Is MS Sabbotaging KDE Plasma?

[radar]

Hello fellow Libre Software Enthusiasts,

Fool me once, maybe a coincidence, but twice? I don’t think so.

Preface:
HEIC/HEIF (HEVC) is proprietary format of MS and APPL. AVIF (from AV1) is libre software from Alliance of Open Media (AOM).

What happened:
For the second time this year, KDE devs (MS employees that sabbotage KDE ?) removed AVIF support in KDE. But NEVER REOMOVED OR TOUCHED PROPRIETARY HEIC/HEIF (HEVC).

Affected Software (Whole KDE Plasma):

1. No background/wallpaper on login screen (SDDM)
2. No wallpaper in KDE
3. No thumbnails in Dolphin
4. No background in Lock Screen
5. Gwenview can’t display photos
6. DigiKam broken
7. Showphoto (HDR, Panorama, …) editing software broken

Something is going on. Once? Maybe a coincidence, a bug? But for the second time? No! Someone went into kimageformats and removed “avif.so” from this library. It had to be done on purpose. Especially when you consider that HEIC/HEIF has never been removed.

P.S. KDE can’t display wide gamut .jpg photos (sxiv can, imagemagick can, graphics magic can,…).

[linux-aarhus]

@radar

Libre Software Enthusiasts

Manjaro is not a libre linux - proprietary binaries is packaged alongside opensource binaries.

I will use what ever software is necessary to carry out my tasks - even if I have to pay for it.

[philm]

@radar Can you point us to the commits which removed it? Are there any open issues at kde.org regarding that?

[Aragorn]

@radar

For the second time this year, KDE devs (MS employees that sabbotage KDE ?) removed AVIF support in KDE.

It hasn’t been removed here on my system.

And Microsoft does not pay anyone on the KDE developer team. Those are all people paid by SUSE, Blue Systems, et al.

@radar

Affected Software (Whole KDE Plasma):

1. No background/wallpaper on login screen (SDDM)
2. No wallpaper in KDE
3. No thumbnails in Dolphin
4. No background in Lock Screen
5. Gwenview can’t display photos

They could have fooled me, then… This screenshot is from yesterday, after having applied the latest Stable Update.

[nikgnomic]

IMO this is a false correlation between 2 similar file formats that has not considered Hanlon’s razor:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

(especially when a proprietary OS has a large legal team)

[medmedin]

Package kimageformats still has libavif (BSD License) and libheif (GNU Lesser General Public License) libraries as optional packages

The latest upgrade was a simple rebuild against libavif.

[Mirdarthos]

What a loaded question…

Would’ve been more productive if you’d have nicely stated the problem, requesting help if it was necessary.

[koshikas]

@radar

P.S. KDE can’t display wide gamut .jpg photos (sxiv can, imagemagick can, graphics magic can,…).

@philm

Can you point us to the commits which removed it? Are there any open issues at kde.org regarding that?

there is confirmed bug in-and-around the issue. looks like some sort of edge case scenario as OP has described; 468884 – Can't open some self-made libaom avif photos anymore; sxiv opens them with no problem

i dont think its even near sabotage material just that some edge case which is not handled in kimageformats-stack.

@radar if you may, can you upload one of the images causing issues

[nikgnomic]

The support request posted last time about the same issue was better than this
Regression: Bug Confirmation From Devs Request
But did not acknowledge the solution: updating kimageformats 5.99.0-2 to 5.99.0-3

Similar to last time, Unstable branch has kimageformats 5.109.0-2 not released to Testing and Stable branches yet

mbn info kimageformats -q

Branch         : archlinux
Name           : kimageformats
Version        : 5.109.0-2
Repository     : extra
Build Date     : Tue 29 Aug 2023 08:18:49 
Packager       : Antonio Rojas <arojas@archlinux.org>
Branch         : unstable
Name           : kimageformats
Version        : 5.109.0-2
Repository     : extra
Build Date     : Tue 29 Aug 2023 08:18:49 
Packager       : Antonio Rojas <arojas@archlinux.org>
Branch         : testing
Name           : kimageformats
Version        : 5.109.0-1
Repository     : extra
Build Date     : Sat 19 Aug 2023 05:12:34 
Packager       : Felix Yan <felixonmars@archlinux.org>
Branch         : stable
Name           : kimageformats
Version        : 5.109.0-1
Repository     : extra
Build Date     : Sat 19 Aug 2023 05:12:34 
Packager       : Felix Yan <felixonmars@archlinux.org>

[radar]

They had this error in “-1” (dash one) version of the library, but they quickly fixed it from “-1” to “-2” version of the same library. I got caught “in between” and had version “-1”. Now they have “-2” (dash two) version of the identical version.