[PLASMA 5] Why is KDE dumping Muon???

[TwoFistedJustice]

Muon has started to crash. Which led me to the discovery that KDE is dumping it as a package manager.


Personally I prefer it to Synaptic (which I find awkward) and also to Discover (which I despise).

Why are they doing this?

[claydoh]

Muon has been dead for years. Last release was in 2018.
KDE never really developed it, itself.
It stopped being developed a long time ago, so KDE aren't really the one's who abandoned it.

It was created by a Kubuntu dev as a Kubuntu project many years ago (at least 2010) when they actually had a good number of coders on the team.

Here is a gem from the Wayback machine

Though it did become a KDE project, it hasn't been worked on in many years now, since it's original creator moved on.
The thing is, Muon is only useful on *buntu and Debian, so really (imo) not a very big slice of the KDE user base as a whole, which means there doesn't seem to be anyone interested in working on this.
Being a KDE project doesn't mean a thing magically becomes maintained or anything when its developer(s) move on.

[TwoFistedJustice]

Okay, so I guess the next question would be: is there a way to make Discover more text based ( lose the big fat boxes ) so I don't have to scroll endlessly to see what's what?

[claydoh]

Nope. Discover isn't intended in any way to be a package manager
Other than synaptic, there isn't much avaialble for this sort of tool.
There is Apper, but that is just as old, and is Packagekit-based, like Discover, though seems more like what you are looking for in terms of the UI

Of course there is aptitude as a text based package manager.

[GreyGeek]

You can get Muon from this site, which has releases for Ubuntu (KDE, Neon, etc).

[claydoh]

You can get Muon from this site, which has releases for Ubuntu (KDE, Neon, etc).

Packages are still available in the various distros, it is just that KDE stopped supporting Muon, long after Kubuntu stopped being able to maintain it.

[TwoFistedJustice]

Goldarnit. I really prefer the Muon interface to clunky Synaptic. It ain't perfect, but it's darn good. It's pretty annoying that the lifespan of any Linux application seems to be inversely proportional to the user friendliness of the interface.

[oldgeek]

I have Muon and use it occasionally. It doesn't crash for me, although maybe that's because I don't use it that much.

[jglen490]

Yep, Discover is a "store", like your neighborhood grocer. Cruise the aisles, find what you want/need. Other than the notifications that pop-up, I don't use it. Synaptic works best to install something that's in its database. Muon, is still good, but as noted it's not supported very well these days. When Muon goes to the great Bibucket, it'll be missed, but life goes on.

[JeffRedd]

I like Muon Package Manager but I forgot it where I got it. It has come in handy finding parts of packages that were not fully uninstalled or removed. Many Linux distros come with so many fonts preinstalled that you’ll never use or are in a foreign language. I’ve removed many of them because I hate going through all the fonts when I want to change them, so I removed most of them and I just have 11 now, 11 that I like. Unlike other package managers that I’ve tried Muon tells you everything about the font.

Toward the bottom, in Muon, there are tabs that tell you technical details, dependencies and installed files. The dependencies tab is the one that is the most useful when removing fonts and not screwing up the system. I will use this for removing fonts and doing other things. I know people will say that you can remove fonts many different ways but I have not seen another way that works so well and gives so much information about each font.

I use the Muon Package Manager and the Synaptic Package Manager but rarely do I use them to install only remove. I install using either Discover or Konsole (command line) or sometimes apps comes with a Debian package that installs with a QApt Package Installer, which works well for me.

The packages that give me hell are the ones that end in .tar.gz. I’ve got them to work sometimes and other times, well, not so much. Cheers!

[claydoh]

The packages that give me hell are the ones that end in .tar.gz.

Those aren't distro packages (lke debs and RPMs), but are (usually) just 'zipped' archives of the source code, or stuff that needs to be manually installed. They aren't handled by a distro's packaging system, or any system really.

[Beerislife]

Muon is one of the first things I install, along with fcitx-mozc and Krusader! For me it just works (tm)

[notabug]

I'm confused about the talk concerning missing Muon in Kubuntu installs. I've never needed to install Muon. It has always been among the default distro applications every time I've installed Kubuntu, clear up to 23.04.

[claydoh]

I'm confused about the talk concerning missing Muon in Kubuntu installs. I've never needed to install Muon. It has always been among the default distro applications every time I've installed Kubuntu, clear up to 23.04.

It isn't missing, it is just dead as a developed piece of software.
It still builds and runs, like it has for the past 5+ years since the last release.
Who knows how long that lasts. Could be a long time, could break with a future update.

[notabug]

Thanks claydoh. I always install synaptic right after an install, but do occasionally use Muon. My imagined mystery has been solved.