openSUSE 15.1 to 15.2 upgrade notes

In a previous article I have shown how to upgrade a distro using zypper, but after the first reboot some issue might always happen, that’s why I collected all the changes and the tweaks I applied switching from openSUSE 15.1 to 15.2.

Installation

At a first attempt of the distro upgrade, stage one, this list of packages was unable to download:

  • libwacom
  • libts0
  • libplist3
  • iw
  • libspeechd2
  • libusb-1
  • libwacom2
  • wpa_supplicant
  • linuxconsoletools
  • tlp
  • tlp-rdw

After ignoring the error for any single package I had a second try typing:

$ sudo zypper dup --download-only

and everything worked as good as usual, probably it was just a temporarily repository error.

Package cleanup

Once the installation has been completed I gave a look at the orphaned packages:

$ zypper packages --orphaned

An orphaned package is just a package which hasn’t been upgraded to the new repository because there isn’t a matching version, so it’s left installed as it is to don’t break some application which requests it.

Although most of them are just useless libraries and can be deleted without problems, I always check whether or not they are really replaced by a newer version.

One of the possibile exception is the kcheckhash application: it works perfectly although has been abandoned and it’s not available in any 15.2 repository. Probably this application will be included in the future, probably will be dropped completely and replaced, but until it’s working and I find it useful, it’s just fine for me to leave it installed.

Another example is the library libIex-2_4-24 used by Darktable 3.0.1, unfortunately that specific library version has not been included in any repo, so uninstalling it means also switching back to the 2.6.3 version.

Warning!!!

With the last update of 2020, August 19 the Darktable application has been updated to the the version 3.2 and works perfectly!

So before removing any of them is better to query the system to see if there are valid alternative installed:

$ zypper search libx264

then remove it using the –clean-deps option to delete also useless related packages:

$ sudo zypper --clean-deps libx264-155 libx264-157 libx264-159

This is the list of orphaned packages I uninstalled without problems:

  • libx264-155
  • libx264-157
  • libx264-159
  • libx265-169
  • libx265-179
  • libx265-188
  • libdns1310
  • libdns1311
  • libdns1600
  • libdns1601
  • libdns1603
  • libfdk-aac1
  • libfind3_0
  • libgpac8
  • libjson-c4
  • libIlmImf-2_4-24
  • libIlmThread-2_4-24
  • libImath-2_4-24
  • libirs1301
  • libirs1600
  • libisc1310
  • libisccc1302
  • libmypaint-1_3-0
  • libpoppler90
  • libpoppler91
  • libpoppler92
  • libpoppler93
  • libpoppler94
  • libpoppler97

Required Packages

Some required packages might have been missed from a version to another, but this time I had no relevant problems except for the Yast Date and Time applet. A dmesg error was claiming:

Failed to start One time sync configured by YaST

And when I opened that applet, it automatically asked to install the package chrony, what better example of a self-repairing system?

Other fixes

Thunderbird old profile

Thunderbird has been the only application that gave me some headache, at the first start it refused to load my profile, claiming that was impossible to launch an older version profile

What I had to do to solve it, is a manual intervention on my Thunderbird profile:

  1. First of all, I had to locate the exact path of my profile under ~/.thunderbird, having only one profile it was easy to find, it is the only folder having .default extension;
  2. then I started Thunderbird with the -ProfileManager switch:
      $ thunderbird -ProfileManager
    
  3. from the dialog I created a new profile, unchecked the checkbox to make that dialog show again and started Thunderbird;
  4. after the first start I closed it, all I wanted to do is create a new folder profile;
  5. at this point I copied only a few files and folders from the old profile to the new:
    • the folders: extensions; Imap; Mail.
    • the files: abook.mab; cookies.sqlite; logins.json; places.sqlite; prefs.js; permissions.sqlite; session.json; training.dat.
  6. Then I started Thunderbird again, all the profile were there again and the downloaded emails too, all I had to do was to insert the password again for each email account.

At this point, if everything works as expected the old profile can be deleted from the profile selection dialog.

Inkscape icons

Inkscape icons resulted too big to have a usable interface, all I had to do is select the smaller size under preferences -> interface and restart it.

Other tips

I had not more fixes to apply, but there are interesting tricks from old articles:

A look around

Let’s see some interesting news provided by this new version.

General improvements

What I noticed at first is that I have no more problems with hibernation, in the past it was leading to random system freezes, and to shut it down I had to use the power button, this is the news that made me happiest.

Filezilla works again, in the previous version something with libraries was broken, but now everything works perfectly.

LibreOffice at its 6.4 version includes the tabbed interface which can be enabled under View -> User interface and a comment editor.

Having the Graphic repository enabled I got the new versions of both Inkscape 1.0 and Gimp 2.10, while the basic repository should still have the older 0.9 and 2.8 respectively.

KDE and its applications

KDE Plasma 5.18 is more reactive, has new icons and the desktop switching applet works as expected: selecting a different desktop hide all the windows that are not open or sent in the desktop itself. Other relevant news is:

  • The ability to drag files from the notification window;
  • use of emojis;
  • the ability to mute the application which makes use of speakers directly from the taskbar.

Other info is available at the KDE 5.18 announcement.

Among the KDE applications, Konsole and Yakuake implement the vertical ctrl + ( and horizontal ctrl + ) split view, and when a new tab is opened it starts from the same path, which is a big plus for me.

Dolphin added the duplicate here action in its contextual menu, but this solution didn’t convince me too much:

  • The output filename format can’t be customized: every time a file is duplicated the word copy is just appended to the filename, for example the filename notes.txt becomes notes copy.txt;
  • in case of a second duplicate, it doesn’t automatically append a consecutive number, but a window popup warns for a file overwrite and asks for choice a different filename; through the Suggest button we can generate a consecutive number to have something like notes copy (1).txt.

Pity more I can’t disable that action menu, anyway I will continue to use my custom service menu to duplicate files. If you are interested in my alternative leave a comment in the box below.

Another interesting service I discovered among the Dolphin settings is the Git extension, which marks with different icons the files belonging to a Git repository making easier to recognize which of them changed since the last commit.

The last improvement I noticed is the ability to switch between the panels using the Tab key when the panel view is active.

The text editor Kate has a new interface to handle sessions, which is really handy for those like me who rely on that feature:

  • The interface is bigger than before and shows in a side panel all the needed button to Create, Duplicate, Rename, Delete or Open a session as a template;
  • sessions now can be filtered writing on the input box;
  • sessions can get sorted by the number of files, names, or last time open.

Definitively a great improvement for a text editor lightweight and powerful.

Final thoughts

More info about openSUSE Leap 15.2 is available at the URLs:

The openSUSE team also launched a Request for feedback asking to all the users who tried this version to compile an anonymous online survey.

The upgrading procedure this time has been really smooth for me, the new kernel didn’t introduce instabilities, and at least on my laptop improved the hibernation and the general power consumption. I am so glad about this version that I will give a try on my Raspberry Pi3 too as soon as I can.


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