Lost in Plasma!

I have Fedora 31 Workstation and have installed the Plasma desktop, just to see how it works on my system.

Now I can’t find the “about system” to see which version of KDE Plasma is installed. It is limited, because it’s not the Fedora Plasma Spin, so some things are missing.

I can easily find that info while in the normal Gnome environment.

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I can’t tell you where to look exactly in KDE to find it because I’m not currently using it, but you can use DNF to find what version you’re using:

$ dnf info plasma-desktop
Last metadata expiration check: 1:40:30 ago on Tue 17 Mar 2020 11:25:27 AM EDT.
Available Packages
Name         : plasma-desktop
Version      : 5.17.5
Release      : 1.fc31
Architecture : i686
Size         : 5.4 M
Source       : plasma-desktop-5.17.5-1.fc31.src.rpm
Repository   : updates
Summary      : Plasma Desktop shell
URL          : https://cgit.kde.org/plasma-desktop.git
License      : GPLv2+ and (GPLv2 or GPLv3)
Description  : Plasma Desktop shell.

Name         : plasma-desktop
Version      : 5.17.5
Release      : 1.fc31
Architecture : x86_64
Size         : 5.2 M
Source       : plasma-desktop-5.17.5-1.fc31.src.rpm
Repository   : updates
Summary      : Plasma Desktop shell
URL          : https://cgit.kde.org/plasma-desktop.git
License      : GPLv2+ and (GPLv2 or GPLv3)
Description  : Plasma Desktop shell.
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The issue, I think, is that the capabilities of the running Plasma Desktop aren’t a question of what version is running, but of what other, related packages are installed. If there are other KDE packages available on the system, they’ll be integrated automatically. Any that are missing, won’t be.

If you just want to install “the rest of KDE”, effectively (the stuff that would be part of the KDE Spin), one option is to install the entire package group:

sudo dnf groupinstall "KDE (K Desktop Environment)"

That’ll install a lot of packages, but many of them will have features that enhance the Plasma Desktop experience.

3 Likes

OP already installed KDE. They’re just trying to figure out what version of KDE they are now running. I dunno how to get to the “About” page like Gnome or XFCE have, so I recommended they just use dnf to see what version is installed.

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Yes, that’s what I was trying to do. I ran the command and it asked me about “Importing GPG key” and other stuff Userid, Fingerprint and From with lots of stuff after every heading.

It asked me if this is okay. I don’t know what all of that means and if it’s okay or not.

Update! I got it! I have 5.17.5 and the latest version is 5.18. No problem.

Thanks for the help.

Yes, thank you for the interest in my issue. I am just trying out Plasma to see how it works on my system.

So far it’s more snappy than Gnome, but Gnome is more practical for me, coming from a Zorin background.(Modified Gnome)

I will make up my mind in the months to come. Keep the standard Fedora or switch to the Plasma Spin after Fedora 31 comes out at the end of April. Okay, maybe a week or two after that, just to make sure the most bugs are ironed out.

Whatever the case might be, I love Fedora, it’s not just for developers after all.

To my understanding, Plasma 5.18 will ship with Fedora 32 which just released the first beta today and is shooting for late April for release.

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@lekkerfedora
Info center will give you the information you seek. Invoke Krunner: Info center

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Yes, I also got the news from Fedora Magazine, email notification.

I was just wondering, if I want to try cinnamon, do I use sudo install cinnamon-desktop?

Were would I find Krunner, hope it’s not a demon!?

There’s another group for cinnamon.

dnf groups list

Will give you all available groups and the top of the list are Desktop Environments.

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I see. Do the Fedora Spins run on Xorg or Wayland?

If I remember correctly, it depends on the desktop environment. According to this github ticket, Cinnamon supports Wayland.

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@lekkerfedora
krunner is invoked with these keys: alt F2.
You don’t have to do any of that, Info Center is one of the menu choices in the System (Applications sub menu)

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If your system is up-to-date, your are running whatever version is in the repository:

https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/plasma-desktop

It is 5.17.5-1.fc31 as of 2020-03-18 (in the repo since 2020-01-13).

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I tried Plasma, LXQT and Cinnamon. Cinnamon acted erratically while the others were fine. So pass for me.

I was trying Plasma DE but it was not the Spin. I think some stuff was missing, but then again I’m so used to Gnome where everything is easy to find.

The spin should be the same as installing the DE afterwards. How did you install KDE Plasma?

That’s right. I only tried Plasma because I forgot how to pin a program in the taskbar in LXQT.

I used sudo dnf install plasma-desktop for KDE and sudo dnf install @lxqt for that environment.

It doesn’t install all the programs associated with the DE but the Gnome programs like Rythmbox works in those environments too.

Those two work a little faster than Gnome but not much.