[Solved] - Plasma 5.8.0 upgrade - Activities Manager now only shows black thumbnails.

[DrGeoffrey]

Hmm... I am glad that it is solved for you. But I can reproduce that issue without having that widget active or without using that at anytime. So there is a more severe problem here. Right after creation of an activity I get a black preview that does not refresh even when switching to that activity.
Though I am testing this on 5.8.1 now. So maybe an issue there with another cause.

Ok, this will likely muddy the issue even more...

In tracking down why my Activities Manager was still showing only black thumbnails, I noted from another thread that maui-plasma5-shells was no longer needed anymore (http://forums.mauilinux.org/showthread.php?tid=23999) and removed the package.

Upon reboot, my thumbnails returned.

[kdemeoz]

<<snip>>

Ok, this will likely muddy the issue even more...

In tracking down why my Activities Manager was still showing only black thumbnails, I noted from another thread that maui-plasma5-shells was no longer needed anymore (http://forums.mauilinux.org/showthread.php?tid=23999) and removed the package.

Upon reboot, my thumbnails returned.

Uh ohhhhhhh, oh dear me, yes we do now have waters muddy to the point of opacity. I also had read that post, & after it i also removed that package. Writing this now, long after the event, i cannot recall with certainty if in that same uptime session i also then removed my aforesaid Activity Pager widget, OR if that was in a separate session. I think, but am not certain now, that my first action was the widget removal then logout/in [& saw my AM thumbnails were good again], followed in that subsequent session by the package removal. Obviously, to be scientifically precise about this [ie, only change one variable at a time], i "should" reverse both steps & begin again... but this little red duck sure as hell aint gonna risk the Wrath of Zeus all over again by looking this gift horse in its mouth.  

[kdemeoz]

Yay!! The mud has gone, the waters are clear once more. Tonight I launched one of my Maui VMs [which i'd used for a few weeks to test Maui after i first discovered it, after which as i really liked it i then comparatively recently installed it as my real OS] to test a new office-suite pgm before [possibly] installing it "for real". As i'd not run this VM for at least a week, maybe two, there were a lot of updates pending. With those completed, i remembered this thread, noted that in this VM i did NOT have the Activity Pager widget installed, but my AM thumbnails were black, so i removed the maui-plasma5-shells package, logged out/in [not rebooted], &... the AM thumbnails are good again.

Thus it seems strongly correlated that that redundant maui-plasma5-shells package is what broke the AM with the 5.8.0 upgrade, & that contrary to my previous mutterings, the aforesaid Activity Pager widget probably was innocent. Phew!!

[kdemeoz]

Oh, it's just ridiculous. I just checked that VM's "About System", & was shocked to discover that this VM Maui is now Plasma 5.8.1, ie, despite my best intention of this VM experiment only changing one variable, actually two changed, hence once again it's impossible to conclude which change fixed the AM. Curses! [And rubbing salt into the wound, my "real" Maui is still on "only" 5.8.0].

[rocky7x]

I guess you just updated all packages in 1 go and not the maui-apt-config first and then the rest ;-) There are 3 options for you now:
1. go to Synaptic, to view Status->Installed (Local or obsolete) packages and there you will see A LOT of packages - you can try to manually downgrade them using CTRL+E with selecting the 2nd highest version (the first from top that has xenial in brackets) - I did it yesterday, it's at least 2 hours of work, but it can be done
2. the easier way (since it's just a sandbox without any real data) is to delete the VM and reinstall it from scratch, then when it's up and running first install maui-apt-config, the refresh the repos and then install what's left
3. leave it as it is and wait for the official 5.8.1 release when it will be updated with the packages from the repos.

But my subjective feeling is that it was solved by the 5.8.1 update and not the other thing you did.

[kdemeoz]

Thanks rocky. Nah, it's just a VM [as you noted], used for testing & evaluating Maui, so i'm not going to invest any time into manually fixing it, nor even starting over on it. I'll just wait for the official 5.8.1 to sort it out.

Actually it's not that it copped the 5.8.1 changes per se last night that annoyed me, but rather that my oversight which allowed that to happen then entirely buggered my attempt to once & for all pinpoint the root cause. As a [retired last year] engineer, i'm acutely aware of & usually a slavish devotee to the scientific principle [change only one variable at once, otherwise singular root cause identification is impossible]. Whilst as i indicated in a previous post i'm not prepared to go back in my "real" Maui, the VM Maui seemed an ideal risk-free testbed to pursue this. Oh well.

Re your "subjective feeling", i'm in no position to refute you based on any hard facts available to me, but i remind you that, per a previous post, in my "real" Maui i fixed the AM thumbnails, but it's still on 5.8.0. Hence that fix can only be either the removal of that widget, or the removal of that package. I'm certainly not saying that KDE Devs might not have fixed it also in 5.8.1, it's just that my "real" Maui does not have 5.8.1 [only the VM does].

[kdemeoz]

It's been a few weeks since i last launched my KDE Neon VM, but earlier today i did. It was still on Plasma 5.7.5, but there were >300 updates waiting. After updating, it became Plasma 5.8.2. I was surprised & alarmed to note that, in its latest guise, its Activities Manager LOST its thumbnail wallpaper images, & they just became the same blank black that originally prompted me to open this thread here for my Maui installation. My Maui 1 Plasma 5.8.0 AM thumbnails that i fixed earlier, have remained good... but considering that 5.8.2 is soon heading our way, i'm a bit apprehensive that maybe our AM thumbnails are going to vanish again.

Pls Devs, would you ensure during your 5.8.2 / Maui 2 testing, that this problem does not befall us?

[kdemeoz]

Post-5.8.2 upgrade, & my A/M thumbnails are still good. Cool !!!

[starbuck]

Since Maui 1 was brand new and the first ISO to switch from Kubuntu to KDE neon, we decided to now ramp up our own infrastructure to be in full control to what goes in at what pace to Maui Linux only after testing. The transition needed should have Maui 1 and Maui 2 users equally save from updates just hitting them directly from the neon servers, since Maui does a lot more beyond the standard KDE via customizing and preparing non-kde applications as best as possible on Plasma.

After Plasma 5.8.2 has been tested and made available for Maui 1 users, every user from now has the choice to enable further incoming updates (via enabling "backports") or simply stay on the current running platform.
That allows everyone to find their sweet spot for their system and decide if to update and when to update or keep it absolute stable.

[kdemeoz]

Interesting. Well, if my little comparative experiment of A/M in 5.8.2 Maui & Neon respectively is any guide, then i'd chalk this up as the first successful example of the benefit to we users of Maui Dev's managed approach to carefully auditing the Neon updates. Yay, & thanks.