I have recently tried to move to Kubuntu and specifically KDE Plasma and Wayland since a few months ago. In a hope to modernize my DE usage. I used to just stick to Unity, but apps have been sabotaging the Desktop UX by removing menubars and let's face it, Unity is never going to be modernized. But one thing I know for sure is that I never had the issues I am going to list in Unity.
I use my computer for work and web browsing. I do not believe my requirements are heavy or niche. I would say this is normal for a user that needs some productivity in their life. If anything, the many issues I've been experiencing with KDE have forced me to greatly scale down my usage. I used to have hundreds, near a thousand tabs opened. And leave apps like GIMP or KDEnlive open permanently for days or weeks. But I can't do that anymore, I will detail why.
- nvidia 1030GT
- Ryzen 5600gtx
- One monitor 2560x1440 140hz
- 64 GB
- Another monitor 1200x1920 (rotated vertically) 60hz
My normal way to use the computer would be to have 4 desktop workspaces. The second screen usually has a terminal or a firefox Pip window or a firefox window containing a meetingr a combination of them. Also Plexamp and these windows are always active in all desktops. The main window would normally have Firefox in the first desktop. VSCode in the second desktop.
During meetings, I use the second screen for the UI. But when a coworker is showing their screen, I sometimes need to detach the screen using pip and move it to the main screen and go full screen.
I usually need to cut a rectangle area of the screen and take a screenshot.
Sometimes I would run other apps on other desktops.
Showstopper #1: "Maximizing or full screening a window can make KDE go insane"
As mentioned, sometimes I would need to make a pip window from Firefox, move it to the main screen and make it full screen. But KDE will every once in a while just decide this is too much for it. The window goes full screen, but the contents freeze and don't scale up. Closing the window or making it stop being full screen fixes that problem but the other windows start flickering or getting the contents of the pip window and a combination of them. I have to move the window and manually resize it, making sure it doesn't touch the edges of the screen. Restarting plasmashell sometimes fixes it, sometimes doesn't.
When googling for this I found similar issues and claims that the following things fixed them: Disabling screen tearing. Changing to Prefer Color accuracy instead of performance. It's unclear if changing these settings help, but they definitely don't stop the problems.
I cannot empathize how much of a job ruiner this can be. The random factor is everything here. I am on a meeting and I just want to see the screen being shared but randomly it will simply not work and I will get distracted from the meeting and it's a disaster.
Showstopper #2: "Can't take screenshots of areas of the screen anymore"
I was happy to find that this version of plasma has spectacle and I can easily just hit Print Screen to get a section of the screen. But this happiness was short lived because a few hours later I started getting this annoying issue in which Spectacle will suddenly decide that it doesn't want to live anymore and will constantly crash on startup. Digging around it looks like once the machine reaches this state, spectacle will always crash whenever it tries to get a rectangle of the screen. I have to work around by getting a full screenshot and cropping it manually. This can be a MAJOR issue because sometimes I need to show screenshots of monitoring graphs and such but instead I have to be worrying about taking a screenshot in some other way and cropping images manually.
Showstopper #3: "Hope you were finished with that window"
From time to time, a window will decide to freeze. It's usually related to moving it around and mazimizing it or moving it to another screen.
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Attempts to work around things.
As I mentioned, I am coming from a place of using Unity for years and things just working. I would like to stick to KDE because it does have a couple perks I'd like to keep. Being able to configure the initial placement of windows is very good and much better than relying on devilspie. I also like dock and terminal blurs. ffs why don't other DEs have it?
From my system description you would most likely have already picked a culprit to blame.
I have tried:
- Changing to X session: I really hated this idea because the whole point of switching was because Unity kept locking me into X. But Okay, I tried the X session. The fullscreen glitches and the flickering kept happening. I also had other weird issues. I had to halt the experiment.
- Not using nvidia: I am not rich, so the best I could do was switch to the AMD APU. Unfortunately this had some very weird issues with dual screen. Basically it just kept forgeting one of the screens exist. This is probably not a KDE or even a Linux problem because it would appear to happen at boot.
- Shutting down the computer instead of sleep. Maybe sleep just messes up with the GPU state? So I stopped using sleep. I lose all my open tabs whenever this happens. My habits have completely switched and I don't really use as much of this PC's available resources anymore. But problems still happen
- Not letting the session on for too long. I do notice that the issues tend to be more likely after a few hours since booting. So nowadays I just turn the PC off from time to time. Once again this forced reset is a huge annoyance and I can't just leave apps open anymore. This seems to help but it could be placebo.
The flickering, the freezing. It's just too much and I am seriously considering just throwing the towel.
Can anyone share a PC configuration that just works for KDE Plasma? Dual screen, one rotated, being able to use sleep. And without having weird glitches. At this point I would just change my computer specs altogether if it's necessary.
Edit: I forgot to mention. I am sure somebody is going to blame the 2K monitor at 140hz. But this was a recent upgrade. I used to have two 1920x1200 60hz monitors, one horizontal and one vertical. Same issues. Although I do feel the introduction of the new monitor has made the full screen issue more frequent.
I use my computer for work and web browsing. I do not believe my requirements are heavy or niche. I would say this is normal for a user that needs some productivity in their life. If anything, the many issues I've been experiencing with KDE have forced me to greatly scale down my usage. I used to have hundreds, near a thousand tabs opened. And leave apps like GIMP or KDEnlive open permanently for days or weeks. But I can't do that anymore, I will detail why.
- nvidia 1030GT
- Ryzen 5600gtx
- One monitor 2560x1440 140hz
- 64 GB
- Another monitor 1200x1920 (rotated vertically) 60hz
My normal way to use the computer would be to have 4 desktop workspaces. The second screen usually has a terminal or a firefox Pip window or a firefox window containing a meetingr a combination of them. Also Plexamp and these windows are always active in all desktops. The main window would normally have Firefox in the first desktop. VSCode in the second desktop.
During meetings, I use the second screen for the UI. But when a coworker is showing their screen, I sometimes need to detach the screen using pip and move it to the main screen and go full screen.
I usually need to cut a rectangle area of the screen and take a screenshot.
Sometimes I would run other apps on other desktops.
Showstopper #1: "Maximizing or full screening a window can make KDE go insane"
As mentioned, sometimes I would need to make a pip window from Firefox, move it to the main screen and make it full screen. But KDE will every once in a while just decide this is too much for it. The window goes full screen, but the contents freeze and don't scale up. Closing the window or making it stop being full screen fixes that problem but the other windows start flickering or getting the contents of the pip window and a combination of them. I have to move the window and manually resize it, making sure it doesn't touch the edges of the screen. Restarting plasmashell sometimes fixes it, sometimes doesn't.
When googling for this I found similar issues and claims that the following things fixed them: Disabling screen tearing. Changing to Prefer Color accuracy instead of performance. It's unclear if changing these settings help, but they definitely don't stop the problems.
I cannot empathize how much of a job ruiner this can be. The random factor is everything here. I am on a meeting and I just want to see the screen being shared but randomly it will simply not work and I will get distracted from the meeting and it's a disaster.
Showstopper #2: "Can't take screenshots of areas of the screen anymore"
I was happy to find that this version of plasma has spectacle and I can easily just hit Print Screen to get a section of the screen. But this happiness was short lived because a few hours later I started getting this annoying issue in which Spectacle will suddenly decide that it doesn't want to live anymore and will constantly crash on startup. Digging around it looks like once the machine reaches this state, spectacle will always crash whenever it tries to get a rectangle of the screen. I have to work around by getting a full screenshot and cropping it manually. This can be a MAJOR issue because sometimes I need to show screenshots of monitoring graphs and such but instead I have to be worrying about taking a screenshot in some other way and cropping images manually.
Showstopper #3: "Hope you were finished with that window"
From time to time, a window will decide to freeze. It's usually related to moving it around and mazimizing it or moving it to another screen.
-----------
Attempts to work around things.
As I mentioned, I am coming from a place of using Unity for years and things just working. I would like to stick to KDE because it does have a couple perks I'd like to keep. Being able to configure the initial placement of windows is very good and much better than relying on devilspie. I also like dock and terminal blurs. ffs why don't other DEs have it?
From my system description you would most likely have already picked a culprit to blame.
I have tried:
- Changing to X session: I really hated this idea because the whole point of switching was because Unity kept locking me into X. But Okay, I tried the X session. The fullscreen glitches and the flickering kept happening. I also had other weird issues. I had to halt the experiment.
- Not using nvidia: I am not rich, so the best I could do was switch to the AMD APU. Unfortunately this had some very weird issues with dual screen. Basically it just kept forgeting one of the screens exist. This is probably not a KDE or even a Linux problem because it would appear to happen at boot.
- Shutting down the computer instead of sleep. Maybe sleep just messes up with the GPU state? So I stopped using sleep. I lose all my open tabs whenever this happens. My habits have completely switched and I don't really use as much of this PC's available resources anymore. But problems still happen
- Not letting the session on for too long. I do notice that the issues tend to be more likely after a few hours since booting. So nowadays I just turn the PC off from time to time. Once again this forced reset is a huge annoyance and I can't just leave apps open anymore. This seems to help but it could be placebo.
The flickering, the freezing. It's just too much and I am seriously considering just throwing the towel.
Can anyone share a PC configuration that just works for KDE Plasma? Dual screen, one rotated, being able to use sleep. And without having weird glitches. At this point I would just change my computer specs altogether if it's necessary.
Edit: I forgot to mention. I am sure somebody is going to blame the 2K monitor at 140hz. But this was a recent upgrade. I used to have two 1920x1200 60hz monitors, one horizontal and one vertical. Same issues. Although I do feel the introduction of the new monitor has made the full screen issue more frequent.