6 ms·

> Plasma will crash on me 2-3 times per day You are doing something really wrong, I haven't seen a plasma crash for years.

by fooker 10mo ago

sho_hn 10mo ago
(Plasma dev here.) I don't think it's something the user is "doing". A crash is never the user's fault. I will say it's atypical though. We measure session uptimes in months. There is probably a very specific cause that can be addressed or mitigated.
- lifetimerubyist 10mo ago
  If it means anything, I always make sure to send in a report when it crashes. I use Opensuse tumbleweed and update compulsively so I should have the newest package versions with all of the latest fixes too.
  - small_scombrus 10mo ago
    Not to it works for me, but I'm on tumbleweed and can't say I'm even crashing once a week
    - yjftsjthsd-h 10mo ago
      I'll do you one better: I daily-drive Kalpa (so effectively tumbleweed packages) and I can't recall it ever crashing.
- com2kid 10mo ago
  Plasma doesn't crash for me but it definitely bugs out and I need to log out and log back in to fix things. That said I'm running a shader as my desktop wall paper on Nvidia drivers so I don't feel like any of my complaints are all that justified. :D
  - dpacmittal 10mo ago
    Have you tried killing plasmashell and restarting it? That way you won't have to close your apps and logout
- addy34 10mo ago
  I'm guessing this doesn't capture manual restarts? I have the same experience as the commenter below: Plasma requires a restart a few times per day for me, as the panels disappear and one monitor's (of two) desktop goes black - usually after wake from sleep. This occurs on both machines that I run it on (only common component is Radeon graphics). That said, it's a single command and not a big deal, and it's a great DE, so thanks for your work.
- tonyhart7 10mo ago
  could you fix when ram is full and DE would always hang/freeze in there????? (rust analyzer and java eat all my ram)
lifetimerubyist 10mo ago
Editing text files (code), executing simple programs in the terminal (work is done on my Mac Studio, not my personal desktop), browsing the web with Firefox and playing the odd Steam game. I use the stock Opensuse Tumbleweed panel setup and don’t even tweak the animation speeds or configured effects. So I don’t think I’m holding it wrong. My hardware is old-ish (Ryzen 1800x and a Vega56) but I’ve had no issues in literally any other environment, use stock drivers with no customizations, no custom kernels or anything, and only with packages from the official repos, so I don’t believe I should have many major quirks. Heck, I don’t even have Bluetooth or wifi enabled.
- Propelloni 10mo ago
  Hmh, I'm running Tumbleweed on a Ryzen 5 7600 and an AMD Rx 7800. Like you I don't fiddle with the defaults and this is my gaming rig (I'm working on starting just into Steam). I just have default KDE Plasma to launch Steam and play my games, I do my work on a Debian Trixie laptop. I have set up TW two years ago and only DUP-ed it since then. Actually, it is more stable then the Debian machine :o I know, this is not helping you in any way. I only encountered weird instability with Linux when my RAM was not OK. Maybe check your RAM?
- terribleperson 10mo ago
  Are you certain the Vega56 is still healthy and stable? It's possible it's just KDE, but it's also possible KDE is triggering hardware issues. RAM is also always one to check, especially on an older machine.
  - ahartmetz 10mo ago
    Might be a driver issue, too. I remember Vega as a sort of short-lived in-between generation with especially many driver problems. Actually, early Ryzen 1800X also crashed under certain workloads on Linux, especially compilation and downloading games on Steam(!) IME - another KDE guy and me were some of the first world-wide to communicate about the problem. AMD had a hardware replacement program, maybe it's still active. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ryzen-Segv-Response https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ryzen-Segv-Response should get you started. People made special software packages to trigger the hardware problem in a minute or so. There was IIRC another problem with early Ryzen, something about transitions from idle power causing instability, fixed by essentially raising idle power consumption a little with a special BIOS switch and / or playing with load line calibration. That one crashed the whole computer, not just the offending program. (Actually, crashes while downloading games on Steam might have been that one.) And yes, do run memtest (from the boot menu) for a couple of hours or over night, too.
zenoprax 10mo ago
Reminds me of when people praise the efficiency of their car: "It's great, $30 lasts me all month!". Tells you nothing about the car and hardly anything about the person using it. I have crashes on a monthly basis but I'm also pushing it pretty hard with 4 Activities, 5 Workspaces, and 3 Screens. That's 60 desktops for it to manage (granted, only about 10-15 in total actually have anything on them) with my tiling window management scripts on top of that. Plasmashell and Kwin take up 20% of my CPU on average which is unfortunate but that's the cost for my setup I guess.
- wolvoleo 10mo ago
  Activities are really great though. It's a wonderful idea. And I love the flexibility in workspaces too.
  - vladvasiliu 10mo ago
    How do you use them? I used to daily drive KDE up until shortly after the 4 switch, when I moved to Mac. I've moved back to Linux starting in 2018 but went with i3. I installed KDE around Christmas to try it, and while I'm mostly impressed with the general polish (except that firefox doesn't react the same way as other windows to clicking on the frame), I have a hard time figuring out what activities are and how they're different from multiple workspaces. Speaking of workspaces, is there no way to only have it show a small rectangle per space in the taskbar instead of a big wide one (I'm using multiple screens)? That's just a useless waste of space.
    - zenoprax 10mo ago
      Activities function best as "context domains" (the classic split is "Personal" and "Work") while preserving your existing Workspaces. I use workspaces to group apps/tasks/programs functionally (eg. "Active Projects", background stuff like music or a long running terminal task, no tiling). Some things like Obsidian or Spotify are open on multiple Workspaces and multiple activities at the same time but only require a single instance.
subjectsigma 10mo ago
Literally today I dragged a file to the trash widget on a panel and it crashed the entire WM. If you don’t have at least one story about this after using KDE for a year then you’re lying
- tapoxi 10mo ago
  I mean, what version of KDE is this? I've had a handful of crashes since 2024, but all of them GPU driver related.
  - subjectsigma 10mo ago
    Plasma 6.4.5 Frameworks 6.19.0 QT 6.9.2 Kernel 6.16.4 Wayland
    - tapoxi 10mo ago
      Nvidia? Which distribution? My experience is on Bazzite with a Radeon 7800 XT and 9070 XT. I've had two amdgpu hangs playing The Finals which were a Mesa bug, this crashed kwin but kwin wasn't responsible in the stack trace. It's been fixed since. That's really it since May 2024.
- yjftsjthsd-h 10mo ago
  People can have different experiences without lying.
  - subjectsigma 10mo ago
    True, up to a certain point. Until recently I used all three major OS almost every day for work, school, games, servers, etc. I’ve seen really bad bugs in all of them. Just spend some time looking around the Internet, Linux and KDE crash constantly. There’s also people regularly slobbering over Linux for a variety of reasons. What’s more likely, this guy won the equivalent of the computer lottery and never experienced a single bug, or that he’s one of the many Linux fanboys infesting this site? I’m willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, but no I don’t believe your shoes are made of gold just because you said so.
srjek 10mo ago
Or they are just simply not on the happy path. For example, my laptop has been running KDE just fine for years, but my attempts to switch to Linux on my desktop today have turned into a project, as plasma, steam[1], discord, and sometimes kde_powerdevil[2] are crashing every time my monitors turn off. [1] Might be https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5984 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5984 [2] https://github.com/rockowitz/ddcutil/issues/556 https://github.com/rockowitz/ddcutil/issues/556
- Kon5ole 10mo ago
  >Or they are just simply not on the happy path. I believe this is a very good point! Linux as an OS is so fragmented that the number of paths are basically innumerable. Many of them are "happy" but they can be hard to find and also change from year to year. I have a machine that has run Debian 11 and 12 with no issues but 13 hung before launching the UI. Fixable from the terminal but still, super un-happy path! KDE on SUSE vs on Debian vs on Kinoite and with various sound demons, file systems, file browsers etc will surely differ in ways that are beyond the direct control of the kDE devs too.

> Plasma will crash on me 2-3 times per day You are doing something really wrong, I haven't seen a plasma crash for years.

by fooker 10mo ago

> Plasma will crash on me 2-3 times per day You are doing something really wrong, I haven't seen a plasma crash for years.

sho_hn 10mo ago

(Plasma dev here.) I don't think it's something the user is "doing". A crash is never the user's fault. I will say it's atypical though. We measure session uptimes in months. There is probably a very specific cause that can be addressed or mitigated.

lifetimerubyist 10mo ago
If it means anything, I always make sure to send in a report when it crashes. I use Opensuse tumbleweed and update compulsively so I should have the newest package versions with all of the latest fixes too.
- small_scombrus 10mo ago
  Not to it works for me, but I'm on tumbleweed and can't say I'm even crashing once a week
  - yjftsjthsd-h 10mo ago
    I'll do you one better: I daily-drive Kalpa (so effectively tumbleweed packages) and I can't recall it ever crashing.
com2kid 10mo ago
Plasma doesn't crash for me but it definitely bugs out and I need to log out and log back in to fix things. That said I'm running a shader as my desktop wall paper on Nvidia drivers so I don't feel like any of my complaints are all that justified. :D
- dpacmittal 10mo ago
  Have you tried killing plasmashell and restarting it? That way you won't have to close your apps and logout
addy34 10mo ago
I'm guessing this doesn't capture manual restarts? I have the same experience as the commenter below: Plasma requires a restart a few times per day for me, as the panels disappear and one monitor's (of two) desktop goes black - usually after wake from sleep. This occurs on both machines that I run it on (only common component is Radeon graphics). That said, it's a single command and not a big deal, and it's a great DE, so thanks for your work.
tonyhart7 10mo ago
could you fix when ram is full and DE would always hang/freeze in there????? (rust analyzer and java eat all my ram)

lifetimerubyist 10mo ago

Editing text files (code), executing simple programs in the terminal (work is done on my Mac Studio, not my personal desktop), browsing the web with Firefox and playing the odd Steam game. I use the stock Opensuse Tumbleweed panel setup and don’t even tweak the animation speeds or configured effects. So I don’t think I’m holding it wrong. My hardware is old-ish (Ryzen 1800x and a Vega56) but I’ve had no issues in literally any other environment, use stock drivers with no customizations, no custom kernels or anything, and only with packages from the official repos, so I don’t believe I should have many major quirks. Heck, I don’t even have Bluetooth or wifi enabled.

Propelloni 10mo ago
Hmh, I'm running Tumbleweed on a Ryzen 5 7600 and an AMD Rx 7800. Like you I don't fiddle with the defaults and this is my gaming rig (I'm working on starting just into Steam). I just have default KDE Plasma to launch Steam and play my games, I do my work on a Debian Trixie laptop. I have set up TW two years ago and only DUP-ed it since then. Actually, it is more stable then the Debian machine :o I know, this is not helping you in any way. I only encountered weird instability with Linux when my RAM was not OK. Maybe check your RAM?
terribleperson 10mo ago
Are you certain the Vega56 is still healthy and stable? It's possible it's just KDE, but it's also possible KDE is triggering hardware issues. RAM is also always one to check, especially on an older machine.
- ahartmetz 10mo ago
  Might be a driver issue, too. I remember Vega as a sort of short-lived in-between generation with especially many driver problems. Actually, early Ryzen 1800X also crashed under certain workloads on Linux, especially compilation and downloading games on Steam(!) IME - another KDE guy and me were some of the first world-wide to communicate about the problem. AMD had a hardware replacement program, maybe it's still active. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ryzen-Segv-Response https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ryzen-Segv-Response should get you started. People made special software packages to trigger the hardware problem in a minute or so. There was IIRC another problem with early Ryzen, something about transitions from idle power causing instability, fixed by essentially raising idle power consumption a little with a special BIOS switch and / or playing with load line calibration. That one crashed the whole computer, not just the offending program. (Actually, crashes while downloading games on Steam might have been that one.) And yes, do run memtest (from the boot menu) for a couple of hours or over night, too.

zenoprax 10mo ago

Reminds me of when people praise the efficiency of their car: "It's great, $30 lasts me all month!". Tells you nothing about the car and hardly anything about the person using it. I have crashes on a monthly basis but I'm also pushing it pretty hard with 4 Activities, 5 Workspaces, and 3 Screens. That's 60 desktops for it to manage (granted, only about 10-15 in total actually have anything on them) with my tiling window management scripts on top of that. Plasmashell and Kwin take up 20% of my CPU on average which is unfortunate but that's the cost for my setup I guess.

wolvoleo 10mo ago
Activities are really great though. It's a wonderful idea. And I love the flexibility in workspaces too.
- vladvasiliu 10mo ago
  How do you use them? I used to daily drive KDE up until shortly after the 4 switch, when I moved to Mac. I've moved back to Linux starting in 2018 but went with i3. I installed KDE around Christmas to try it, and while I'm mostly impressed with the general polish (except that firefox doesn't react the same way as other windows to clicking on the frame), I have a hard time figuring out what activities are and how they're different from multiple workspaces. Speaking of workspaces, is there no way to only have it show a small rectangle per space in the taskbar instead of a big wide one (I'm using multiple screens)? That's just a useless waste of space.
  - zenoprax 10mo ago
    Activities function best as "context domains" (the classic split is "Personal" and "Work") while preserving your existing Workspaces. I use workspaces to group apps/tasks/programs functionally (eg. "Active Projects", background stuff like music or a long running terminal task, no tiling). Some things like Obsidian or Spotify are open on multiple Workspaces and multiple activities at the same time but only require a single instance.

subjectsigma 10mo ago

Literally today I dragged a file to the trash widget on a panel and it crashed the entire WM. If you don’t have at least one story about this after using KDE for a year then you’re lying

tapoxi 10mo ago
I mean, what version of KDE is this? I've had a handful of crashes since 2024, but all of them GPU driver related.
- subjectsigma 10mo ago
  Plasma 6.4.5 Frameworks 6.19.0 QT 6.9.2 Kernel 6.16.4 Wayland
  - tapoxi 10mo ago
    Nvidia? Which distribution? My experience is on Bazzite with a Radeon 7800 XT and 9070 XT. I've had two amdgpu hangs playing The Finals which were a Mesa bug, this crashed kwin but kwin wasn't responsible in the stack trace. It's been fixed since. That's really it since May 2024.
yjftsjthsd-h 10mo ago
People can have different experiences without lying.
- subjectsigma 10mo ago
  True, up to a certain point. Until recently I used all three major OS almost every day for work, school, games, servers, etc. I’ve seen really bad bugs in all of them. Just spend some time looking around the Internet, Linux and KDE crash constantly. There’s also people regularly slobbering over Linux for a variety of reasons. What’s more likely, this guy won the equivalent of the computer lottery and never experienced a single bug, or that he’s one of the many Linux fanboys infesting this site? I’m willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, but no I don’t believe your shoes are made of gold just because you said so.

srjek 10mo ago

Or they are just simply not on the happy path. For example, my laptop has been running KDE just fine for years, but my attempts to switch to Linux on my desktop today have turned into a project, as plasma, steam[1], discord, and sometimes kde_powerdevil[2] are crashing every time my monitors turn off. [1] Might be https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5984 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/5984 [2] https://github.com/rockowitz/ddcutil/issues/556 https://github.com/rockowitz/ddcutil/issues/556

Kon5ole 10mo ago
>Or they are just simply not on the happy path. I believe this is a very good point! Linux as an OS is so fragmented that the number of paths are basically innumerable. Many of them are "happy" but they can be hard to find and also change from year to year. I have a machine that has run Debian 11 and 12 with no issues but 13 hung before launching the UI. Fixable from the terminal but still, super un-happy path! KDE on SUSE vs on Debian vs on Kinoite and with various sound demons, file systems, file browsers etc will surely differ in ways that are beyond the direct control of the kDE devs too.