Plasma/5.9 Errata

Known issues in the Plasma 5.9 release.

Freezes Using Qt 5.6.0

• http://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-51676
• https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=359611

When using Qt 5.6.0 Plasma loads itself incompletely and with long delays. Deadlocks occur in kded5. Use Qt 5.7 instead.

Intel GPUs

We have received many reports on problems with running Plasma on hardware with graphic cards provided by Intel. We are sorry for the inconvenience and are sorry that we are not able to provide a product which is on par on all systems. Our aim is it to have our software run well on all hardware, but we cannot prevent errors in the underlying stack. Our software was hit by surprise by the issues which are from our view regressions in the underlying driver stack as previous versions worked fine. We would have liked to provide workarounds for these issues which can only be fixed by Intel. Unfortunately we were not able to find a satisfying solution. Given that we present here a list of known workaround which can be tried by affected users.

We encourage our users who experience problems to come to forum.kde.org so that we can help with our knowledge and to help us gather more information to provide better workarounds.

Random application crashes

This issue is caused by an Intel driver bug. A reported workaround is to change AccelMethod to UXA in the xorg configuration and restarting the system. Please refer to documentation provided by your distribution on how to change this.

Heavy rendering artifacts

Users told us that enabling DRI3 in xorg configuration can circumvent this problem. An alternative can be to use the new OpenGL ES backend in KWin which also seems to circumvent the problem or disable compositing completely.

Modesettings

To circumvent the issues mentioned above it's also possible to switch the Xorg ddx driver from Intel to modesettings. Many distributions do so by default nowadays.

Wayland

• Integration features in Plasma still missing or incomplete (e.g. Pager applet)
• No Drag and Drop from X11 to Wayland windows and vice versa
• Support for per-screen DPI is missing
• No support for primary selection (middle-click to paste)
• No support for relative pointer events
• No support for pointer confinement
• No support for tablet devices (e.g. wacom tablets)
• No clipboard history (e.g. klipper and clipboard plasmoid)
• XWayland older than 1.18 lacks features, no touch, no updates on screen hot plug. Recommendation is XWayland 1.18.4 or 1.19
• X11 windows don't have an icon in the task bar
• Several effects break multi-screen rendering
• No focus stealing prevention for Wayland windows
• No window rules support for Wayland windows
• (Multi-)Screen configuration only partially implemented
• QtWebEngine crashes when used on Wayland Qt Bug 55384
• QtWayland: No support for animated mouse cursors Qt Bug 48181
• QtWayland: Dropdown windows closes on key presses Qt Bug 55403
• QtWayland: Missing compose key support Qt Bug 54792
• QtWayland: Key repeat settings ignored Qt Bug 55615
• QtWayland: Sub-menus may be placed incorrectly Qt Bug 50458
• GTK: windows don't have a minimize and maximize button
• GTK: windows are incorrectly placed

Missing features

• KWin does not provide window tabs
• Tooltips on window decoration buttons

Configuration changes

Environment variables and shutdown scripts are now sourced from ~/.config/plasma-workspace/env and ~/.config/plasma-workspace/shutdown, respectively. Existing scripts from Plasma 4 should be moved there.