buffy

If I am not mistaken, I used a Debian KDE live image from the official repository then switched the mirrors from Bookworm to Sid. The system went months without a single issue, then this happen.

Your suggestion will actually be my solution of choice if everything else fails: reinstall / and import relevant files from a backup that I already have.

Thanks for the tip! However, I tried apt reinstall kde-full and apt --fix-broken install, but no packages were installed and (unsurprisingly) the problem still persists.

The Gentoo sub had such a nice subtitle because it is indeed accurate! Definitely one of the things I like the most about "flexible" distros.

"Gentoo Linux: Because you like it when the power is in your hands"

Yeah, I tried installing kde-full but it didn't solve my problem.

Thanks for the recommendation! I will definitely do it when I eventually install some other distro in the future.

I do store regular backups of this machine, but not of /var. I can always reinstall Debian (or whatever other distro), while keeping other relevant configs intact (stored in the backups) and not lose any critical data.

I commented below that I did check /var/log/dpkg.log, but it didn't help much due to the high number of packages removed that day.

At this point I am more curious to learn more about KDE and what is causing the problem, since other desktop environments (I installed mate) seem to work fine.

Sadly I am not using BTRFS for my root directory on this specific system. If I end up deciding to reinstall, I will definitely go back to BTRFS to avoid such problems.

Debian actually has a KDE group named kde-full. I reinstalled it but the issue persists, which was honestly surprising to me.

~$ sudo apt install kde-full
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
kde-full is already the newest version (5:147).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 87 not upgraded.

The new user idea was really clever, thanks for the suggestion! I will try that now and see.

Edit: the new user also presents the same problem. Actually, it makes sense, since SDDM is affected as well (I should have mentioned that before).

That was actually my first attempt, but unfortunately I removed 484 packages during that process, so checking the log didn't help me much. Some packages that were removed had many dependencies that I could quickly recover, like Dolphin and Okular, but in the end I was left with ~100 packages that I don't know what they do.

While I could technically reinstall all of them manually, it would be less than ideal since many are indeed not needed and supposed to be removed during that update (apt complains about conflicts).

~$ awk '$1 == "2024-03-13" && $3 == "remove" {gsub(":amd64",""); print $4}' /var/log/dpkg.log | wc -w
484

I am open to suggestions if you know how I could recover from this or improve my awk filter to make things easier.

Agreed! It is both very convenient and scenic. Chautauqua Park's location is perfect.

I'm not an expert, but Wikipedia says that

"they were lifted and tilted into their present orientation between 80 to 35 million years ago, during the Laramide Orogeny. The Flatirons were subsequently exposed by erosion."

I think their origin is characteristic of such formations.

Thank you! I agree, a day hiking at the flatirons is always a good day!