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I continue to be truly amazed by all the work going into KDE Plasma. Not only is it my desktop environment of choice on Linux, it's Valve's too as it powered the desktop mode on Steam Deck. It's about to get some juicy upgrades too.

Writing in a blog post developer Nate Graham gives an overview of some big improvements coming along to a future version of the Plasma desktop.

The first is you'll finally see fractional scaling on Wayland which was merged in and it should result in scaling having "better performance, less visual blurriness, and lower power usage". Sounds like all of it might not be ready until Plasma 6.0 though due after Plasma 5.27 that releases in February 2023 but it might get backported so we're not waiting so long.

Another issue is the mess that is using multiple screens. They've finally fixed the root cause of the problems with a whole new system of identifying screens that should result in better stability and reliability. Some pretty notorious bugs like desktops randomly losing wallpapers, widgets and various other settings. It won't be perfect but it's not "broken by design" like the old system seemingly was.

There's various other bug fixes, UI updates and more.

One more exciting one I wanted to point out is their new Steam Deck OS (SteamOS) update system. Discover, the software store, now has a backend system to handle SteamOS updates so in future you'll be able to update a Steam Deck from within desktop mode. That sounds mighty useful.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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s01itude Dec 19, 2022
Quoting: BlackBloodRumI'm curious who had the multi-monitor issues? I've used KDE for around a year now with two monitors, first with Xorg which worked fine, and these days using Wayland, also working fine. Never had any identification issues...:

Sometimes when I login my widgets get shuffled between screens, sometimes this happens with wallpapers, and sometimes both; although it doesn't happen that frequently. It should be noted that this is a static system (hardware-wise); I never change monitors in or out and I don't change their resolutions or layout or orientation, and yet the shuffles still happen from time to time.


Last edited by s01itude on 19 December 2022 at 11:33 pm UTC
Viesta2015 Dec 20, 2022
QuoteSometimes when I login my widgets get shuffled between screens, sometimes this happens with wallpapers, and sometimes both; although it doesn't happen that frequently. It should be noted that this is a static system (hardware-wise); I never change monitors in or out and I don't change their resolutions or layout or orientation, and yet the shuffles still happen from time to time.
This is EXACTLY my issue with the steam deck... Widgets shifting around randomly, i gotta unplug & power on the steam deck then plug it back into the dock for it all to work properly. It's kinda strange.


Last edited by Viesta2015 on 20 December 2022 at 5:08 am UTC
ssj17vegeta Dec 20, 2022
One problem I've had for the past 2 years with a 2-monitors setup with KDE is the main screen's wallpaper being randomly disabled at startup (2 times out of 3).

Have to re-set it and it's good for the remainder of the session.
CyborgZeta Dec 21, 2022
KDE rules.
SynchroAnarchy Dec 27, 2022
I will need to try, finally got my 1920x1080 screen to pair with an older 1366x768.
petersaints Dec 28, 2022
Quoting: starfarer
Quoting: BlackBloodRum
Quoting: starfarerKDE on Wayland is absolutely unusable for me since my external monitor has really low FPS, below 20. This is also a known bug and it's not looking like it will be fixed soon, which is a shame. :(

One commenter has mentioned that disabling the discreet GPU in your bios may resolve the issue, any luck with that? It's worth a try :)

(I know it's a workaround rather than fixing the issue, but for immediate affect it may be useful)

Additionally, have you tried with this merge request? https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/3254

It may (or may not) help :)

Well disabling the GPU is not an option since I am actively using it, that's why I am still on X11 (although it has many other issues).

I've only now seen the merge request but it looks like it failed.

I had similar issues and ended switching to Ubuntu 22.10 which has better fractional scaling support on Gnome X11 through a custom patch. Moreover, regarding disabling the dedicated GPU, at least in my case I'm only able to disable the integrated GPU which helps getting Wayland to work with better performance with a multi monitor setup (especially on KDE) but it's not what I want to do, especially on a laptop where I want to save battery when I'm not plugged in.
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