Re: Buster: KDE questions/issues

[Martin Steigerwald <martin@lichtvoll.de>]

local10 - 08.09.18, 04:42:
> Anyway, here are the questions  I still would like to find the answers
> to:
> 
> 1. KDE > Power / Session menu does not have Suspend or Hibernate
> options. How can I get them back, if possible? I currently don't have
> sddm installed but when I did it did not seem to help. Can suspend
> the PC by using "systemctl suspend" from the terminal.

I bet you may be lacking Plasma power management support packages that 
interface with Systemd (or whatever else on a non Systemd system).

% dpkg -l | grep powerdevil | cut -c1-72
ii  libpowerdevilcore2                            4:5.13.4-1            
ii  libpowerdevilui5                              4:5.13.4-1            
ii  powerdevil                                    4:5.13.4-1            
ii  powerdevil-data                               4:5.13.4-1

Install just the "powerdevil" package might do the trick. When those are 
installed you also have a systemsettings module to configure power 
management.

Then there may still be other pieces not working as intended. So if you 
really like to make sure you have a complete kde-standard set of 
packages, I think I´d remove kde-standard package and reinstall it with 
*recommends*. And then you can still carefully remove selected packages 
that you are sure you do not need.

Of course you can also go the other way around and install necessary 
packages as you find functionality missing. But depending on what else I 
like to do I may not always hint you at what packages those might be, at 
least not in a timely manner. I am already starting to get a bit tired 
to do the package searching for you.

If above packages are installed for you, I do not know off-hand what may 
still be missing. In case you use "systemctl suspend" you´d need to make 
sure to lock the desktop first, cause I think it does not lock Plasma 
desktop. As Powerdevil was broken in Unstable at some time, I just used 
"sleep 5 ; systemctl suspend" and then locked the desktop before the 
sleep was over. But there are also some DBUS calls to lock the desktop.


I really think: In case you still like to go without recommends by 
default, its better you really make yourself a bit more familiar of the 
different components of Plasma, KDE Frameworks and KDE Applications and 
how their respective Debian packages are named, or make yourself at 
least more familiar with how to search for them. None of the packages I 
recommended to you to install where difficult to find in my opinion.

I went without recommends for a long time, especially on servers, but 
with the current policy regarding recommends I install recommends by 
default and use --no-install-recommends with apt in case I do not like 
what it would install, in that case carefully checking the recommended 
packages and install what I think I need.

I am actually quite fine with the policy, cause it helps casual users to 
get their system running with in usual configurations while *still* 
allowing me to remove things I do not like to have installed. If 
recommends in Plasma dependency chain would all be depends I´d not have 
this choice anymore.

> 3. Device Notifier widget shows Floppy Disk device even though my PC
> does not have a floppy disk. Is there a way to remove it?

Floppy disk drives have been connected with ancient interfaces, even in 
the last modern PCs that still had them – interfaces that required 
polling for the presence of hardware. AFAIK the Linux kernel floppy 
driver can not, or at least not always, timely know whether there is one 
or there is not one. I´d just blacklist the kernel module "floppy" via a 
file in /etc/modprobe.d.

Thanks,
-- 
Martin