[gentoo-dev] [RFC] Plasma Profile to switch on PipeWire, Wayland support

[gentoo-dev] [RFC] Plasma Profile to switch on PipeWire, Wayland support

[Andreas Sturmlechner]

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Title: Plasma Profile to switch on PipeWire, Wayland support
Author: Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org>
Posted: 2023-05-20
Revision: 1
News-Item-Format: 2.0
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma/systemd
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma/systemd/merged-usr
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/23.0/desktop/plasma
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/23.0/desktop/plasma/systemd

1. PipeWire

Gentoo's Plasma profile has not had any sound server enabled since the days of 
KDE's own aRts. As the way we output sound has changed dramatically in the 
years since - using wireless or often several devices, dynamically connected 
and shared between multiple systems, a modern desktop environment is expected 
to handle this effortlessly by default.

This means the profile will enable both USE="pipewire,pulseaudio" globally, and 
enable media-video/pipewire[sound-server] to make it act as our PulseAudio 
server.

User action required:
- Check out what, if anything, you should configure to make PipeWire work for 
your purpose [1].
- For kde-apps/kmix users, a second sound mixer will appear in system tray: 
kde-plasma/plasma-pa as pulled in by kde-plasma/plasma-meta. Quit KMix and it 
will not re-appear on next startup.
- If you want to keep your PipeWire or ALSA-only setup, invert above USE flag 
settings globally, as needed.

2. Wayland

Plasma Wayland support has come a long way and we consider it stable enough 
for daily use with a lot - if not all - systems, even if some known papercuts 
remain [2]. For those willing to switch it makes sense for Plasma profile 
to already provide sane settings. For everyone else it means only negligible 
impact in dependencies, as most of it was already inevitable with 
kde-plasma/plasma-desktop and its dependencies.

Plasma profile will enable both USE="wayland,screencast" globally. The latter 
flag is tied to the video functionality of PipeWire, and e.g. used to 'cast'
window content onto task managers' window previews. This is why PipeWire and 
Wayland enablement are happening at the same time.

User action required:
- If you want to keep your PipeWire or ALSA-only setup with Wayland, note that 
media-video/pipewire installation can not be avoided, but configuration not to 
act as a sound server is possible [1].
- None. No one will lose their X session, but will have the option to easily 
log into a working Wayland session instead.

[1] https://www.gentoo.org/support/news-items/2022-07-29-pipewire-sound-server.html
[2] https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Showstoppers

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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] News Item v2: Plasma Profile to switch on PipeWire, Wayland support

[Andreas Sturmlechner]

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Title: Plasma Profile to switch on PipeWire, Wayland support
Author: Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org>
Posted: 2023-05-20
Revision: 1
News-Item-Format: 2.0
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma/systemd
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma/systemd/merged-usr
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/23.0/desktop/plasma
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/23.0/desktop/plasma/systemd

1. PipeWire

Gentoo's Plasma profile has not had any sound server enabled since the days of 
KDE's own aRts. As the way we output sound has changed dramatically in the 
years since - using wireless or often several devices, dynamically connected 
and shared between multiple systems, a modern desktop environment is expected 
to handle this effortlessly by default.

This means the profile will enable both USE="pipewire,pulseaudio" globally, and 
enable media-video/pipewire[sound-server] to make it act as our PulseAudio 
server.

User action required:
- Check out what, if anything, you should configure to make PipeWire work for 
your purpose [1][2].
- For kde-apps/kmix users, a second sound mixer will appear in system tray: 
kde-plasma/plasma-pa as pulled in by kde-plasma/plasma-meta. Quit KMix and it 
will not re-appear on next startup.
- If you want to keep your PulseAudio or ALSA-only setup, invert above USE flag 
settings globally, as needed.

2. Wayland

Plasma Wayland support has come a long way and we consider it stable enough 
for daily use with a lot - if not all - systems, even if some known papercuts 
remain [3]. For those willing to switch it makes sense for Plasma profile 
to already provide sane settings. For everyone else it means only negligible 
impact in dependencies, as most of it was already inevitable with 
kde-plasma/plasma-desktop and its dependencies.

Plasma profile will enable both USE="wayland,screencast" globally. The latter 
flag is tied to the video functionality of PipeWire, and e.g. used to 'cast'
window content onto task managers' window previews. This is why PipeWire and 
Wayland enablement are happening at the same time.

User action required:
- If you want to keep your Pulseaudio or ALSA-only setup with Wayland, note 
that media-video/pipewire installation can not be avoided, but configuration 
not to act as a sound server is possible [1].
- None. No one will lose their X session, but will have the option to easily 
log into a working Wayland session instead.

[1] https://www.gentoo.org/support/news-items/2022-07-29-pipewire-sound-server.html
[2] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PipeWire
[3] https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Showstoppers

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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] News Item v2: Plasma Profile to switch on PipeWire, Wayland support

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Tue, 16 May 2023, Andreas Sturmlechner wrote:

> Title: Plasma Profile to switch on PipeWire, Wayland support
         00000000011111111112222222222333333333344444444445555
         12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123

The title is slightly too long, GLEP 42 says 50 chars maximum.

The news item seems to combine two topics which are only loosely
related, and contains a lot of information. Did you consider splitting
it into two items?

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] News Item v2: Plasma Profile to switch on PipeWire, Wayland support

[Andreas Sturmlechner]

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On Dienstag, 16. Mai 2023 15:59:13 CEST Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> The news item seems to combine two topics which are only loosely
> related, and contains a lot of information. Did you consider splitting
> it into two items?
> 
> Ulrich

PipeWire and Wayland support are intertwined and the news text tells as much. 
I am open to cutting prose but users shouldn't have to look at two news items 
to come to a conclusion, with both telling them to configure the same thing.

Regards

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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] News Item v3: Plasma Profile to enable PipeWire, Wayland support

[Andreas Sturmlechner]

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Restructured, not necessarily smaller, but maybe easier to follow.


Title: Plasma Profile to enable PipeWire, Wayland support
Author: Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org>
Posted: 2023-05-20
Revision: 1
News-Item-Format: 2.0
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma/systemd
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/17.1/desktop/plasma/systemd/merged-usr
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/23.0/desktop/plasma
Display-If-Profile: default/linux/amd64/23.0/desktop/plasma/systemd

Reasons
=======

Gentoo's Plasma profile has not had any sound server enabled since the days of 
KDE's own aRts. As the way we output sound has changed dramatically in the 
years since - using wireless or often several devices, dynamically connected 
and shared between multiple systems, a modern desktop environment is expected 
to handle this effortlessly by default.

In Wayland sessions, the video functionality of PipeWire is not only used for 
screensharing but also to take screenshots and -recordings or simply to cast 
window content onto task managers' window previews. This is why PipeWire and 
Wayland enablement are happening at the same time.

Plasma Wayland support has come a long way and we consider it stable enough 
for daily use with a lot - if not all - systems, even if some known papercuts 
remain [1]. Therefore it makes sense for Plasma profile to provide sane default 
settings.


Changes
=======

New global USE flags enabled: pipewire, pulseaudio, screencast, wayland
New package.use default: media-video/pipewire[sound-server]

We want broad sound server support in packages, and these settings will make
PipeWire act as our PulseAudio server where there is no native PipeWire 
support.


Impact On Happy X Users
=======================

Minor. Most dependencies were already required with kde-plasma/plasma-desktop 
and its dependencies. Upcoming stable versions of kde-apps/spectacle and 
kde-apps/krfb will depend on (K)PipeWire unconditionally.

No one will lose their X session, but will have the option to easily log in to 
a working Wayland session at any time.


User Action Required
====================

In order to enact all changes:

    emerge -1avUD @world
    Check out how to configure PipeWire for your purpose [2][3]

In order to keep a PulseAudio or ALSA-only setup:

    Invert above new USE flag settings as needed, see also [2].

In order to avoid media-video/pipewire completely:

    This can only be achieved by losing basic task manager, screenshot/screen
    recording/sharing functions as provided by Plasma and KDE applications.


[1] https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Showstoppers
[2] https://www.gentoo.org/support/news-items/2022-07-29-pipewire-sound-server.html
[3] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/PipeWire

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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] News Item v3: Plasma Profile to enable PipeWire, Wayland support

[Sam James]

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Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org> writes:

> Impact On Happy X Users
> =======================
>
> Minor. Most dependencies were already required with kde-plasma/plasma-desktop 
> and its dependencies. Upcoming stable versions of kde-apps/spectacle and 
> kde-apps/krfb will depend on (K)PipeWire unconditionally.
>
> No one will lose their X session, but will have the option to easily log in to 
> a working Wayland session at any time.
>

We should probably note that it's fine for people to use -wayland in
make.conf if they want although we'd discourage it for the Plasma
profile?

I know we don't want to encourage people to set X or wayland manually
on that profile, but I think it's worth us saying because I can
absolutely see people asking about it.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] News Item v3: Plasma Profile to enable PipeWire, Wayland support

[Toralf Förster]

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On 5/16/23 20:15, Sam James wrote:
> We should probably note that it's fine for people to use -wayland in
> make.conf if they want although we'd discourage it for the Plasma
> profile?

+1

IIRC I experienced a nagging issue with chromium in the past. Its window 
size wasn't resizeable:

chromium --disable-extensions --disable-plugins --disable-sync 
-–no-experiments --new-window --app=https://teams.microsoft.com

-- 
Toralf
PGP 23217DA7 9B888F45


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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] News Item v3: Plasma Profile to enable PipeWire, Wayland support

[Andreas Sturmlechner]

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On Dienstag, 16. Mai 2023 21:01:14 CEST Toralf Förster wrote:
> On 5/16/23 20:15, Sam James wrote:
> 
> > We should probably note that it's fine for people to use -wayland in
> > make.conf if they want although we'd discourage it for the Plasma
> > profile?

We can do that, albeit at the same time make it clear that it does not really 
achieve any dependency savings nor make any difference in X sessions.

> 
> IIRC I experienced a nagging issue with chromium in the past. Its window 
> size wasn't resizeable:
> 
> chromium --disable-extensions --disable-plugins --disable-sync 
> -–no-experiments --new-window --app=https://teams.microsoft.com
> 

That's not really related to any certain USE flag setting though, right? I 
mean, www-client/chromium has USE=wayland but can still be started in X mode.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] News Item v3: Plasma Profile to enable PipeWire, Wayland support

[Toralf Förster]

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On 5/16/23 21:09, Andreas Sturmlechner wrote:
> That's not really related to any certain USE flag setting though, right? I
> mean, www-client/chromium has USE=wayland but can still be started in X mode.

indeed.

-- 
Toralf
PGP 23217DA7 9B888F45


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[gentoo-dev] [RFC] News Item: KDE Plasma 6.1.4 and Gear 24.05.2 Upgrade

[Andreas Sturmlechner]

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Title: KDE Plasma 6.1.4 and Gear 24.05.2 Upgrade
Author: Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org>
Posted: 2024-08-31
Revision: 1
News-Item-Format: 2.0
Display-If-Installed: kde-plasma/plasma-workspace:5

Reasons
=======

KDE Plasma 5 has reached end of life and is no longer supported by Gentoo.
Qt5 upstream OSS support ended on 2020-12-08, and LTS releases - even with
considerable effort by KDE community's backports on top - only go so far.
It is therefore required for all users to upgrade to KDE Plasma 6[1].

At the same time, KDE Gear 24.05.2 is provided with most applications ported
over to KDE Frameworks 6. As long as KF5-based applications are being shipped
with the KDE Gear bundle, and other non-KDE Qt5-based applications still
common in ::gentoo repository, it is advised *not* to disable USE="qt5".


Changes
=======

Not many - much like Qt6, this is mostly an evolution of the existing
codebase, no disruptive feat.

Plasma Wayland support has come a long way and therefore KDE developers have
decided to make it the default login session for Plasma 6, even if some
known papercuts[2] remain. For users affected too much by those, switching
to the still existing X11 session is as easy as selecting it in the display
manager of choice. Disabling USE="wayland" is *not* changing this default,
it will yield no dependency savings, and we advise against doing so. It does
not affect users' X11 sessions.

In Gentoo:
- arm 32-bit support is discontinued
- x86 will not see stabilisation of Plasma 6 and KF6-based packages


User Action Required
====================

For users of a plasma profile[3], no specific upgrade steps are necessary,
although some precautionary measures are advised before and during upgrade:

- Switch to a standard (Breeze or Oxygen) theme
- Unmerge kde-misc/latte-dock, it is unfit for Plasma 6 (and masked already)
- Cleanup sets and @world from any SLOT or version pinning of KDE packages
- If possible, perform the upgrade not inside a running Plasma session

Necessary USE flag changes were already made in plasma profile, therefore
only users of other profiles should set USE="kf6compat qt6" globally[4].

Once the packages become available on your arch, it should be as simple as
update @world:

    emerge -aquvUD @world


[1] https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/
[2] https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Known_Significant_Issues
[3] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/KDE#Profile
[4] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki//etc/portage/package.use

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Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] News Item: KDE Plasma 6.1.4 and Gear 24.05.2 Upgrade

[Sam James]

Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org> writes:

> Title: KDE Plasma 6.1.4 and Gear 24.05.2 Upgrade
> Author: Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org>
> Posted: 2024-08-31
> Revision: 1
> News-Item-Format: 2.0
> Display-If-Installed: kde-plasma/plasma-workspace:5
>
> Reasons
> =======
>
> KDE Plasma 5 has reached end of life and is no longer supported by Gentoo.
> Qt5 upstream OSS support ended on 2020-12-08, and LTS releases - even with
> considerable effort by KDE community's backports on top - only go so far.
> It is therefore required for all users to upgrade to KDE Plasma 6[1].
>
> At the same time, KDE Gear 24.05.2 is provided with most applications ported
> over to KDE Frameworks 6. As long as KF5-based applications are being shipped
> with the KDE Gear bundle, and other non-KDE Qt5-based applications still
> common in ::gentoo repository, it is advised *not* to disable USE="qt5".
>
>
> Changes
> =======
>
> Not many - much like Qt6, this is mostly an evolution of the existing
> codebase, no disruptive feat.
>
> Plasma Wayland support has come a long way and therefore KDE developers have
> decided to make it the default login session for Plasma 6, even if some
> known papercuts[2] remain. For users affected too much by those, switching
> to the still existing X11 session is as easy as selecting it in the display
> manager of choice. Disabling USE="wayland" is *not* changing this default,
> it will yield no dependency savings, and we advise against doing so. It does
> not affect users' X11 sessions.
>
> In Gentoo:

Let's rephrase this a bit.

> - arm 32-bit support is discontinued

"The 32-bit ~arm/arm keyword was inconsistent across KDE Plasma, KDE
Frameworks, and KDE Gear, and has been dropped."

> - x86 will not see stabilisation of Plasma 6 and KF6-based packages

"Like for arm, but to a lesser extent, the situation for x86 was
inconsistent and test failures often blocked stabliization."

This makes it sound less final and avoids the potential for
misunderstandings.

>
>
> User Action Required
> ====================
>
> For users of a plasma profile[3], no specific upgrade steps are necessary,
> although some precautionary measures are advised before and during upgrade:
>
> - Switch to a standard (Breeze or Oxygen) theme
> - Unmerge kde-misc/latte-dock, it is unfit for Plasma 6 (and masked already)

s/Unmerge/Depclean/, but weren't there others we should do as well? Or
maybe they're all handled?

Maybe we can recommend: emerge -pev @world --backtrack=0 and emerge
--deselecting any KDE-adjacent software which says "no ebuilds
available".

> - Cleanup sets and @world from any SLOT or version pinning of KDE packages
> - If possible, perform the upgrade not inside a running Plasma session
>
> Necessary USE flag changes were already made in plasma profile, therefore
> only users of other profiles should set USE="kf6compat qt6" globally[4].
>
> Once the packages become available on your arch, it should be as simple as
> update @world:
>
>     emerge -aquvUD @world
>

-q and -v? (yes, this does work in Portage, but it looks odd...)

>
> [1] https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/
> [2] https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Known_Significant_Issues
> [3] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/KDE#Profile
> [4] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki//etc/portage/package.use

Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] News Item v3: Plasma Profile to enable PipeWire, Wayland support

[Andreas Sturmlechner]

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On Dienstag, 16. Mai 2023 20:15:44 CEST Sam James wrote:
> Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org> writes:
> > Impact On Happy X Users
> > =======================
> > 
> > Minor. Most dependencies were already required with
> > kde-plasma/plasma-desktop and its dependencies. Upcoming stable versions
> > of kde-apps/spectacle and kde-apps/krfb will depend on (K)PipeWire
> > unconditionally.
> > 
> > No one will lose their X session, but will have the option to easily log
> > in to a working Wayland session at any time.
> 
> We should probably note that it's fine for people to use -wayland in
> make.conf if they want although we'd discourage it for the Plasma
> profile?
> 
> I know we don't want to encourage people to set X or wayland manually
> on that profile, but I think it's worth us saying because I can
> absolutely see people asking about it.

"It is possible to set USE="-wayland" against these changes, but it will 
amount to no dependency savings, just micro-optimisation in affected 
packages."

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[gentoo-dev] Re: [RFC] News Item v3: Plasma Profile to enable PipeWire, Wayland support

[Duncan]

Andreas Sturmlechner posted on Tue, 16 May 2023 19:55:04 +0200 as
excerpted:

> Title: Plasma Profile to enable PipeWire, Wayland support

TLDR: Thanks!

FWIW, I'm not a plasma profile user (no no-multilib variant) and had 
already encountered some of this with the (luckily) then-transient plasma-
workspace pipewire deps as well as the (more permanent) spectacle pipewire 
dep (which without this guide, triggered an unmerge as less useful than the 
time it would take me to get upto speed with a maintainable-working/secure 
pipewire config).

But while I am still alsa-based, no pipewire/pulse (yet?), I'm already 
wayland-migrated and in fact have no xorg on the system (xwayland is my 
only X), so that part's already done, here.

And this NEWS-item/guide is very clear (definitely more so than my previous 
partial understanding), both in the choices to be made and implications 
thereof, and in the practical how-to of how-to-get-there-from-where-you-are 
configuration whatever one's choices are.

While I still have to think about it, armed with this I feel far more 
confident in switching on pipewire, and with it installed anyway, perhaps 
even enabling it all the way, full pipewire sound/video-server and all.  
We'll see.

So thanks, indeed.  Just what I needed, despite not being a plasma profile 
user.

And while I'm at it, thanks for all that work keeping gentoo/kde, 
especially the live-git packages and associated unmasking/sets/etc config 
in the overlay that I use, in such good shape as well. While it surely must 
help having many of the new deps caught and fixed well before release time, 
and I know a lot of the otherwise drudge work is now automated, kde's still 
awfully big to be dealing with all those live packages as I well know from 
the user side.  And of course there's all the just coming 5->6 changes to 
deal with now too!  So I surely appreciate the work you put in on the dev 
side to make my user-side possible.  =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman