[gentoo-user] Plasma upgrade: Part Deux.

[gentoo-user] Plasma upgrade: Part Deux.

[Daniel Frey]

So, I have a week off and have time to mess around trying to upgrade to
Plasma once again.

I have got it mostly-somewhat upgraded, but I have two bizarre problems.

The first one is I have two volume controls in the tray. I have no idea
why, and both seem to present slightly different controls. Could this be
related to pulseaudio?

The second is Thunderbird has lost its window. As in, the app itself
isn't aware of the task bar and its title bar (with
minimize/maximize/close buttons) is missing. This existing before the
restart into Plasma; I closed all the windows I had open (Thunderbird
being one) before rebooting.

Baloo stayed disabled for me with balooctl this time, and it seems
plasma isn't crashing every 10-20 seconds (I read this was fixed back in
May or June.) So now all I have to do is figure out these issues then
try all the other apps I regularly use.

Anyone have any ideas?

Dan

[gentoo-user] Re: Plasma upgrade: Part Deux.

[Kai Krakow]

Am Mon, 19 Sep 2016 20:05:19 -0700
schrieb Daniel Frey <djqfrey@gmail.com>:

> So, I have a week off and have time to mess around trying to upgrade
> to Plasma once again.
> 
> I have got it mostly-somewhat upgraded, but I have two bizarre
> problems.
> 
> The first one is I have two volume controls in the tray. I have no
> idea why, and both seem to present slightly different controls. Could
> this be related to pulseaudio?

There's kmix and there's the systray integrated mixer. Disable either
one of them. With modern versions of plasma I prefer the plasma
integrated mixer and uninstalled kmix.

You can disable the other mixer in the systray properties.


-- 
Regards,
Kai

Replies to list-only preferred.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Plasma upgrade: Part Deux.

[Daniel Frey]

On 09/19/2016 11:36 PM, Kai Krakow wrote:
> Am Mon, 19 Sep 2016 20:05:19 -0700
> schrieb Daniel Frey <djqfrey@gmail.com>:
> 
>> So, I have a week off and have time to mess around trying to upgrade
>> to Plasma once again.
>>
>> I have got it mostly-somewhat upgraded, but I have two bizarre
>> problems.
>>
>> The first one is I have two volume controls in the tray. I have no
>> idea why, and both seem to present slightly different controls. Could
>> this be related to pulseaudio?
> 
> There's kmix and there's the systray integrated mixer. Disable either
> one of them. With modern versions of plasma I prefer the plasma
> integrated mixer and uninstalled kmix.
> 
> You can disable the other mixer in the systray properties.
> 
> 

Yes, that solved it, thank you.

I also figured out my Thunderbird problem, for some reason "Fullscreen"
was set under window properties (right-click Thunderbird in the task
bar, More Actions.)

I've noticed a couple more things. One is after resume from standby the
plasma taskbar hangs at 100% cpu for 2-3 minutes, during which time you
can't open the K menu, click on open programs in the task bar or start
any apps. The tray icons and clock are also frozen. Has anyone
experienced this? It only does this after resume, it seems to be fine
otherwise.

Is there a way to speed up alt-tab switching? Often I hit alt-tab
expecting it to switch to another app but nothing happens. I have to hit
it two or sometimes even three (!) times to make it switch. This is
really irritating and slows down my work flow.

Dan

[gentoo-user] Re: Plasma upgrade: Part Deux.

[Kai Krakow]

Am Tue, 20 Sep 2016 08:13:49 -0700
schrieb Daniel Frey <djqfrey@gmail.com>:

> On 09/19/2016 11:36 PM, Kai Krakow wrote:
> > Am Mon, 19 Sep 2016 20:05:19 -0700
> > schrieb Daniel Frey <djqfrey@gmail.com>:
> >   
> >> So, I have a week off and have time to mess around trying to
> >> upgrade to Plasma once again.
> >>
> >> I have got it mostly-somewhat upgraded, but I have two bizarre
> >> problems.
> >>
> >> The first one is I have two volume controls in the tray. I have no
> >> idea why, and both seem to present slightly different controls.
> >> Could this be related to pulseaudio?  
> > 
> > There's kmix and there's the systray integrated mixer. Disable
> > either one of them. With modern versions of plasma I prefer the
> > plasma integrated mixer and uninstalled kmix.
> > 
> > You can disable the other mixer in the systray properties.
> > 
> >   
> 
> Yes, that solved it, thank you.
> 
> I also figured out my Thunderbird problem, for some reason
> "Fullscreen" was set under window properties (right-click Thunderbird
> in the task bar, More Actions.)
> 
> I've noticed a couple more things. One is after resume from standby
> the plasma taskbar hangs at 100% cpu for 2-3 minutes, during which
> time you can't open the K menu, click on open programs in the task
> bar or start any apps. The tray icons and clock are also frozen. Has
> anyone experienced this? It only does this after resume, it seems to
> be fine otherwise.

Any chances you're using calendar access in plasma widgets? I'm using
calendars via akonadi-ews, and the clock widget has access to this
(also korgac integrates with the plasma bars and accesses the
calendar). This leads plasma to blocking for about 1 minute after login
or resume - but only due to heavy writes of logs about zoneinfo that
cannot be found. The problem here is that Outlook uses very strange
time zone names (which even seem to change from version to version, I
wonder how MS programmers keep track of it). The solution was to simply
symlink the missing names (which you can extract from the X session
logs and/or journal) to /usr/share/zoneinfo/localtime and now it works
and my calendar events are even at the correct hour (and not shifted to
another time zone). For me, blocking of plasma is now gone or at least
reduced to a very short time.

> Is there a way to speed up alt-tab switching? Often I hit alt-tab
> expecting it to switch to another app but nothing happens. I have to
> hit it two or sometimes even three (!) times to make it switch. This
> is really irritating and slows down my work flow.

I wonder about this annoying bug, too. As a programmer this is
absolutely irritating as I do a lot of alt+tab between editors, logs,
web browsers, and documentation. :-(

Something similar happens when switching tasks using the mouse:
Sometimes the first click on a taskbar icon is simply not fully
recognized, it just switches focus to plasma but doesn't switch the
application to front.

Sometimes I feel like this may be related to having multiple monitors
connected.


-- 
Regards,
Kai

Replies to list-only preferred.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Plasma upgrade: Part Deux.

[Daniel Frey]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3072 bytes --]

On 09/20/2016 08:26 PM, Kai Krakow wrote:
>>
>> I've noticed a couple more things. One is after resume from standby
>> the plasma taskbar hangs at 100% cpu for 2-3 minutes, during which
>> time you can't open the K menu, click on open programs in the task
>> bar or start any apps. The tray icons and clock are also frozen. Has
>> anyone experienced this? It only does this after resume, it seems to
>> be fine otherwise.
> 
> Any chances you're using calendar access in plasma widgets? I'm using
> calendars via akonadi-ews, and the clock widget has access to this
> (also korgac integrates with the plasma bars and accesses the
> calendar). This leads plasma to blocking for about 1 minute after login
> or resume - but only due to heavy writes of logs about zoneinfo that
> cannot be found. The problem here is that Outlook uses very strange
> time zone names (which even seem to change from version to version, I
> wonder how MS programmers keep track of it). The solution was to simply
> symlink the missing names (which you can extract from the X session
> logs and/or journal) to /usr/share/zoneinfo/localtime and now it works
> and my calendar events are even at the correct hour (and not shifted to
> another time zone). For me, blocking of plasma is now gone or at least
> reduced to a very short time.

Well, I think I might have solved this one for now. I was using the
nouveau driver and I was playing a news clip and had no sound and when I
clicked on the volume control in the tray my computer hardlocked.

I was able to ssh in to see that nouveau was crashing constantly trying
to do what plasma was asking of it; I have installed the recommended
nvidia-drivers version that was mentioned on nvidia's site and now it
seems to be okay.

Six or so months ago I tried both nouveau and nvidia's drivers and they
were both crashing plasma every 10-20 seconds.

> 
>> Is there a way to speed up alt-tab switching? Often I hit alt-tab
>> expecting it to switch to another app but nothing happens. I have to
>> hit it two or sometimes even three (!) times to make it switch. This
>> is really irritating and slows down my work flow.
> 
> I wonder about this annoying bug, too. As a programmer this is
> absolutely irritating as I do a lot of alt+tab between editors, logs,
> web browsers, and documentation. :-(
> 
> Something similar happens when switching tasks using the mouse:
> Sometimes the first click on a taskbar icon is simply not fully
> recognized, it just switches focus to plasma but doesn't switch the
> application to front.
> 
> Sometimes I feel like this may be related to having multiple monitors
> connected.

I do not have multiple monitors. I haven't seen the mouse issue yet as
when alt+tab isn't working I have to resort to the dang mouse and it
always works.

However, on the plus side, I disabled the compositor effects on the
alt-tab switching and so now it works as expected.

I've attached a small screenshot, make sure what I've circled in red is
NOT checked. It's under system settings -> window management -> task
switcher.

Dan




[-- Attachment #2: Disable task switch effects.png --]
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[gentoo-user] Re: Plasma upgrade: Part Deux.

[Kai Krakow]

Am Tue, 20 Sep 2016 21:03:23 -0700
schrieb Daniel Frey <djqfrey@gmail.com>:

> On 09/20/2016 08:26 PM, Kai Krakow wrote:
> >>
> >> I've noticed a couple more things. One is after resume from standby
> >> the plasma taskbar hangs at 100% cpu for 2-3 minutes, during which
> >> time you can't open the K menu, click on open programs in the task
> >> bar or start any apps. The tray icons and clock are also frozen.
> >> Has anyone experienced this? It only does this after resume, it
> >> seems to be fine otherwise.  
> > 
> > Any chances you're using calendar access in plasma widgets? I'm
> > using calendars via akonadi-ews, and the clock widget has access to
> > this (also korgac integrates with the plasma bars and accesses the
> > calendar). This leads plasma to blocking for about 1 minute after
> > login or resume - but only due to heavy writes of logs about
> > zoneinfo that cannot be found. The problem here is that Outlook
> > uses very strange time zone names (which even seem to change from
> > version to version, I wonder how MS programmers keep track of it).
> > The solution was to simply symlink the missing names (which you can
> > extract from the X session logs and/or journal)
> > to /usr/share/zoneinfo/localtime and now it works and my calendar
> > events are even at the correct hour (and not shifted to another
> > time zone). For me, blocking of plasma is now gone or at least
> > reduced to a very short time.  
> 
> Well, I think I might have solved this one for now. I was using the
> nouveau driver and I was playing a news clip and had no sound and
> when I clicked on the volume control in the tray my computer
> hardlocked.
> 
> I was able to ssh in to see that nouveau was crashing constantly
> trying to do what plasma was asking of it; I have installed the
> recommended nvidia-drivers version that was mentioned on nvidia's
> site and now it seems to be okay.
> 
> Six or so months ago I tried both nouveau and nvidia's drivers and
> they were both crashing plasma every 10-20 seconds.

Strange, I never had this and use plasma since 5.2 or something...
Always with the proprietary driver (as I also like to play Steam games).

> >> Is there a way to speed up alt-tab switching? Often I hit alt-tab
> >> expecting it to switch to another app but nothing happens. I have
> >> to hit it two or sometimes even three (!) times to make it switch.
> >> This is really irritating and slows down my work flow.  
> > 
> > I wonder about this annoying bug, too. As a programmer this is
> > absolutely irritating as I do a lot of alt+tab between editors,
> > logs, web browsers, and documentation. :-(
> > 
> > Something similar happens when switching tasks using the mouse:
> > Sometimes the first click on a taskbar icon is simply not fully
> > recognized, it just switches focus to plasma but doesn't switch the
> > application to front.
> > 
> > Sometimes I feel like this may be related to having multiple
> > monitors connected.  
> 
> I do not have multiple monitors. I haven't seen the mouse issue yet as
> when alt+tab isn't working I have to resort to the dang mouse and it
> always works.

Well, I use multi monitor on all setups. Here at home, I use TV and
monitor in clone mode. Mouse switching works almost reliably here
(only rarely exposing the bug). At work I use two monitors side by side,
with a desktop across both screens (no clone mode). Only there, I'm
experiencing the mouse problem often, on the other hand my home system
is much more capable. It might well be an issue related to
performance of the system.

On the other hand, when using the activity switcher (not the meta+q one
but the one that works like alt+tab, I've set it to meta+tab), it is
displayed twice - it seems once for each monitor. At work, it is shown
on both monitors. It is shown only once as soon as I disable one
monitor. I've filed a bug report for it. I think multi monitor is not
really tested well.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368870

> However, on the plus side, I disabled the compositor effects on the
> alt-tab switching and so now it works as expected.
> 
> I've attached a small screenshot, make sure what I've circled in red
> is NOT checked. It's under system settings -> window management ->
> task switcher.

Tried that. Didn't work at all at first, the current window was just
flashing on alt+tab. Only after manually switching with the mouse, the
keyboard shortcut worked reliably. That makes me think the root cause
is to be searched somewhere else and not really related to the
compositor effect.

Anyway, I switched back to the both checkboxes reversed. I prefer that
setup much better. I don't like alt+tab hovering the windows, and
without the compositor effect that setting disabled makes the hole
experience quite useless.


-- 
Regards,
Kai

Replies to list-only preferred.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Plasma upgrade: Part Deux.

[J. Roeleveld]

On September 21, 2016 6:03:23 AM GMT+02:00, Daniel Frey <djqfrey@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 09/20/2016 08:26 PM, Kai Krakow wrote:
>>>
>>> I've noticed a couple more things. One is after resume from standby
>>> the plasma taskbar hangs at 100% cpu for 2-3 minutes, during which
>>> time you can't open the K menu, click on open programs in the task
>>> bar or start any apps. The tray icons and clock are also frozen. Has
>>> anyone experienced this? It only does this after resume, it seems to
>>> be fine otherwise.
>> 
>> Any chances you're using calendar access in plasma widgets? I'm using
>> calendars via akonadi-ews, and the clock widget has access to this
>> (also korgac integrates with the plasma bars and accesses the
>> calendar). This leads plasma to blocking for about 1 minute after
>login
>> or resume - but only due to heavy writes of logs about zoneinfo that
>> cannot be found. The problem here is that Outlook uses very strange
>> time zone names (which even seem to change from version to version, I
>> wonder how MS programmers keep track of it). The solution was to
>simply
>> symlink the missing names (which you can extract from the X session
>> logs and/or journal) to /usr/share/zoneinfo/localtime and now it
>works
>> and my calendar events are even at the correct hour (and not shifted
>to
>> another time zone). For me, blocking of plasma is now gone or at
>least
>> reduced to a very short time.
>
>Well, I think I might have solved this one for now. I was using the
>nouveau driver and I was playing a news clip and had no sound and when
>I
>clicked on the volume control in the tray my computer hardlocked.
>
>I was able to ssh in to see that nouveau was crashing constantly trying
>to do what plasma was asking of it; I have installed the recommended
>nvidia-drivers version that was mentioned on nvidia's site and now it
>seems to be okay.
>
>Six or so months ago I tried both nouveau and nvidia's drivers and they
>were both crashing plasma every 10-20 seconds.
>
>> 
>>> Is there a way to speed up alt-tab switching? Often I hit alt-tab
>>> expecting it to switch to another app but nothing happens. I have to
>>> hit it two or sometimes even three (!) times to make it switch. This
>>> is really irritating and slows down my work flow.
>> 
>> I wonder about this annoying bug, too. As a programmer this is
>> absolutely irritating as I do a lot of alt+tab between editors, logs,
>> web browsers, and documentation. :-(
>> 
>> Something similar happens when switching tasks using the mouse:
>> Sometimes the first click on a taskbar icon is simply not fully
>> recognized, it just switches focus to plasma but doesn't switch the
>> application to front.
>> 
>> Sometimes I feel like this may be related to having multiple monitors
>> connected.
>
>I do not have multiple monitors. I haven't seen the mouse issue yet as
>when alt+tab isn't working I have to resort to the dang mouse and it
>always works.
>
>However, on the plus side, I disabled the compositor effects on the
>alt-tab switching and so now it works as expected.
>
>I've attached a small screenshot, make sure what I've circled in red is
>NOT checked. It's under system settings -> window management -> task
>switcher.
>
>Dan

All those effects depend on your 3D GPU.

The nouveau drivers don't fully support 3D (please correct me if I am wrong) due to Nvidia not being able (legally) to provide all the necessary specs. (This is Nvidias claim, I am not interested in a discussion if this is really true or not)

If you want to use nouveau, disable ALL compositing effects and it should then be more stable.

--
Joost
-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Plasma upgrade: Part Deux.

[Alecks Gates]

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On 09/21/2016 12:07 AM, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> 
> All those effects depend on your 3D GPU.
> 
> The nouveau drivers don't fully support 3D (please correct me if I am wrong) due to Nvidia not being able (legally) to provide all the necessary specs. (This is Nvidias claim, I am not interested in a discussion if this is really true or not)
> 
> If you want to use nouveau, disable ALL compositing effects and it should then be more stable.
> 
> --
> Joost
> 

For what it's worth, radeon/amdgpu and intel open source drivers have no
such problems.

-- 
Alecks Gates


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[gentoo-user] Re: Plasma upgrade: Part Deux.

[»Q«]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2016 08:36:24 +0200
Kai Krakow <hurikhan77@gmail.com> wrote:

> There's kmix and there's the systray integrated mixer. Disable either
> one of them. With modern versions of plasma I prefer the plasma
> integrated mixer and uninstalled kmix.
> 
> You can disable the other mixer in the systray properties.

I can't find the integrated mixer in my System Tray Settings -- a
Volume Control shows up in Entries if and only if I have KMix running.
Is it possible I'm missing some package or some USE flag(s) to get
the integrated one?