Thanks for the update, but any plans to finally push Plasma 6.1 at least to testing? We are at 6.1.4 now, after all…
This query repeats every update thread, and AFAIK the reason that plasma 6.1.X is stuck in the unstable branch is due to issues that need to be resolved (I assume by KDE, but I believe nvidia is part of the problem).
And for some reason folks don’t want to accept that answer from the Manjaro team, so let’s try something different…
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to switch to the unstable branch, experience plasma 6.1.X in all its glory, and report back how ready it is for stable. Then hopefully folks will accept your conclusion(s), which will likely read something like “It’ll reach stable when it’s ready; less buggy”.
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I’ve been on Plasma 6.1 since it first reached unstable branch. I’ve had no issues at all on my AMD CPU with integrated graphics. In fact, it fixed the small bugs I experienced in Plasma 6.0.
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As @ben75, I am running Plasma 6.1.4 on unstable branch and think the assesment that Nvidia is the culprit - could very well be true.
I am using AMD and Intel using Intel or AMD GPU and I have a reasonable stable experience with Plasma.
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As an AMD GPU/CPU user, I’m glad to hear that… and I guess that adds some support to what I said about nvidia being part of the problem.
However, I wonder what percentage of Manjaro users use nvidia versus AMD GPU’s? And in that thought experiment lies the rationale that why would they push an update to stable that would be horrible for their non-zero nvidia users?
The best option to move forward is to keep all manjaro users happy, not just the AMD ones.
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I have also noticed the same on Arch. No significant problems with 6.1.
I fully expected to find 6.1 in this update … 
.
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Not exactly sure what all the issues the Manjaro team are waiting to be corrected before pushing Plasma through to Testing, but for myself the main issues I’ve noticed as a Manjaro unstable user with KDE/Plasma and nvidia were as follows:
The major bug that was an issue for me was if I was in an X11 session the crash that that would happen when using the logout/reboot/suspend/shutdown buttons would leave the system hanging (fortunately for me I have magic SysRq enabled) but I know it’s off by default so most users would need to hard shutdown (and we can all assume the mass hysteria that would cause here on the forum).
This did not happen with Wayland sessions.
I am happy to report that this bug no longer exists (on my system). But I should note that this is a desktop with a single Nvidia card, no idea if laptop users with dual GPU’s are still affected in some way.
The second issue I continue to have is that there are still some rendering issues with Vivaldi when running in a Wayland session (yes I made the appropriate adjustments for native Wayland).
Based on my own experience I would assume it may be safe to push 6.1.4 to Testing, but there may be other issues I don’t experience that would be show stoppers for others.
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11 posts were split to a new topic: Manjaro is not for me
As I have an Intel integrated GPU, I find no issues with KDE 6. Installed it from the very beginning using unstable branche, it works like a charm on my system…
Cheers, Eddy
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I’ve switched my old Intel laptop to EOS, so far so good. I like the purple accents and Plasma 6.1 with Wayland is working great. If I run into issues, I may reinstall Manjaro someday or not… one can not predict what the future holds…
Good bye for now and good luck 
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Wouldn’t that be pretty much the same as switching to to Manjaro Unstable?
EndeavourOS does not have their own software repositories. They depend on the main Arch Linux repositories and doing so, you get the most “vanilla” experience if you use EndeavourOS.
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This does make it look more like an Arch clone rather than an Arch fork. At that point, why not just use pure Arch?
We are currently heavily testing Plasma 6.1 series on our upcoming consumer product the Neo Gaming Handheld. When the first version of 6.1 hit that device I had a hard time regarding X11 issues, which were still existing in 6.0 series we had before. There is a good reason why Valve still uses Plasma 5.27 series and didn’t had updated on their platform yet.
So we knew that Wayland is the way to go. Also the gamemode session is running Wayland already. However the steam client on the desktop side is still bound to X11. So on the Steamdeck you are stuck to X11 for that reason. We found a way to switch to wayland after all. There are still some issues with games on Steam, but they are similar when running them on X11 with the Steam client.
On Nvidia side of things the current proprietary drivers have a hard time with explicit sync. Multiple libraries and parts need to match. The 550 driver series is kinda ok, as that series doesn’t ship that feature yet. Which means you won’t have those issues to begin with.
Then there are some issues and regressions which now got introduced by 6.1 series of Plasma also to the Wayland section. I had to rewrite the way I switch between desktop mode to game mode on the handheld to make that work, after we switched to wayland.
Since we use Manjaro immutable on the device I’m not bound to our update branch channels at all, as we follow a snapshot distribution and can jump between branches as we want to.
Also the current release of Manjaro is based on Plasma 6.0 series. So it depends if we want to send another update to those install medias and to the stable branch.
Then there is the question what is with testing branch? Well, testing branch acts as a staging area for now, since we have several packages blacklisted from unstable branch:
- plymouth 24+
- Nvidia 555+
- Plasma Workspace 6.1+
Which means that I have to sync from Arch repos also on testing branch. Then have to move over our overlay packages manually to the testing branch and build additional drivers like Nvidia 550 series for all kernel series, if there where updates to those. That process will create a partly broken testing branch, hence the TBD update announcements, which simply mean: DON’T UPDATE or ELSE 
At some point we might declare Plasma 6.1 as stable enough. 6.1.4 is a good candidate. For 6.0 series it was 6.0.5 and people blamed us for it as that was still buggy at some edges. Personally I’m not sure. 6.1.4 is out now on unstable and 6.1.5 is scheduled for Tue 2024-09-10.
Gnome 47.0 is scheduled for 2024-09-14 and 47.1 for 2024-10-12.
So lets see when the stars align: Either Mid-August or Mid-September …
If you want to have it right now you can always test the Immutable version of Manjaro: Manjaro Immutable Out Now for Community Testing | Manjaro News
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Thank you very much for the info!
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That’s not actually correct, they do have a small additional repo containing their theming and helper tool packages (all of which are optional additions to pure Arch and can be removed).
And the installation process is much easier of course (using Calamares installer like Manjaro does). You could get the same end result using pure Arch but with more time and effort spent on installation and configuration.
Anyway, personally I’m in no great hurry to install Plasma 6.1.x. There is nothing in it that I need so I’m happy to wait as long as it takes until Manjaro considers it stable enough. I use Manjaro stable branch because it’s in exactly the right place for me rather than the absolute bleeding edge.
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Many thanks for the explanations.
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Same here, im more worried about the delay because the KDE 6.0.5 version that we have now, is not a LTS version and if this means trouble for a longer delay?
Im also very glad for all the work that Philm and the other Maintainers doing for us, i don’t see this effort with other Distro’s.
The people who can’t wait for 6.1 had always the option to switch between the Branches… i have no idea why people can’t wait to have everything in stable and the story repeats again and again (groundhog day) every few month.
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In no hurry here either.
I think also it would be better to add plasma 6.1 once it is stable.
Currently, I am still using Plasma 5.27, and I will wait to update until Plasma 6.1 is stable. Will I face any issues updating directly from Plasma 5.27 to Plasma 6.1?
Im pretty sure that other distro’s who jumping from a LTS Version to a stable Plasma 6.1 version should be in the perfect way to upgrade their desktop.
But since Manjaro is official updated to Plasma 6.0.3 since mid May i don’t think this delay what are you doing leading to a good result.
On the other hand, im not experience enough to judge about it 
I assume that you only blocking KDE Updates, while still updating everything else, is that correct?
From my weak understanding about this Topic and the point that Manjaro is a rolling release Distro. You at least skipping updated KDE files for 3 full month, probably leading to a regression around the KDE desktop.
Probably my viewpoint is not correct, if this is the case i hope someone can correct me. But i think when you decided for yourself to block a package, its a different thing when a Distro Maintainer doing this.
Example: You have a package with version 1.00 and you don’t like the new changes and want to wait for version 2.00 and this means you probably skipping smaller updates that rely on each other like 1.01>1.2>1.5>1.8> and your glorius 2.0 update.
Again i could make a mistake here (probably its trash what im talking here 
), but all this updates (files) are gonna be missing and version 2.0 required version 1.8 but you have only version 1.0
A Debian Distro which are designed for this big delays will (from my terrible understanding 
) included all this tiny updates, but this don’t work for the Arch Tree.