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  • [gentoo-user] re-installed KDE doesn't start

    From Philip Webb@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jul 19 02:30:01 2025
    A few weeks ago, a weekly update resulted in KDE failing to start ;
    as it needed to be updated anyway, I have been using Fluxbox instead.
    During the past few days, I removed all the old KDE pkgs,
    did an update of all the Qt pkgs which were installed
    & re-installed all the previous KDE pkgs in their new versions,
    so that I now have Qt 5.15.17 + 6.9.1 , KDE Frameworks 6.13.0 ,
    Plasma 6.3.5 + Apps 25.04.2 .

    I use OpenRC with 'startx' + '.xinitrc' :
    for Fluxbox, the latter is simply 'startfluxbox' ,
    for KDE, it's 'exec dbus-launch --exit-with-session startplasma-x11',
    which worked with the old version of KDE & is recommended in Gentoo Wiki.

    Now when I enter 'startx', I get a black screen + a movable mouse-pointer,
    but nothing else, & have to restart the machine & return to Fluxbox.
    There is an error msg : "$DISPLAY is not set or can't connect to server".

    Gentoo Wiki seems to recommend using 'sddm' instead of 'startx',
    which it describes at "the old method". I have 'elogind' 2.55.17 installed.

    I've looked at the logs in /var/log , but can't see anything relevant.

    Can anyone suggest what may have gone wrong ?
    Might it be advisable to use 'sddm' in future ?


    ========================,,============================================
    SUPPORT ___________//___, Philip Webb
    ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto
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  • From Michael@21:1/5 to Gentoo User on Sat Jul 19 12:07:34 2025
    On Saturday, 19 July 2025 01:20:48 British Summer Time Philip Webb wrote:
    A few weeks ago, a weekly update resulted in KDE failing to start ;
    as it needed to be updated anyway, I have been using Fluxbox instead.
    During the past few days, I removed all the old KDE pkgs,
    did an update of all the Qt pkgs which were installed
    & re-installed all the previous KDE pkgs in their new versions,
    so that I now have Qt 5.15.17 + 6.9.1 , KDE Frameworks 6.13.0 ,
    Plasma 6.3.5 + Apps 25.04.2 .

    A simple update would not normally break a DE. Did you run --depclean and
    were any packages removed?


    I use OpenRC with 'startx' + '.xinitrc' :
    for Fluxbox, the latter is simply 'startfluxbox' ,
    for KDE, it's 'exec dbus-launch --exit-with-session startplasma-x11',
    which worked with the old version of KDE & is recommended in Gentoo Wiki.

    Now when I enter 'startx', I get a black screen + a movable mouse-pointer, but nothing else, & have to restart the machine & return to Fluxbox.

    You should be able to exit the X session by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. Or you could try Ctrl+Alt+F2 to go to a VT from which you can interrogate the logs, stop the hanging X session, etc.


    There is an error msg : "$DISPLAY is not set or can't connect to server".

    Where did you find the above error message? Can you check /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see what it reports before you restart the PC?


    Gentoo Wiki seems to recommend using 'sddm' instead of 'startx',
    which it describes at "the old method". I have 'elogind' 2.55.17 installed.

    The sddm is a Display Manager, offering a login screen GUI for entering a user's login credentials and it will launch the desktop of choice. However, you should still be able to start an xserver from a console, the sddm is only
    a graphical alternative to starting a xsession from the console.


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