Moving to K20

[Don B. Cilly]

I currently use neon (5.18, User edition) which has an 18.04 base.
I also have Kubuntu 20.04 on another partition.
I have been trying for a few days to see if I could move my daily use to K20. I can't... yet. Not quite.

For one thing, after the last update (say three days ago) I started having minor crashes - kwin, "logout greeter" (I have to do a hard reboot or reboot from konsole) and other minor issues.
But then, nothing new, I put my neon /home on it, I've seen it before, they usually smooth themselves out.

But the other thing is the dreaded "fpdb" python script.
So far, I've been able to move it to all subsequent distros - with increasing difficulty. On 18.04, half of the python stuff I had to install was "deprecated" and... somersaults.
On 20.04, it's... pretty much impossible. I can install python 2.7, have separate pips, etc. But... I can't get it to work. Even after I get the modules in, now it's "syntax errors".
I tried something called 2to3, which "translates" python 2 to 3. Syntax errors. I tried...

Now, that app is not absolutely essential, but I really like it, there are no alternatives,and it hasn't been maintained since... 2014 :·/
I tried to see if I could make an appimage of it. I can't... would anyone here be able to do that? Or try anyway?

[Don B. Cilly]

After quite a bit of headbanging, I found an obscure fork for Windows that actually works with Wine.
It's not half as good as the native Linux one, but... it's usable. I can live with it

[Don B. Cilly]

I've been using K20 for half of yesterday and most of today. Installed remaining (minor) stuff, it's pretty much a mirror of my neon.
Personal opinion: rock solid, probably the best Kubuntu distro ever. All glitchies/minor-crashes went away (as expected).
Well, it's still missing the "globe" wallpaper 14.04 and 16.04 had.
That is the one thing I don't understand about KDE. They had the best gimmick ever and just let it die. Oh well. I'll make do with xplanetFX.:·)
And I did get better system monitoring with karamba, but, after countless hours of conkying around, my conky is not that bad.

So, yes, great distro.
I'm back on neon but, in case I have/want to use K20 daily, I can.
And if (eventually) upgrading neon to the 20 base should result in losing some thingies, I know the roadmap.
Pity the windows version of the OSX fork of fpdb isn't all that good. But then not critical.

[Don B. Cilly]

Actually, this python thing is starting to get mildly annoying.
I'd forgotten to install xplanetFX on K20 (hadn't noticed because I had a "mock-up" wallpaper. and was busy doing things).
So I went to install it. Dependency not satisfiable: python-gtk2. No such package, or anything similar.
Groogling around, I found the workaround. Which boils down to
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nrbrtx/python2-stuff
sudo apt install python-gtk2

Still, with the amount of python(2)-based apps lying around... dropping support for python2 is probably not a good idea :·/

[chimak111]

...
I'm back on neon ...

Testing Edition, of course

[Don B. Cilly]

Well no, I turned my Testing into User by switching repos about ten days ago

[EDIT] So this is my 1000th post, and I have "Kubuntu as Second Language"... hmmm :·/
For one thing, I'm trilingual, so it would be my fourth.
For another... I really love Kubuntu (and KFN) but my knowledge of it is quite... dismal really :·0

[EDIT 2] I've lodged a formal protest :·)

[Don B. Cilly]

Well, having worked around pretty much all the python hurdles, I have now moved almost permanently to 20.04

[Don B. Cilly]

So, cilly question (maybe).
Since I'm still "hopping" a bit between K20 and neon, I thought I'd make a separate /home partition so both would share it.
So I have "my" updated stuff in both - and it saves a lot of space.
Thing is, there are a few things that will "conflict" if they both use the same /home.

Take conky. The same setup (mysteriously) returns different outputs for some things with the same syntax. And of course they read separate disk partitions, etc.
That should be easy to fix. I make a user-owned dir outside /home, point my startup scripts and things there...

But... for example, some of the same Application Launcher/dock entries point to slightly different stuff on the two distros.
Configurations would be written to the same /home.
How does one deal with that sort of thing?

I have been groogling around and I am confused.

[oshunluvr]

Well, I would think the best solution might be separate homes but share the data. Then no conflicts but saving some space. Honestly IMO the best way would be to use a single BTRFS partition (file system), have two home subvolumes and a subvolume for each home folder containing data that you wanted to share. For example, your subvolume list might look like:

@home_neon
@home_kubuntu
@documents
@downloads
@music
@pictures
@templates
@videos
etc.

One for each folder. Then in each distro, mount the home subvolume and the "root" BTRFS file system. Then either mount the data subvolumes to the folders in the respective home folder. It sounds complicated, but it's really not. I do something like this with my media server but it's got 24 subvolumes. Once it's set up, you can forget about it.

One of the major advantages here is all the subvolumes share a single partition and it's space so you don't have the wasted unused space that multiple partitions always end up with. Also you've added BTRFS snapshot and backup capability to your data and home by using subvolumes to contain the data. Here's a link to some different ways to use subvolumes and mounting, but it touches on a lot of rather complicated use-cases that aren't really needed for something this simple: https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index....inGuide#Layout

Of course, this doesn't share anything except your personal data files. So applications would have totally different configurations, history, etc. If you only want to separate only some of them, this wouldn't work. Then you would have to use a custom config location for the applications you were looking to separate like conky.

[Don B. Cilly]

Is that translatable to ext4?
All my partitions on all my disks are ext4 (except efi and swap ones)...

Still, the main reason I'm trying a separate /home is to save space.
So.. the conky thing - as I've said - is easy.
The entries that point to different (versions of) apps are... few.
I guess I make menu entries for both types and remember which work on which...

[oshunluvr]

All you have to do is clear one off and reformat it to BTRFS.

Multiple partitions are NEVER a way to save space, so no my suggestion would not "translate" to EXT4. Having two home partitions using EXT4 would add a significant amount of wasted space. My assumption was you wanted to access personal data files from both installs without duplicating their contents, which is the solution I offered. BTRFS subvolumes can exist on the same partition thus removing the need to divide up your hard drive space into arbitrarily sized partitions.

You might want to start by actually seeing where your space is being used. Open up Konsole and type:

du --max-depth=1 -h | sort -h

It will take a minute or two, but then you'l know where the space is being used. In my case, there are only these locations outside of the data folders that contain any noteworthy amount of used space:

30G ./.WarThunder
11G ./.local
4.6G ./.cache
3.0G ./.config
1.3G ./.steam
607M ./.wine

WarThunder (a game), Steam, and Wine are all easily configured directories. local, cache, and config not so much.

Within local the largest are;

1.3G share/baloo
2.4G share/Trash
6.1G share/steam

within config;

1.2G chromium
1.5G Mailspring (email)

within cache;

1.2G chromium
2.0G thumbnails



So I can say, in my case, that by changing a few directory locations I can move 65G or so out of my home. So that, combined with my data folders takes up more than 99% of my total home, which is about 230G. Crazy right?

The point is, with the above few exceptions, almost all of your home is data files, not Linux files.

Figure out where your space is being used, then plan accordingly.

[oshunluvr]

BTW, if you're trying to save space but using antiquated EXT file systems, you could reclaim some space by eliminating the amount of reserved space. By default EXT4 reserves 5% of data space for "system" functions. This is largely overkill especially on large drives. A feww hundred MB is enough unless you're doing something that causes excessive fragmentation or the drive is 95% full.

Since your /home partition(s) are not system partitions, there's no need for reserved space at all. This command will free up the space totally (set it at 0%):

sudo tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdb2

Obviously use whatever partition(s) are appropriate in place of sdb2. Here, this added 49G of space to a 916G partition.

You can run the same command on your root partitions also, but maybe use 1 instead of 0 just in case it's needed.

[Don B. Cilly]

Well, first of all, what I just said was incorrect. The main reason I want a shared /home is, as you say, "to access personal data files from both installs without duplicating their contents".
So - obviously - whatever personal stuff/configuration I change on one OS, changes on the other one.

I also want to do it to save space - if I only have one /home, it takes half the space of two :·)
I have three distros on a 500GB SSD. I only use two - the old neon Unstable can go - but...

Now, I guess I would have to re-format all three partitions to BTRFS, right? Not just the /home.
I'll think about it.

Meanwhile, I'll see what I can do with the separate entries/conkys. It's probably trifling.
Thanks for the explanation.

[oshunluvr]

Now, I guess I would have to re-format all three partitions to BTRFS, right? Not just the /home.
I'll think about it..

Actually, no. The "best" use of BTRFS would be to combine all the partitions into a single BTRFS partition and have ALL your installs and homes on a single partition, all sharing the same space. Right now, I have KDEneon, Kubuntu, Manjaro, a stand-alone Grub install, and two home subvolumes on a single BTRFS partition. IF you wanted to go that way, you'd have to look into migrating your EXT4 installs to BTRFS. I've not played around with that for years, but it can be done.

Alternately, leave your partitions as they are, make one of them BTRFS, and create home and data subvolumes as I described above. It's not an all-or-nothing thing. Kubuntu can remain on EXT4 while home resides on BTRFS. Actually, if you go that route, don't use separate home partitions at all. Leave /home within each install and use the BTRFS partition to hold your personal data - which you them mount to all your existing and future installs. Cake.

There's is a real cool part: you wouldn't necessarily have to re-partition your drive at all if you wanted to go full BTRFS. BTRFS can expand into unused space AND combine partitions itself and very easily (a single command) without editing the partition table.

Example:
Assuming you have 5 partitions, 1-Kubuntu, 2-KubuntuHome, 3-Neon-Unstable, 4-Neon, 5-NeonHome.
You wipe 3-Neon-Unstable and reformat it. It becomes 3-BTRFS.
You migrate all your personal data from folders from everywhere into subvolumes on 3-BTRFS.
You then move all the configs and other parts of 2 and 5 INTO their respective installs eliminating separate home mounts.
You re-format and ADD 2 and 5 to 3, making one large BTRFS fie system - now it's 235-BTRFS.
In both your installs, you mount the various data subvolumes to the folders in /home/don and you're done. You don't even need to re-partition or resize partitions.

If you're so short on space already that the data files are too large to be combined at once, you can do this one home partition at a time. You could also, since 2 and 3 are next to each other in this example, expand 3-BTRFS into 2 making it into 2-BTRFS, then ADD 5 in afterward.

BTRFS allows to to connect partitions or devices (drives) and use them as a single space. Lots of freedom compared to EXT.

[Don B. Cilly]

Very interesting.
At the moment, I'm like... https://youtu.be/ySyBMTo-1sc?t=33 (30 seconds).

But I'll look into it eventually. Thanks.