the Debian Template. I modified the prompts and save it. Then I closed Impress, opened Dolphin, and migrated to that saved document. I clicked on it and Impress opened, loaded it and displayed it.
Everything is working fine.

Hitting the ESC key did nothing when I had my impress file open. No crashes.

Some KDE menu links stopped working and I had to redo them, and I am assuming it was because of Wayland, but that's just a guess.

Systemd-analyze gives me:

$ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 3.776s (firmware) + 3.119s (loader) + 3.799s (kernel) + 3.007s (userspace) = 13.703s
graphical.target reached after 2.997s in userspace.
jerry@GreyGeek:~$ systemd-analyze blame
1.491s exim4.service
658ms man-db.service

I could change exim4 to make it load after the graphic service, which could lower my total boot time to 12.2 seconds but why? All my games and other apps run fine, my Jupyter Notebook & Python code works great, and my system response is very quick.

The only "problem" I have is that I manually switched to the 6.4 kernel so that I could take advantage of the rtl88x2bu kernel module and not have to use a dkms compile to get the wifi working again. I had to put a hold on the 6.1 kernel updates because the update wanted to remove the 6.4 kernel. Sometime in the future that nonsense will get straightened out.

[NoWorries]

I am pleased to report that after the latest updates LibreOffice Impress on both Wayland and X11 does not crash when using ESC to exit a presentation. On both systems LibreOffice returns to the document for further editing or just normal exit.

The only difference between Wayland and X11 is that, on Impress, a presentation has a white line on the right and bottom edge of the screen for Wayland but no white lines for X11.

Because of these improvements I have been able to do a presentation on X11. I will wait patiently for the white line problem to be fixed on Wayland as it is over twice as fast as X11 using glmark2 to check performance.

[NoWorries]

The Final Release of Mantic Minotaur

It is now time for the release of Mantic. So this pre-release site will just be a historical list of the progress of Mantic development. When the Mantic site is listed as a Currently Supported Release, the next version will be the LTS in 24.04. I have enjoyed experiencing the development of Mantic from its Lunar origins. The table below shows the development over the past Month

	1 Months Ago	Mantic Release
KDE Plasma Version	5.27.7	5.27.8
KDE Frameworks Version	5.110.0	5.110.0
KDE Applications Version	23.08.0	23.08.1
QT Version	5.15.10	5.15.10
Kernel Version	6.3.0-07-generic	6.5.0.-9-generic

From the above list you can see that Plasma, Applications and the Kernel Version have all been advanced in the final month of development. Using Wayland for LibreOffice Impress projections still has a white line on the right and bottom edge of the projection screen for Wayland. Also in Wayland, an embedded video is displayed in a reduced size on the control screen and not on the projection screen. For this system to correctly display LO Impress videos on the projection screen, I had to remove libreoffice-kf5. Another application that I have found not working in Wayland is Kazam. Both LibreOffice and Kazam work perfectly when using X11. At least there is a way for me to solve these problems. I do prefer using Wayland because it is so much faster than X11!

Overall the developers and their supporters have done a great job at bringing Mantic to this level of development.