KDE bleeding into Metacity

Dell Latitude E5570 running Ubuntu 24.

Following a recent crash, the Mad Penguin helped me to recover sufficiently to back up the few files I’d created since my last backup. Thank you.

Not liking the Unity desktop, I installed ages ago the original, simple “gnome-session-flashback” (Metacity) desktop. Later, I installed the KDE desktop - just to play around with as I am not really familiar with how the various possible desktops interact with the operating system and I thought it might be an interesting exercise. But KDE turned out to be very memory hungry and unnecessarily complicated for this user so I reverted to the plain vanilla Metacity desktop.

Following my recovery from the crash, I find now that KDE has “bled into” Metacity and generally messed things up here and there. Examples: …

  1. the log-in screen is KDE despite having selected Metacity.
  2. at top right of the Metacity desktop bar is the icon for selecting Reboot, “About this computer”, Settings etc. Clicking on Settings does nothing. But there is a KDE System Settings listed in the Applications menus.
  3. several other KDE applications are now listed in the Applications menus and “Places” is now “Double Commander”, although Nautilus is still listed under Accessories.
  4. printing double-sided, long-edge actually prints double-sided short-edge

…and so it goes on.
My choice is now between attempting to remove KDE entirely (and hoping that Metacity is undamaged ) or re-installing Ubuntu. As I have no real objection to re-installing Ubuntu (or perhaps I’ll try Debian using the wonderful Universal Boot-loader Key) it might be instructive to try removing KDE, if that’s not too onerous.

Advice would be welcome.

Ok, so … unlike Windows el al, Linux’s graphic systems are fairly decoupled, so there are a number of moving parts which all work together.

  • login screen / greeter, so the Gnome login or KDE login etc
  • optional WM or DE selector, typically these are relatively invisible, but names that might come up are things like “sway” or “iceWM”
  • optional session type selector, which governs your actual login session and whether it’s running Gnome, KDE, XFCE etc …

For the most part different environments can all co-exist on your machine at once, however the easy way to control your login mechanism is to just have the one you want installed. So the three main ones you might be interested in are;

  • gdm (Gnome)
  • ssdm (KDE)
  • light-dm (others, light-weight, XFCE?)

So apt install one of these should give you the option of making it the default next time you reboot.

Moving on, don’t worry too much about the Window manager, let the session you pick control that for you.

In terms of your session, this is the bit that usually catches people out. You can for example install “gdm” as your login manager, then fire up a KDE desktop by selecting a “KDE” session. There is generally a session selector hidden somewhere on the login page that means you can select your desktop when you log in, and indeed switch between Gnome and KDE on alternate logins, if this is really what you want to do :slight_smile:

The Downside …

So there’s always pro’s and con’s … :wink: … as you have discovered, when you install a different desktop environment, by default it also installs all the tools and preferred applications that go along with that environment.

Whereas some parts of some menu systems are static, some will pick up all available applications, so you can end up with two or three (or more) options for system settings (just for example) all installed and available at the same time. So running system settings from the gnome menus could activate either Gnome or KDE settings if you have both installed.

There’s no easy way around this (at the moment), you actively want installed applications to be made available on the desktop … the future solution will be to install the system side of things as a container (so there is a Gnome container, a KDE container etc), then have a common “/home”, so you can login and get your files, but with the graphical environment coming from a specific contained environment, so different environments don’t bleed into each other.

This is on the way, if you see people talking about ephemeral distributions in the news, this is kind of the direction of travel. Side effect here is that because your installation is fixed / partitioned off, it’s more robust with regards to viruses / malware.

So …

If you choose a re-install, be aware that installing a package that happens to be a preferred application from another environment (say installing a KDE application when you’re running GNome) can via dependencies cause similar issues to the ones you are seeing, in that some KDE ‘components’ can end up being loaded into your environment.

Depending on the scope of the bleed, a better solution could be to just remove the packages you don’t want to see. So if you prefer a particular file manager in a given environment, just remove the others. A simple ‘apt remove’ on the package should also remove it from the menus. (anything that’s auto installed should also auto remove in terms of menus)

You will also find that some desktops are horribly configurable … it’s relatively easy for example to make Gnome look just like a Mac … and KDE very similar to Windows … so if you have something appearing in the top right, it may actually be from your chosen desktop, but a default configuration that’s popped up without you asking. i.e. it may be worth trying to “edit” your desktop settings and see if you can remove it. Gnome and XFCE in particular allow you to add “panels” to any side of the screen, then install menus, launchers, widgets etc into them … which can make them look like “something else”.

(i.e. if it’s “in” a menu, apt remove, it it looks like a menu from another desktop, it’s “probably” part of your desktop configuration that’s been configured by default or by a rouge setting, which you can remove by tweaking your desktop config)

The more you try to correct, the more you learn, the more you can fix if it happens on a smaller scale in the future :slight_smile:

I think I understood some of your explanation, but, as you will know by now, I am easily confused and find the possible ways forward somewhat daunting. Especially as menu items like “KDE System Settings” don’t have an obvious way of being uninstalled, and many other trifles such as installed s/w not being displayable in the snap store.

So, on balance, I think I shall install a new OS via your Universal Boot-loader USB key. Since Ubuntu is a “version” of Debian it occurs to me that installing Debian-Gnome might be the way to go - as long as I can install the “gnome-session-flashback” (Metacity) desktop. Would there be any advantage? Or would sticking with Ubuntu be advisable in view of my familiarity with it?

Mm, good questions, the answers might be a bit of a moving target. Over the last year I’ve flitted between Ubuntu, Debian and Raspberry Pi OS (which is Debian, but IS subtly different)

So at the moment I’m running my Desktop on Raspberry Pi OS [KDE] (Rpi5), by Backup installation is running on Ubuntu 24.0 (Gnome), the two remote desktops I look after directly are both running Ubuntu/Gnome, and ALL of my servers and virtual machines are running Debian 12 (bookworm). [maybe 50 machines over 5xPi’s and a PC, then a couple of $5 Digital Ocean instances]

My primary reason for PiOS over Debian or Ubuntu is the custom kernel and various display tweaks available for the Pi which are critical to performance. Other than that, there is very little difference between the three for desktop performance, so for a standard PC, Debian or Ubuntu are pretty much the same. Ubuntu maybe comes with default Gnome tweaks, some of which are good, some bad, either way I need to tweak it a little before use.

The key for me is the commercialization of Ubuntu, which is why over the last year I’ve all but eradicated Ubuntu from my setup. There is stuff they are doing technically and otherwise that I simply don’t “like”, so I’m partially avoiding this stuff and partially boycotting what I consider to be “bad behavior”.

As for Gnome / KDE, I think as I mentioned some time ago, Gnome bloats memory over time. It’s certainly “better” now than it used to be, but I found on my Pi that given a couple of weeks, my free memory evaporates for no discernible reason and I really need a reboot. So whereas it’s quite usable, the necessity to reboot regularly is for me annoying as I tend to have a long-running setup and don’t like to log out when I’m in the middle of stuff. (which might involve closing and re-opening 50 windows / applications)

Note; the memory reboot thing may well be a function of my 2x4k screens and the work I’m doing, but it’s still a “thing”

KDE on the other hand doesn’t see to suffer the same fate, and with the advent of recent fixes to Wayland and twin screen handling, it now seems completely stable for me … uses less memory, and it feels faster, even with all the wizzy animations turned on. Gnome on the other hand still feels fractionally hesitant on a Pi …

So, with a fast PC, lots of RAM (16G+), minimum issues and no scruples, probably go for Ubuntu /Gnome just for the Polish. Otherwise, consider Debian (and KDE).

Many thanks for your very helpful comparisons.

In the medium term I shall go for the Pi for all the reasons that you have espoused elsewhere on this Forum, but for now I shall stick with Ubuntu as I reboot almost everyday and don’t suffer from any obvious signs of bloating. And I’m used to it, and familiarity is big thing for most people.

Having said that, the Forum’s Universal Boot-loader USB key is particularly useful as it allows one to try out very many Linux OSs extensively and without commitment until one is sure of which to go for. Except that one useful desktop option that is not available is Ubuntu’s Classic View (Metacity). Every one of my elderly friends prefer this desktop as it is so clean, intuitive and easy to use. Any chance of including it?

My thanks as always for your help.
Keith

Erm, the classic view isn’t a separate installation, it’s a different session type. All you need to do on an existing installation is;

  • sudo apt install gnome-shell-extensions
  • log out
  • when logging in, select the session type (via the cog icon?) as “Gnome classic”
  • log in

That should be enough …

Oh yes - I always do that. What I meant is that it’s a visual appearance that isn’t shown in any demos of Ubuntu/Debian.

Nobody seems to like the Unity Desktop, and as it’s a favourite of all my friends I thought it would be useful if it could be shown.

But possibly not.

Mm, you’ve lost me a bit … the bootloader allows you to boot specific distro’s … do you mean a tweak so it boots Ubuntu, then runs those scripts for you?

Not sure what you mean by scripts.
As I understand it Metacity is a “desktop” as Unity is, and I felt that it would be helpful if one of the demos on the Universal Boot-loader key opened up with Metacity in order to demonstrate its clarity and ease of use.

Just a thought. But might not be possible.

Mm, so the boot-loader is designed to present distro’s “as-is” … if there is a distro that runs Metacity by default, there is the potential to add that … however if you’re looking to use Metacity with Ubuntu, running the Ubuntu distro then turning on Metacity might be a more realistic demo?

…Except that when trying out Ubuntu demo on the USB key one can’t “turn on” Metacity - one has to use Unity, so a potential user doesn’t know that it’s an option.

I was being optimistic, and you’ve answered my query.

Incidentally: my re-installation of Ubuntu went OK. Many thanks for your help.

:slight_smile:
I use “NextCloud” for all my files, so I can spin up a new machine, log in, add the NextCloud desktop client, let it sync, then have access to all my files on my newly chosen desktop. Then each time I change a file, edit, etc, it sync’s my files back to NextCloud automatically. Makes it very easy to distro-hop and maintains a ‘real-time’ backup of everything I do … :slight_smile:

(NextCloud, free, running inside a container on another RPi5)

Did you intend this post to be elsewhere?

I can see the utility of such a service, especially for collaboration. You say that you use it for all your files, which must be many GB and take ages to synchronise - but I guess that’s only the once when you add a new machine. And all your computers are sync’d together via NextCloud?

I had a look at it, and it looks fearsomely complicated for someone like I to extract just what I might need. I do like the idea of having all my files stored securely somewhere “off-site” but providers like Mega.nz or Dropbox (which I do play with) would charge for more than a few GB storage, and my regular backup to USB/SD-card is ~20GB. Do you really use it for free?

Data security is so important that I really ought to bite the bullet and pay for a decent cloud service and become to be fluent with its use.

Elsewhere, no, just working within the context of making installations more portable, i.e. not tying yourself to one machine because that’s where your files are :slight_smile:

Ok, so server setup (for me) is an eyes closed job. Desktop setup for a user is standard username / password with email verification, with options for 2FA and Google authentication … pretty much the same as the Forum. Maybe a little extra when it comes to selecting “which” files to sync … but if you just select the default (your home folder) it’s not too onerous.

In terms of math, a n RPi5 with 2Tb of storage might be £200 and maybe cost £25 a year to run in terms of electricity. Write down the cost over 4 years, that’s £300/4 = £75 per year, / 2000Gb is 0.0375 per Gb per year … call it 4p per year. Looking at my average compression ratio on ZFS of 1.3, knock this down by 1p once you turn compression on, so 3p per Gb per year. Cost of hosting 20Gb, 60p per year. So … storage, not so much of an issue in terms of cost… even if my numbers are a little off.

In terms of speed, depends on your connection. Let’s say someone syncs from their location to mine … it’s all going to hinge on their broadband upload bandwidth … so if you have a standard 50Mb broadband connection, you’ll probably get 9Mb upload. That will come to me via my download link which runs at 920Mb, so I’m not even going to notice it.

Yes there is always a one-off slow sync as it gets set up for the first time, but after that it uses a Linux kernel feature to monitor directories for changes (which is very light-weight) and only syncs files that change.

Encryption, that would be the key for me. Having your data stored on another server on the Internet is no good at all … it would be hackable. Storing an encrypted copy of your data that can only be read by keys you hold, that copy is just noise to anyone else. This is the feature I only just noticed that NextCloud has :slight_smile: … this is how “BorgBase” works. (which is what I use for offsite backups) The backup is encrypted at source, then copied off-site … and it can only be read by copying the data back, and THEN using local keys to decrypt it. So in either instance you have two levels of remote security, (1) login / password etc, and critically (2) everything is encrypted using keys that only you have, so there is only encrypted data on the remote host.

If you’re looking for off-site backups, I like and use (and pay for) Borgbase, works very well for me. The software is all open source and I run a local borg server as well, or I used to … I tend to use ZFS (send) now for local backups, way more efficient and much faster, esp, for restores.

Although I am convinced of the superiority of the RPi for all the reasons that you have mentioned over several posts, it would still be a learning exercise for me so I shall defer it for now.
In the meantime, reading the very informative pages of Borgbase.com persuades me that backing up to an encrypted, off-site repository would be a very good thing to do. Installing Vorta looked like a good start as it will back up either to a local device or to Borgbase (for a very reasonable cost) so I installed it according to the very detailed instructions. All went well without any reported errors until I issued the command to run Vorta:

keith@E5570:~$ flatpak run com.borgbase.Vorta
error: app/com.borgbase.Vorta/x86_64/master not installed
keith@E5570:~$

I can’t be bothered to fix this (might need some help to uninstall it) so shall continue with local backup to an SD card and make sure it is stored well away from my computer.

Yeah, I don’t like Vorta at all tried it a few times, not a great experience. I use two different solutions, for servers I run “borgmatic”. You won’t like this, however it’s very good in a non-graphical environment and is great for servers.

For the desktop I you might like to try Pika, I used to use this locally but I’m pretty sure I used it with my Borgbase account too. I think you’d like it, very nice UI with great Gnome integration.

In terms of installation, as it happens I mentioned Pika a little over a year ago here; :slight_smile:

I did see Pika on the Borgbase website and can’t remember why I chose Vorta. The only reason for me to use one of these is the possibility of backing up to an encrypted server, so if I can uninstall Vorta I’ll give Pika a go. In practice, the backup script that I have written does a good job - as long as I keep the backup medium somewhere safe.
I’ll report back on progress.

Sure, pika is worth a look. Borg backups only work in this way, i.e. by transmitting and storing pre-encrypted files. (so none of your data goes off-site unencrypted)

“Borg” is “Borg”, so anything that works locally should also work with “BorgBase”. Note that Borgbase have a free tier which works well, only limitation I can think of is the space available. That said, not only do you get encryption with borg, but also compression and “de-duplication”. This last option is a real killer feature; if you backup the same thing twice, and the second copy is the same as the first, it will effectively only store a pointer to the first. (so every backup is an implicit incremental, i.e. only files that changed since the previous backup) … so you effectively get quote a lot of “real” backup space in your physical space … and when you run out of space it’s something like $2 per month for 250Gb … which for me (after compression and de-duplication) is all my stuff backed up daily for a year across a dozen machines :slight_smile: )

Incidentally, this is what a borgmatic server backup looks like for me, notably it takes a database dump as a part of the process and backs the database copy to ensure consistency … rather than backing up the database file while the database server is running, which is likely to yield a corrupt database on restore.

/etc/borgmatic/config.yaml

source_directories:
  - /var/www/live_madpenguin
  - /etc/nginx
repositories:
  - path:  ssh://(*** borbase account redacted ***)
    label: madpenguinuk
read_special: true
one_file_system: true
encryption_passphrase: "*** password redacted ***"
keep_daily: 7
keep_weekly: 4
keep_monthly: 12
keep_yearly: 1
mysql_databases:
  - name: wp_madpenguinuk
    hostname: mysql
    username: madpenguinuk
    password: (** database password redacted **)
    format: sql
    add_drop_database: false
    options: --skip-comments --no-tablespaces

Then in my crontab;

00 04 * * * nice -n19 ${BORGMATIC} -nc --stats 2>&1 | \
mail -r borgmatic -s "Borgbase [MadpenguinUk]" (** my email **)

So I get an automated backup at 4am every day with a summary email in my mailbox when I get up. Email looks something like this;

Repository: (** redacted **)
Archive name: live-madpenguinuk-2025-02-05T04:00:02.832326
Time (start): Wed, 2025-02-05 04:00:04
Time (end):   Wed, 2025-02-05 04:00:20
Duration: 16.71 seconds
Number of files: 30364
Utilization of max. archive size: 0%
--------------------------------------------------------------
               Original size Compressed size Deduplicated size
This archive:        1.55 GB       337.81 MB         979.66 kB
All archives:      123.11 GB        43.99 GB          12.32 GB
               Unique chunks    Total chunks
Chunk index:          101299         1782138
--------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------
               Original size Compressed size Deduplicated size
Deleted data:       -1.50 GB      -337.25 MB          -1.08 MB
All archives:      121.61 GB        43.66 GB          12.32 GB
               Unique chunks    Total chunks
Chunk index:          101289         1751393
---------------------------------------------------------------

The key takeaways here, size of backed up data, 121.6Gb, size when compressed, 43.99Gb, deduplicated size (i.e. amount of space taken up on the target systems disk) 12.32Gb (!)

This is a truly impressive reduction in storage space, and for large commercial organisations would be a great cost saving.
I haven’t done anything about Pika yet as there isn’t the imperative to do so: my looking into it was just out of interest, so it can wait. The issue of backup security can be met in my case by simply keeping it physically remote from my pc.

As for my original query: I am back up and running again thanks to your assistance.