plasma5 screen management going wrong

[Duncan]

Bug Reporter posted on Sun, 01 Jul 2018 21:17:29 -0400 as excerpted:

> Which project should this bug be reported to?
> 
> Is this "laptop display" box that pops up part of plasma5? I assume it
> must be, but I'm not using a laptop.
> 
> On Sat, Jun 30, 2018 at 6:26 PM, Bug Reporter <bugreporter11 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> With the most recent update of KDE, screen management is acting up. I
>> have a desktop with 3 monitors. After this update, every time I log
>> into Plasma5, several things happen:
>>
>> 1. I get a popup asking me about laptop display options. This is not a
>> laptop. Furthermore, the options presented are confusing. None of them
>> look viable. I have been leaving it unchanged. However, I do not want
>> this dialog every time I log in when my attached screens have not
>> changed.
>>
>> 2. The arrangement of my screens has changed (e.g., the screen that
>> should be in the middle is arranged on the left or right, etc.)
>>
>> 3. the primary display may have changed too.
>>
>> In general, other settings may be lost or changed too, such as the
>> locations and settings of my panels. That appears to be a consequence
>> of the screen arrangement being screwed up.
>>
>> $ qmake --version QMake version 3.1 Using Qt version 5.11.1 in /usr/lib
>>
>> $ plasmashell --version plasmashell 5.13.2
>>
>> $ dolphin --version dolphin 18.04.2
>>
>> $ uname -a Linux 4.17.2-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Jun 16 11:08:59 UTC
>> 2018 x86_64 GNU/Linux
>>
> <div dir="ltr"><div>Which project should this bug be reported
> to?</div><div><br></div><div>Is this "laptop display" box that
> pops up part of plasma5? I assume it must be, but I'm not using a
> laptop.<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div
> class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jun 30, 2018 at 6:26 PM, Bug Reporter <span
> dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bugreporter11 at gmail.com"
> target="_blank">bugreporter11 at gmail.com</a>></span>
> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
> .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div
> dir="ltr"><div>With the most recent update of KDE, screen management is
> acting up. I have a desktop with 3 monitors. After this update, every
> time I log into Plasma5, several things
> happen:</div><div><br></div><div>1. I get a popup asking me about laptop
> display options. This is not a laptop. Furthermore, the options
> presented are confusing. None of them look viable. I have been leaving
> it unchanged. However, I do not want this dialog every time I log in
> when my attached screens have not
> changed.<br></div><div><br></div><div>2. The arrangement of my screens
> has changed (e.g., the screen that should be in the middle is arranged
> on the left or right, etc.)</div><div><br></div><div>3. the primary
> display may have changed too.<br></div><div><br></div><div>In general,
> other settings may be lost or changed too, such as the locations and
> settings of my panels. That appears to be a consequence of the screen
> arrangement being screwed up.<br></div><div><br></div><div>$ qmake
> --version<br>QMake version 3.1<br>Using Qt version 5.11.1 in
> /usr/lib<br><br>$ plasmashell --version<br>plasmashell 5.13.2<br><br>$
> dolphin --version<br>dolphin 18.04.2<br><br>$ uname -a<br>Linux
> 4.17.2-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Jun 16 11:08:59 UTC 2018 x86_64
> GNU/Linux<br></div></div>
> </blockquote></div><br></div></div>

First, please avoid the HTML gibberish.  HTML email is a major security 
vulnerability if it's actually displayed as HTML, with the various 
elements allowed to fetch and/or execute, and as I hope you can see (but 
you may not depending on how your client reacts to conventionally quoted 
HTML), if the HTML is displayed as plain-text, that's not particularly 
pretty either.

So set plain text for mailing lists and avoid having us old timers shake 
our cane at you. =:^)  (I wish the kde lists did what the kernel lists 
do, auto-reject HTML mail with a message saying to send in plain text, 
but since they don't, this is the manual version.)

Second, please reply in-context under the contextual-quote you're 
replying to.  It makes further replies in-context /so/ much easier.  I 
almost just skipped this rather than bother, but decided to send the 
requests along with the reply to the question, instead.

As for the question...

This is likely the kscreen component, or libkscreen loaded by something 
else (maybe solid, which is supposed to do hardware detection?) .

After fighting with similar issues on and off since at least kde3 era, 
thru 4 and now plasma5 -- for whatever reason kde just doesn't seem to be 
able to take a carefully configured xorg setup and leave it alone, it 
always wants to mess it up in some way or another -- after the last 
iteration, I finally unmerged/uninstalled those two components (nothing 
else I had installed actually required them, solid is installed but if it 
can use them at least it doesn't complain without them), and while I 
can't use kde/plasma/kscreen to change the multi-monitor layout now since 
it's not installed any longer, at least things stay the way I have them 
configured in xorg.conf, and plasma doesn't complain or want to 
reorganize things its own way any longer.  And if I /do/ want to change 
the layout or resolution on-the-fly, I can use xrandr to do it, or simply 
change the xorg.conf configuration and restart x/kde/plasma to have it 
take effect.

The trouble in this case seems to be that kscreen assumes a laptop with a 
monitor attached, and that all other monitors are dynamic, coming and 
going.  There's no real way to tell it "hey, this is an xorg-preconfigured 
desktop system, use it as-is and don't bother it".


... I'm wondering how all that's going to work once I switch to plasma on 
wayland... I've not tried it yet, but from all I can tell, wayland is 
just a protocol, with kwin_wayland being the compositor that handles 
windows much as kwin_x11 does, but it's also the server, and each wayland 
server including kwin_wayland apparently has its own private 
configuration; there's apparently nothing global like xorg.conf, that 
applies regardless of the compositor/window-manager and desktop used.

Which means I'll probably have to install kscreen and use it to configure 
things.  But maybe being the only configuration, it actually works 
properly on wayland.  One of these days if I get some time I may try it 
and see.  Or it'll wait another year or two, and hopefully by then 
there's a bit more documentation and/or howto articles out there about it.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman