plasma-workspace issue fix, and fix methods for those affected
Unfortunately after the Plasma 5.20 update for Feren OS APT decided to cause problems for random users of the Feren OS Major Updater, as well as preventing attempt one of updating systems to 5.20 from being successful from installs of 2020.11 (the latest Feren OS at this post’s publishing) (attempt two and onwards of updates usually always worked). This post is to announce that this bug has now hopefully been fixed meaning people updating to Plasma 5.20 on Feren OS, and those performing Major Updates, in the future should no longer run into these issues.
Fixing this issue if you’re affected by it
In most cases, updating your system will be enough to fix this, however if you still run into issues afterwards, such as not being able to install Calibre, run this command in Konsole:
sudo apt install --reinstall plasma-workspace libqt5core5a
(sudo password = your password)
Once that has been done, you should be able to install Calibre once more just fine, and also install other affected applications.
Fixing this issue if you’re affected by it and cannot get to your Desktop or can’t connect to the internet
In extremely rare cases when performing a Major Update this issue could break the Desktop. In these cases, do the following:
- Boot into a Feren OS flashed USB or burnt Feren OS DVD
- Download https://github.com/feren-OS/misc-scripts/raw/main/dec2020plasma520bugfix.sh (go there, right-click on the text-filled page you now see, Save as…)
- Mount the installed Feren OS partition via Files
- Open Konsole
- Connect to the internet
- In Konsole type ‘sudo bash ‘ without quotes (the space is important)
- Drag the file you downloaded in step 2 into the Konsole window
- In Files, go into the mounted partition
- Drag the blue selection in the top toolbar of Files, indicating the partition’s name, into the Konsole window
- Press ENTER in Konsole
- Once it’s done, reboot back into Feren OS and try logging in again
If you still can’t get to a Desktop by now, it’d probably be best to either return to before you did the Major Update, using Timeshift, and then try the Major Update once again, or reinstall Feren OS. Sorry about that.
