Buggy KDE Desktop

[dooved]

I’ve been having constant issues with KDE ever since I’ve installed the system. It’s not my first time using Manjaro and these issues have been piling up and have become very annoying.
Here’s a list:

1. Super key randomly decides to stop working and doesn’t open the menu. I’ve tried rebinding it, nothing works.
2. Latte-dock glitches when launching a pinned app - the app disappears from the dock and the only thing I can do to bring it back is to kill the dock and launch it again.
3. When booting up, KDE simply refuses to start entirely. The wallpaper would be black and I’d have to manually kill it and restart it.
4. My month / year view in the calendar applet randomly decides to not work. Blank.
   Small issues like these pile up and make for an extremely annoying user experience. I love Plasma as a whole and the endless customization is what makes me stick to it, but issues like these make me want to switch to another DE.

Here’s my detailed system specifications:
Operating System: Manjaro Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.26.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.101.0
Qt Version: 5.15.7
Kernel Version: 6.1.1-1-MANJARO (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz
Memory: 11,6 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 530
Manufacturer: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
Product Name: X550VX
System Version: 1.0

Any help is appreciated.

[wpkg]

@dooved

Super key randomly decides to stop working and doesn’t open the menu. I’ve tried rebinding it, nothing works.

What is the super key bound to? Vanilla KDE Application menu widget? Where did you re-bind it?

@dooved

Latte-dock glitches when launching a pinned app - the app disappears from the dock and the only thing I can do to bring it back is to kill the dock and launch it again.

As far as I’m aware latte-dock is currently unmaintained - https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/w7ugsb/latte_dock_farewell/ and the recommendation is to switch to latte-dock-git from AUR if you really want that.

@dooved

When booting up, KDE simply refuses to start entirely. The wallpaper would be black and I’d have to manually kill it and restart it.

You can log in from SDDM and none of the widgets, panels, wallpapers etc. show up? What errors show up in the journal? Are you trying to log into an xorg or Wayland session?

I think we need more information on the setup you have. To eliminate changes you’ve made, could you create a new user, log into that session and report back any errors you observe?

If that works ok, then you can slowly start adding your customizations back and trace when they break.

[Aragorn]

There have been loads of problems with Plasma ever since 5.25.5, so if you’re brave enough, you can try downgrading to the rock-solid-stable 5.24.7 LTS version of Plasma, as many of us have done. The post below explains how to do it.

KDE Plasma 5.26.x Stability Inquiry

I don’t think there’s any point in ignoring the plasma package group when you’re already on 5.26.2, because 5.26.3 is just around the corner. The advice to ignore those packages was for those on 5.24.6 who didn’t want to upgrade to 5.25.5. There is however — at least for now still — the option of switching to Plasma 5.24.7, which is the current LTS version. Assuming that the reader of this post is already on Plasma 5.26.x now, here’s how to do it… First, make a complete back…

[Locutus]

@Aragorn

There have been loads of problems with Plasma ever since 5.25.5, so if you’re brave enough, you can try downgrading to the rock-solid-stable 5.24.7 LTS version of Plasma, as many of us have done. The post below explains how to do it.

The bugs are way overblown. 5.26.5 and now beta testing 5.26.9 and both rock solid.