Am I right in thinking that the 18.04 KDE Neon repo is not going to continue to be updated? I would like to stay on 18.04 for the time being if it will still be viable.

In theory, most of them will be good for a while yet. See https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle

In practice... it's complicated :·)
I've been trying to get some sense of it myself...

Don B. Cilly wrote:In theory, most of them will be good for a while yet. See https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle

That isn't applicable to neon. We will stop doing updates to bionic soon and that includes security updates.

Drat. That's what I thought. I had really come to appreciate KDE Connect, and my workflow as such depends on it, so I don't want to have to give it up.

Any idea how long it will be before updates are shut off for 18.04?

albenson wrote:I had really come to appreciate KDE Connect, and my workflow as such depends on it, so I don't want to have to give it up.

Wait, why would you have to give it up in the first place?

bobbywibowo wrote:Wait, why would you have to give it up in the first place?

It simply does not work in 20.04 as it did in previous releases.

I use it to transfer files among my PCs on my home LAN, as well as opening links and sharing clipboards with one another. Some people work with PCs with multiple displays, but I use three PCs (one desktop, two laptops) and I move stuff around with KDE Connect as needed. With 18.04, this worked flawlessly, and it's why I've gotten so used to it.

In 20.04, whether it be Kubuntu 20.04 or Neon based on 20.04, pairings don't stick. I can pair my PCs and hit refresh on the KDE Connect devices list and it will instantly unpair them both. Logging out, entering sleep mode, or rebooting will cancel the pairings also.

For that time they are paired, shared clipboard, ping, and open links on other devices work, but file transfers don't. The file transfer dialog appears on the target PC and that's all... it never progresses, and the file is never sent.

When I first tried out Kubuntu 20.04 and found that KDE Connect didn't work, I chalked it up to Ubuntu messing things up somehow, but I was sure KDE would get it right... I mean, it is their product, right? But it's exactly the same. It may well be some other library or dependency that is messing up the show, but it's beyond my ability to troubleshoot. I've looked over the logs and found nothing that would clue me in to where the failure is happening.

I've tried it from Kubuntu 20.04, from Neon rebased to 20.04, and from Linux Mint Cinnamon 20 (based on 20.04) with the KDE Connect indicator. None of them are able to hold a pairing or transfer a file. I've tried connecting (initiating a pairing request and then trying to send a file) from a Neon 18.04 machine to each of these variations on 20.04, and it still did the same thing... file transfer dialog appears, but no progress, and it just stays there until I cancel it. I've tried a live session of Kubuntu 20.04 and paired it with a full install of 18.04 Neon and it fails. I've tried numerous combinations of PC hardware and OS... the only KDE Connect setup that worked was 18.04 to 18.04 (whether Kubuntu or Neon). If there was any 20.04 in the mix, it fails.

It's gone from being a killer feature that I've touted to others as one of the great bits about KDE to being completely useless. I mentioned the issue in the "need help testing rebase 20.04" thread, I emailed the person in charge of KDE connect via the email address on the little info blurb on the KDE Connect plugin, and I filed a bug officially, but there has been no reply to any of it, and the rebase was released with the bug still present. Clearly, it is not a priority for KDE at the present time.

I imagine it will be fixed eventually, and I know it's not the only thing the KDE devs have going on, so I would be happy to wait on 18.04 for as long as it takes (or at least until Ubuntu's support runs out), as the failure of KDE Connect is really the only big difference visible to me between 18.04 and 20.04 anyway. I am not in any hurry to upgrade. But if the KDE bits are going to be unsupported shortly, that's not going to work. That was why I wanted to see how much more time I have over on 18.04.

I see.

Right off the bat, I can't really say much if you're facing the issue from PC-to-PC, as I do not have a secondary PC/laptop to try it with. If it matters however, I can confirm it works just fine from PC-to-Phone (Android). Granted it's a pairing that I've set up in 18.04, but it works just as well after upgrading to 20.04.

The only thing that isn't working is probably copying to clipboard from Phone to PC (the other way around is working fine), but that was indeed a limitation that came with Android 10 (some sort of security thing). I was informed it could be worked-around with a clipboard whitelist magisk module thing (basically root), but I have yet to try that out.

apachelogger wrote:That isn't applicable to neon. We will stop doing updates to bionic soon and that includes security updates.

Could you explain this is some detail?
I thought on neon the Plasma part was "rolling", and the base system was Ubuntu anyway.

I mean, I have repos for both neon and Ubuntu stuff... Disregarding 3rd parties, if I do apt update I have:

Code: Select all

http://es.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic InRelease
http://es.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates InRelease [88.7 kB]
http://archive.neon.kde.org/user bionic InRelease [131 kB]
http://es.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-backports InRelease [74.6 kB]
http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security InRelease [88.7 kB]

Pkcon refresh also gives me http://es.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic InRelease as "Enabled".

Don B. Cilly wrote:Could you explain this is some detail?
I thought on neon the Plasma part was "rolling", and the base system was Ubuntu anyway.

The Plasma part is rolling, but it will only be built by the KDE devs for the base they consider current. The KDE Neon repos for bionic and focal are separate from one another.

Right now, everything in the KDE Neon repo is, as far as I know, built for bionic and focal, but that won't last forever. I don't know whether KDE will simply stop updating the bionic repo (and allow it to keep serving up packages, though they will not be updated) or if they'll completely shut it down, but either way, any updates to Plasma or any of the other KDE stuff will only be happening with focal.

I did roll back to the Neon with 18.04 base, and I guess I will just stay here until 20.04 is a little more fully cooked, however long that may take. The majority of the security stuff is in Ubuntu's wheelhouse anyway, and that part of Neon with the 18.04 base will continue to get updates.

OK, thanks.
This is starting to make a little more sense.

Now, I'm quite happy with the current state of all apps I'm using (except kde-connect, of course ;·) , and not particularly worried about "security".
So I will hang on to the 18 base as long as... reasonably feasible.
Unless of course someone at Canonical realises that the python2/3 debacle is a major disaster, and does something to fix that, in which case I probably won't have any problem with the 20 base, but... we'll see

Well, guess the end date on 18.04 is here. This most recent update (KDE applications 20.08) came today for 20.04, but not 18.04.