Nicely Nitpick Noble 24.04 LTS

[Schwarzer Kater]

As many of you already know Kubuntu 24.04 LTS will use the Calamares installer.

Fun fact: the installer's slideshow still is the one from Lubuntu.

[Schwarzer Kater]

It's easier to simply use poweroff - and no need for sudo in *Ubuntu.

[WonkoTheSaneUK]

Yes, I do have trouble with the Shut Down button not working. The only one that I now use to Shut Down is the Log Out button and that gives all options including the Shut Down option.

My system still hangs when trying that.
I'll try a "sudo shutdown now" next.

[NoWorries]

Yes, I do have trouble with the Shut Down button not working. The only one that I now use to Shut Down is the Log Out button and that gives all options including the Shut Down option.

[WonkoTheSaneUK]

Anyone else having trouble with Noble hanging when shutdown from the menu?

[Schwarzer Kater]

Slightly OT:

I have noticed that kernel 6.7.x uses a good deal more memory on cold boot than e.g. kernel 6.5.x or 6.6.x (I have seen this in openSUSE Tumbleweed and Arch).
Did you also observe this in Kubuntu 24.04?

With the update to kernel 6.7.6 both in openSUSE Tumbleweed and Arch the memory usage on cold boot has dropped by approximately 512MB for my main desktop computer!
I have no idea why, but I am satisfied with the newer kernels now.

[NoWorries]

We are now in final 2 Months before the Release of Noble Numbat 24.04 LTS

This month has been characterised by a multitude of updates. For this month, only the KDE Plasma version has not been advanced. Version 6 will come in the six months of Noble development.

Now for the impressive list of Info Version updates in the last month with the Application Version updates.

	3 Months Ago	2 Months Status
KDE Plasma Version	5.27.10	5.27.10
KDE Frameworks Version	5.113	5.115.0
QT Version	5.15.10	5.15.12
Application Version	4:23.08.4	4:23.08.5
Kernel Version	6.7.0-2-generic	6.8.0-11-generic

I am very impressed with the advances reflected in the above list. Most notable is the QT Version update which reflects that Plasma 6 is getting ready with QT Version possibly getting to 6 as well. Looks like exciting days ahead.


I continue to use Noble 100% of the time and appreciate its stability. I assume that other users of Noble are experiencing the same stability. Congratulations to the developers for the progress they have made over the last month and will continue to make in the coming months

[Schwarzer Kater]

Today I quickly spun up a VM and started a live ISO with today's Kubuntu 24.04 (Noble Numbat) Daily Build to have a look at the state of things
(be aware that this is - in contrary to the posts of NoWorries - a virtual machine and only from a live ISO):

KDE Plasma	5.27.10
KDE Frameworks	5.115.0
KDE Gear	23.08.4
Qt	5.15.10
Mesa	24.0.1
Kernel	6.6.0-14

snap list only shows the usual(?) bare, core22, firefox, firmware-updater, gnome-42-2204, gtk-common-themes and snapd.
So fortunately no Thunderbird Snap yet…

The default $XGD_SESSION_TYPE is X11.


PS: The firmware-updater Snap is new compared to the previous Kubuntu releases.

[claydoh]

Apologies if you already know this, but I find you can help to keep Kontact working reliably by regularly running a couple of maintenance commands on the Akonadi database backend:

akonadictl fsck

and

akonadictl vacuum

Run the commands as your regular user (not sudo).

Me and Kontact have had our issues over the years, but I stick with it because Thunderbird is so damn ugly on a Plasma desktop....

......

[bendy]

So now every aspect of Kontact is now working very well for me. Many thanks to the developers for a job well done.

Apologies if you already know this, but I find you can help to keep Kontact working reliably by regularly running a couple of maintenance commands on the Akonadi database backend:

akonadictl fsck

and

akonadictl vacuum

Run the commands as your regular user (not sudo).

Me and Kontact have had our issues over the years, but I stick with it because Thunderbird is so damn ugly on a Plasma desktop....

[NoWorries]

In the past I have commented that Kontact fails to start. About a week ago it launched successfully with the only problem being Feeds not being displayed correctly. Today I went into Kontact > Settings > Configure Kontact and changed display parameters and I was surprised that Feeds were displayed correctly. I suspect that updates probably fixed this problem and it was just coincidental that that I found Feeds working.

So now every aspect of Kontact is now working very well for me. Many thanks to the developers for a job well done.

[Schwarzer Kater]

The Register : KDE 6 misses boat to make it into Kubuntu 24.04

[Snowhog]

While one can install a Porsche engine in a Volkswagen Beetle, there are going to be limitations one has to deal with. At a certain point, 'old(er)' hardware just isn't going to be up to snuff for the latest OS's.

[Schwarzer Kater]

It is no problem for me either regarding memory - I was just curious, because for my computer's system it was something like 1,2 GB vs. 2 GB with the upgrade from kernel 6.5.x to 6.7.x …
And it might become "problematic" (meaning: increase swapping) in everyday use then, if you wanted to install 24.04 on an older machine that has e.g. a max memory of only 4 GB and an iGPU that also uses this memory.

[NoWorries]

I have noticed that kernel 6.7.x uses a good deal more memory on cold boot than e.g. kernel 6.5.x or 6.6.x (I have seen this in openSUSE Tumbleweed and Arch).
Did you also observe this in Kubuntu 24.04?

Since I have 15.5 GiB of memory, I have not noticed that problem.