Why does openSUSE "zypper install" threaten to remove "Desktop" [but not do it, phew!]?

Steffie

Hello

I remain happy with my distro & DE, but i also like exploring alternatives [in VMs], for fun, learning [& masochism?]. Currently i'm dabbling with openSUSE-Tumbleweed-x64-Snapshot20170510, with Plasma5 DE. It's pretty impressive, though i'm not yet familiar enough with non-Debian/Ubuntu file manipulations. I have learned & successfully used [eg]:

sudo zypper install <<pgm>> → There is a peculiar thing/bug though... see this sample copied from Konsole:

me@linux-sr0s:~> sudo zypper install kmymoney
[sudo] password for root:
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...

The following 19 NEW packages are going to be installed:
<<snip>>

The following application is going to be REMOVED:
Desktop
.
.
Happily, it does not actually delete the desktop [that would be catastrophic]. However WHY does it say this? Does it like to make timid new users run & hide under the bed?

..............................................................................................
Tower & Lappy = Maui Linux 17.03 x64 Plasma 5.9.3.
Vivaldi 1.10.845.3 (Official Build) dev (64-bit)
..............................................................................................

Steffie

@Gwen-Dragon said in Why does openSUSE "zypper install" threaten to remove "Desktop" [but not do it, phew!]?:

should first inspect which packages depend on Desktop.

Danke. I did these, & learned nothing useful.

steffie@linux-sr0s:~> rpm --test -e Desktop
error: package Desktop is not installed

steffie@linux-sr0s:~> rpm -q --whatrequires Desktop
no package requires Desktop
steffie@linux-sr0s:~> rpm -qa | grep Desktop
steffie@linux-sr0s:~>

Puzzling!

Steffie

@Gwen-Dragon said in Why does openSUSE "zypper install" threaten to remove "Desktop" [but not do it, phew!]?:

I do not know OpenSUSE.

Me either. My total experience with it is merely a couple of hours of mucking about with it in a VM over the past few days. It's been one of the distros i've had for ages on my "might be interesting to learn about" list. Since i came to Linux from Windows in 2013/14 i have gravitated somehow to Debian/Ubuntu-based distros, so "other" systems like Fedora, Arch/Manjaro, openSUSE etc are still a bit "strange" for me, & i still feel rather "uncomfortable, off-balance, & lost" in them. Having said that, so far i am really very impressed with openSUSE [i'm playing with its rolling release Tumbleweed stream, KDE/Plasma5 DE (not GNOME, which i really dislike in all distros)].

Given i've not yet discovered what "Desktop" truly means in those Konsole windows, i'm kinda leaning towards the warning messages being maybe just a bug. All i can say for 100% certain is that ignoring it & proceeding with those installations did NOT remove the Plasma Desktop. Also, if i choose to install those same packages via the YaST2 GUI instead of Konsole, NO such warning messages appear at all.

Obviously if i registered myself in the openSUSE fora & posted my enquiry there, i might find the answer. I initially just tried here in V first, as i was feeling too lazy to bother with the new user registration palaver over there

..............................................................................................
Tower & Lappy = Maui Linux 17.03 x64 Plasma 5.9.3.
Vivaldi 1.10.845.3 (Official Build) dev (64-bit)
..............................................................................................

Steffie

@LeesaJohnson I'm unconvinced that you're a genuine user, rather than a spam-bot... how do you respond? [i thought i'd give you one chance, before reporting this post as spam].

Der_Pit

About that 'Desktop' thing - just ignore it. It is an application pattern, and not refering to a specific package. TBH I don't know why it wants to remove it. But it is showing up on about any zypper update....

Apart from this irritation, it's an extremely powerful package manager. So I hope you'll get used to it (and Tumbleweed). Definitely worth it!

Edit: See bugreport about it

Steffie

@Der_Pit Hiya -- thanks for this info. Indeed, after the initial scare, nothing bad seems to actually occur, so i decided it was a spurious warning [i'd still prefer the Devs got rid of it].

Since my last post i've not spent much time at all with my openSUSE VMs, but tonight i fired them up to install the latest updates. I continue to be impressed with this OS.

Due to an experimental partitioning & encryption scheme i used on my Laptop several months ago when i last installed its OS [Maui], but which i've now tired of [the partitions, not Maui], i recently decided i shall do another OS installation to sort it out. Even though i continue to love Maui, i am also now rather intrigued with openSUSE & thus i am seriously thinking about putting it rather than Maui on the Lappy this time. Pretty much the only thing holding me back at the moment is my ongoing anxiety about this not being an apt- & deb-package-based distro. I'm familiar & comfortable with apt & deb packages, & feel there's a pretty wide selection range of programs using deb packages. As i am far less familiar with rpm, i worry that maybe the package range might be quite restrictive for me, &/or i might have to frequently compile & build from source in openSUSE for various pgms available in the *buntu world ready packaged in debs... i am NOT saying that my anxiety is correct, only that i have not yet resolved if my concern is valid or silly.

Steffie

Interesting. Just downloaded then installed the new Stable into one of my openSUSE VMs. It seems that zypper might have been fixed since my initial post, as now it does not threaten to remove my desktop:

sudo zypper install vivaldi-stable-1.10.867.38-1.x86_64.rpm 
[sudo] password for root: 
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...

The following NEW package is going to be installed:
  vivaldi-stable

1 new package to install.
Overall download size: 47.1 MiB. Already cached: 0 B. After the operation, additional
175.8 MiB will be used.
Continue? [y/n/...? shows all options] (y): ?

y - Yes, accept the summary and proceed with installation/removal of packages.
n - No, cancel the operation.
v - Toggle display of package versions.
a - Toggle display of package architectures.
r - Toggle display of repositories from which the packages will be installed.
m - Toggle display of package vendor names.
d - Toggle between showing all details and as few details as possible.
g - View the summary in pager.

[y/n/...? shows all options] (y): 
Retrieving package vivaldi-stable-1.10.867.38-1.x86_64
                                                   (1/1),  47.1 MiB (175.8 MiB unpacked)
Checking for file conflicts: .....................................................[done]
(1/1) Installing: vivaldi-stable-1.10.867.38-1.x86_64 ............................[done]
Additional rpm output:
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/vivaldi-stable to provide /usr/bin/vivaldi (vivaldi) in auto mode

Does anyone know how i can make openSUSE add the Vivaldi repos into its internal list such that in future SS [installed several weeks ago, but it has never since auto-updated] & Stable will properly auto-update? This works brilliantly in Maui from my original Deb package installations 2 years ago, so i'd like to similarly automate it in openSUSE.

PS: I'd hoped that the cryptic zypper message near the bottom of the code-box might have been relevant, but it doesn't seem to have helped... or maybe i have misunderstood it.

Steffie

@Gwen-Dragon Hi, thanks, no i didn't... because i had been looking on the Vivaldi side, not the openSUSE side... by which i mean, in my "real" Linux [Maui - based on Ubuntu], i originally installed V in 2015 via downloaded Deb packages from the V site, & those Debs fully set up everything -- ie, not only installing the pgm itself, but also the GPG validation stuff for the V repos, so that all future updates happened automagically via Maui's Update Manager. I had assumed that the RPM package would behave similarly in openSUSE, but it didn't, in that it only installed V but did not also setup the repos. Is that a problem with the Vivaldi RPMs, or with openSUSE itself?

Anyway, i tried your links [thanks], but they were also problematic. I couldn't use the zypper method of adding the V repo, because i did not know [at that stage] the specific details of what to use as the V repos. Alternatively i tried the YaST method, but completely unlike the video, my YaST did NOT show me any long list of available repos from which to choose [that link is for Leap, whereas my openSUSE is Tumbleweed; don't know if that difference is relevant?].

After some research, i solved it this way [posted here in case any other openSUSE user might need it]:

I discovered these addresses for the V RPM repos:
http://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/rpm/x86_64/
http://repo.vivaldi.com/snapshot/rpm/x86_64/
I created new entries in YaST with these addresses
Happily YaST then correctly imported the GPG info, & completed setting up both new repos, & with auto-refresh set.
After forcing openSUSE's Software Updater to check for any new updates, it correctly found the latest SS was available [the one i installed a few weeks ago, was now a few SS's behind], downloaded & installed it.

So, though a bit inelegant to begin with, it now looks like V will be happily maintained by openSUSE's updater as successfully as it always has been for me in Maui.

Der_Pit

@Steffie said in Why does openSUSE "zypper install" threaten to remove "Desktop" [but not do it, phew!]?:

Is that a problem with the Vivaldi RPMs, or with openSUSE itself?

I think it was/is one of the RPM you installed.

my YaST did NOT show me any long list of available repos from which to choose [that link is for Leap, whereas my openSUSE is Tumbleweed; don't know if that difference is relevant?].

YaST would only show you installed repos. For Vivaldi, there is only one repository for all openSUSEs. But you have to know the URL to add it.

After some research, i solved it this way [posted here in case any other openSUSE user might need it]:

I discovered these addresses for the V RPM repos:
http://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/rpm/x86_64/
http://repo.vivaldi.com/snapshot/rpm/x86_64/

I created new entries in YaST with these addresses

Happily YaST then correctly imported the GPG info, & completed setting up both new repos, & with auto-refresh set.

This is correct. However, normally this would have happened when you initially installed vivaldi: An RPM also contains scripts that are executed upon installation. You can check those using the command
rpm -q --scripts vivaldi-snapshot | less
(search for 'install_yast')

This did work for me, so I cannot really tell what prevented it in your case.
(BTW, looking at the script you might also realize that the RPM is not even openSUSE specific, but also for Fedora and Mandriva...)

So, though a bit inelegant to begin with, it now looks like V will be happily maintained by openSUSE's updater as successfully as it always has been for me in Maui.

Yes, it will

Steffie

@Der_Pit Thanks for your ongoing help.

FYI, i am continuing to explore & play with openSUSE in a couple of VMs running inside my Maui. One VM is for Tumbleweed [the one relevant to this thread; today's updates brought it to 20170615], & overnight i created another VM for Leap 42.2 to give me a comparison of rolling vs stable releases. I was subsequently shocked to find that Leap is still only using Plasma v5.8.6, & Kernel 4.4.70 [vs TW's 5.10.1 & 4.11.4]. This makes it no better than Mint KDE, much poorer than Maui, & much MUCH poorer than openSUSE Tumbleweed. I've now lost interest in this flavour [Leap] of openSUSE... already its crappy old buggy Plasma has buggered up a couple of times forcing me to kill the VM & reboot it [if i want that kind of "fun" i could simply go back to Kubuntu or Mint].

Conversely Tumbleweed is continuing to massively impress me... i'm liking it more & more. I'm currently, progressively, testing that each of my favoured programs in Maui are installable & runnable in OSS TW... so far it's all thumbs-up, but i still have many more to install & tryout. If it passes this evaluation, then i think i will throw it onto my Lappy. What a hidden treasure OSS seems to be [mind you, i still really like my Maui too].

The only fly in the ointment so far is that TW is performing s..l..o..w..l..y. There's a big lag after every operation [eg, open a pgm, close a pgm] before the action occurs. For now i'm willing to assume this is not OSS's fault but merely a hallmark of the VM [only 2 GB memory, & its VDI is the expanding not fixed size; both these factors certainly would slow it down]. If however it passes my current pgm compatibility tests & then makes its way into the real world onto my Lappy but then also runs slow, it won't last 10' before i remove it again. Presumably it will not come to that [ie, presumably the fault is the VM].

Der_Pit

Don't be too harsh with Leap 42.2.
It is an old release. 42.3 is at the doors, you might give it a try already in one of your VMs (but it also is quite conservative in many version numbers). And the policy is quite clear that version numbers are fixed within a release. That does not mean they are unmaintained - bug- and security fixes are backported. I run 42.2 at home, and it's rock solid.
As for the speed - yes, I'd definitely blame the VM there. My TW laptop is blazing fast (the power-on self test of the BIOS is longer than the rest of the boot to the graphical login...). Despite being bleeding edge, I've had very little issues. It does help though to follow the opensuse-factory mailing list.
The only reason I'm not going TW at home is the update volume. It can easily be several GB per week, and I'm on a 6Mbit line there....
Enjoy your Geeko

Steffie

@Der_Pit Ha, maybe i did sound harsh... i didn't mean to [or maybe i did...?], but i still stand by the essential theme if not the tone of what i wrote. Thanks for sharing your insights & experience with OSS; it's interesting for me [i have such a lot of new learning to do now].

Since last posting, i've not been here in the V fora much at all [~~see my Sig below; haven't even had time yet to let Update Manager update my SS~~] coz i've been playing/fighting for long days & long nights with my Lappy, which now does no longer have Maui, & instead has OSS TW [after today's latest updates it's at 20170618]. There's sooooooooooooooooo much more i need to do on it to get it fully operational wrt all my fav pgms settings & data, but what's been taking a vast amount of my time & stress [highs & lows] so far includes:

I have been used to the Debian/Ubuntu way of doing things, hence when i use Konsole i use a set of learned commands predicated on apt. It's come as a total shock to me to have discovered that in OSS i have to throw out a lot of that & learn a new cli vocabulary. I've learned a bit, but for example i still need to research how to do what in *buntu-land is grep & --version commands.
I am delighted to say that unlike the VM, the on-SSD performance of TW is... lovely ... i'm really enjoying it !!
Also happy news is that in OSS [Leap & TW], unlike Maui, finally I once again have a rock-solid reliable Kwin Desktop Grid functionality. It’s every bit as reliable as Mint KDE4 was, unlike frustratingly in Maui. In the latter, every time I show the Grid, then drag a window from one desktop to another, I have to immediately click on a desktop to stop the grid & revert to a single desktop view, otherwise Plasma crashes. Hence in Maui if I need to move multiple windows, I have to tediously keep leaving the Grid then re-enter it. Not so in Mint KDE4, & so far nor in OSS. Yay.
What changed my mind on rolling-release vs LTS: discovering openQA, Btrfs, & Snapper.
Yakuake on Lappy absolutely refuses to respond [ie, open / close] to its keyboard F12 hotkey, despite working well in my Tower’s OSS TW VM [& also worked fine on Lappy when it still had Maui]. Grrrr.
VLC can’t play MP3 files on Lappy due to missing vlc-codecs, which so far i’ve been unable to install due to calamitous cascading dependency & version conflicts… so bad that in fact overnight 18 – 19/6 I had to reinstall OSS TW on Lappy due to irrevocable such f&ck&ps.. All this is despite my Tower's TW VM being totally fine with respect to this… no hassles at all. Sigh.
I have not found an RPM installer file for the PulseAudio Multiband Equaliser, & of course it’s not in the official OSS repos. I found it in an unofficial one so reluctantly used that. It did install, does launch, does respond to mouse-based settings changes… but makes absolutely zero difference to any audio source. This is bitterly disappointing & may indeed be a show-stopper for me if I cannot find a solution. It works nicely for me in the *buntu-universe, & I rely on it for substantially improving my music & video streaming enjoyment. I really need to solve this.
...and so now to the biggie... I am still mightily struggling with the whole concept of non-official OSS “community” Repos, existing in parallel with the official OSS Repos, & from which it seems so far that several of my mandatory programs are only available. The specific problems so far are:
(a) The YaST graphical installer, or the Zypper cli method, force me to have to accept on blind faith the GPG key & fingerprint of the privateers having these unofficial Repos, despite me having no way to verify that they are legitimate not dodgy, & that if I decline, the installation aborts. If I accept, their Repo gets added to my TW’s list of allowed Repos.
(b) So far i’ve had a terrible run of dependency conflicts with several of these other Repos, & usually I cannot resolve them. It seems that the authors issue their own flavours of various supporting library files to make their package of the target-pgms I want, & these home-grown supporting files clash with ones already in my system from official OSS. This entire paradigm seems horrible in comparison to the orderliness i’ve grown used to in the Debian/Ubuntu universe.

Teehee, back to trying to sort it out...

PS - Just to close the loop on this thread's subject line, Zypper for several days now has stopped all those scary messages, & instead is playing nicely.

Der_Pit

@Steffie Great to read your steps into the TW world
As you see, I'm also not too frequently reading here, but still want to comment/answer on some of your points:
@4: Yes, I'm also amazed by BTRFS and it's possibilities. E.g., I moved the system partition of one of my servers here (which is a RAID1 setup) to two different physical disks. With one command, and while the system was running.
@6: I'm not a too big fan of VLC (for some historic reasons). But as the paptents on MP3 just ran out, TW has been including support for it in the last few updates.
@7: Have you tried https://software.opensuse.org/package/pulseaudio-equalizer? Is this different?
@8: Well, also Ubuntu has (lots of) private repos. On OS there are basically two different ones: Half-official ones, like, e.g., the Science repo. They are ran by renowned community and/or OS people. Then there are the Home: repos from OBS (the openSUSE Build Service). But OBS is a transparent build-from-source system. You can see the source, changes made to it etc., and the build is done on the OS machines, which guarantees that the binary you install matches the source. So trusting anything that you find via the general Package Search is not a risk at all...
Plus, you don't have to add the repo, you can also just install the rpm or even get the src.rpm and compile the package yourself using rpmbuild.
Many of the home repos offer bleeding-edge versions from development trees, and those often/always require libs more recent than what is in the official repo. The 'conflicts' typically arise because zypper in default mode will not install stuff that is already installed from a different repo. a 'zypper in --force' will override this (and tell you that it switches some packages to a different repo), and after that things just continue to work normally. At least that is my experience with it. I find it extremely stable handling many different repos...
Hope you continue to have fun

Steffie

@Der_Pit Hi & thanks again for more excellent help/info. OMZ, "while the system was running"; that is simply incredible... i didn't even think that could be possible. Wow.

OSS TW is continuing to rock - it's such an amazing distro, & i can't quite believe that until only late last month OSS was always in my "i'm too terrified of them to go anywhere near these distros" basket [along with Gentoo, Arch, KaOS...]. I loved my Mint 17.x KDE4 [just glorious after 2 decades of Windows], then i kinda enjoyed Mint 18 Xfce+Compiz, then i loved Maui... but now OSS TW feels even more amazing. Why did i wait so long?

Since my last post i have continued sweating blood on getting Lappy setup "just right", & most of the problems i encountered earlier have been overcome now. It's setup & running very sweetly. Maui's Plasma5 deployment was significantly better than Mint's & Kubuntu's, but OSS TW's Plasma5 is even better again - it's very very good, & this makes it lovely to use.

I'm even finally beginning to think in a slightly less Debian/*buntu way, & slightly more in an OSS way now... i had to giggle a bit earlier tonight when i came back to my Maui Tower from my TW Lappy, wanted to install a program there that i'd discovered in TW, & found myself momentarily wondering why i couldn't find YaST & whether i needed to Zypper it instead [this was in Maui]... ha, silly me.

Zypper is incredible, YaST & YaST2 continue to impress me... Even the repos / dependencies hassle is slightly less scary for me now [albeit i still need to get much better than i am]. I've learned many new CLI commands, though i still need to learn some of the equivalents of some favourite APT ones.

Overall, Lappy OSS TW is now at a point, it seems, of config that meets my aesthetic, stability, usability & functionality requirements. Maui was too, but OSS TW seems to have taken it up to another level again. However...

... whilst you / many people might think this is just silly & trivial, the one remaining major [for me] disappointment is the ongoing inability to get that damn PulseAudio Multiband Equaliser working. My Tower & Lappy are not just for "doing doc & spreadsheet stuff" to me, but also entertainment centres, most especially for multimedia - onboard & streamed music, & streamed videos. Audio quality is fundamentally important for these things, & Lappy's speakers are just ghastly without that EQ. Furthermore, though i have found i like OSS TW soooooooo much now, & am kinda sorta itching to also migrate my Tower to it, such a move seems dumb if it means that both my PCs end up with crappy sound. It's a dilemma. BTW, yes that link is the one i used, but thanks anyway.

I think my next step will have to be registering in the OSS forum & asking for help there... but i'm worried that i might be at the end of a cul-de-sac, & if there's no OSS solution possible, i might have to throw all my work away & revert Lappy to Maui, which would be sad [not at all to insult Maui, but only wrt the fact that TW is otherwise so impressive].

PS - Naturally Vivaldi was the first non-system program i put on Lappy after first installing OSS TW a week ago, but tonight for old times' sake i also installed Opera 12.16, & as usual it made me fondly smile. YaST2 got upset during the installation that one dependency was unavailable & so my choice was to abort the installation or proceed but break Opera. Curious, i proceeded... & so far at least O12 seems to run just fine. Ah, O12 --> Vivaldi... we really have been blessed with two super browsers.

Der_Pit

@Steffie said in Why does openSUSE "zypper install" threaten to remove "Desktop" [but not do it, phew!]?:

Overall, Lappy OSS TW is now at a point, it seems, of config that meets my aesthetic, stability, usability & functionality requirements. Maui was too, but OSS TW seems to have taken it up to another level again. However...

... whilst you / many people might think this is just silly & trivial, the one remaining major [for me] disappointment is the ongoing inability to get that damn PulseAudio Multiband Equaliser working.

OK, I had another look at this. The package I refered to is the one you want, is it? But it doesn't work, whatever you do? At least that was my experience when I just gave it a try.
The reason is plain simple: The Equalizer 'installs' a new output device, and even sets it as default. However, Pulse remembers 'prefered' output devices based on application, so my music player just used the direct output.
Right-click the volume control in the panel, and click on the 'Audio Volume Settings'. Start your player, it should show up in the 'Application' Tab. There's a pulldown menu on the right, open it and select the 'LADSPA ...' output, and the equalizer will work.
At least it does for me

PS - Naturally Vivaldi was the first non-system program i put on Lappy after first installing OSS TW a week ago, but tonight for old times' sake i also installed Opera 12.16, & as usual it made me fondly smile. YaST2 got upset during the installation that one dependency was unavailable & so my choice was to abort the installation or proceed but break Opera. Curious, i proceeded... & so far at least O12 seems to run just fine. Ah, O12 --> Vivaldi... we really have been blessed with two super browsers.

Hah, good old Opera (I've been using it ever since - bought it at the time when the free version had advertisements in...). I've no longer installed it though.
The missing dependency (libgstbase) is from the gstreamer framework, so it might be some sound or video stuff isn't working. But quite some of those don't work on it anymore anyhow....

Steffie

@Der_Pit said in Why does openSUSE "zypper install" threaten to remove "Desktop" [but not do it, phew!]?:

OK, I had another look at this. The package I refered to is the one you want, is it? But it doesn't work, whatever you do? At least that was my experience when I just gave it a try.
The reason is plain simple: The Equalizer 'installs' a new output device, and even sets it as default. However, Pulse remembers 'prefered' output devices based on application, so my music player just used the direct output.
Right-click the volume control in the panel, and click on the 'Audio Volume Settings'. Start your player, it should show up in the 'Application' Tab. There's a pulldown menu on the right, open it and select the 'LADSPA ...' output, and the equalizer will work.
At least it does for me

Well, well, well... it's now 3:20AM for me, but i just couldn't go to bed until i sussed this out, & happily now i have, at long last. I'm immensely grateful for your kind help -- vielen danke! Much of what you wrote i already knew, & had already done, but you definitely set me off in the right direction... as i followed through your steps in real-time, to ensure i wasn't overlooking/skipping something, i stumbled onto THE fault, although i do not know if the blame goes to the EQ, or to TW. Whatever, now that i know of the fault, i can simply work around it from now on. It's a huge relief to me, coz not only does it mean i do not have to return Lappy to Maui [yippee], but... i can now also confidently migrate my Tower to OSS FW once i have the time.

FYI, here's what i discovered. Oh, before that, i need to clarify my earlier grumbles about the EQ when i said it didn't work. It always did launch, always did let me operate the sliders, always did let me create & save custom profiles or select existing ones... it's just that the actual sound output from Lappy's speakers always still came from the normal audio device, not the EQ device. Here's why:

I ensured that all 6 items in "Audio Playback" correctly prioritised the EQ not the std device, eg:
I superimposed the EQ atop the System Settings Audio Volume window whilst streaming a Netflix movie in Vivaldi [of course], so that i could watch everything at once. To my surprise [& exactly as you had advised me - thanks again!], despite my defaults in #1 above, initially my marked button below did NOT show the EQ, but was still showing the std device. I had never checked this before, as it never occurred to me that my defaults in #1 above would be ignored. In the pic below, it only shows the EQ specifically coz i manually changed it before taking the screenshot. The instant i made that change, to my delight, for the first time in OSS TW, i was hearing the EQ output. Wow.
However, every single time i made ANY change to the EQ settings, instantly [& THIS is the fault] the output jumped back to the std device not the EQ, eg:
So now that i finally get to see what the damn thing was doing, the workaround whilst inelegant, is simple... plan ahead prior to starting my music / videos by getting the EQ Presets just how i want them & then do NOT touch them again, &/or do this IF i forget what i just said & accidentally do fiddle with the EQ --> bring up the tray popup, click the EQ icon on the RHS, observe the FALSE indication that it's already Default [yes it was, until i disturbed the EQ, when the std device kicked in again], click on the Default box anyway... & instantly the EQ takes over again:

IMO it really should not misbehave like this, but hey, so what, with your great help i now have a totally viable arrangement. Yay.

Oh dear, 3:55AM... Sleep.