I temporarily “fixed” the issue, by completely disabling all plasma notifications.
Simply turn on don’t disturb until you manually enable it again.
I have been following this thread and I find it rather strange
- why is it that so many users have issues
- but I have none?
What is your differences?
- Did you apply some custom theming?
- Do you use one or more custom packages interfering with the window manager?
- Using Wayland or X11?
What is the difference betwenn my system and yours?
Let me layout my system
- Default Manjaro Plasma on unstable branch. (5.15 and 6.0)
- Using Wayland
- No custom theming
- Several custom packages
- Azure Datastudio
- Postman
- Jetbrains Rider
- Sublime Text
- Sublime Merge
- Chromium
- Firefox
- VirtualBox (no extension pack)
- Windows 10 LTSB
- Windows Server 2019
- Windowx XP
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The same problems are being reported on new installations, and on existing installations without any custom theming at all.
While it is true that some themes would be problematic because they were created for Plasma versions older than 5.12, newer themes should be fully compatible, and so should widgets be that were created by the KDE developers themselves.
If Plasma were intended to be used without any customizations at all, then the KDE developers should themselves not offer any means to customize it. 
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I agree on the contradictons - but sometimes there’s very little to go on 
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Well, it depends which car you drive. If we compare software with cars you see similar things.
In the 60s cars were simple. Drove you from A to B and there were few models to choose from. You had the gasoline and Diesel engine. Both invented in Germany. In the 80s the tuner scene was born so people pimp up their vehicles. Later on new engines like electric and hydrogen was born. All those are more driven automatic, which is also a huge factor in the states. Only geeks drive with gears these days.
From the technical point of view, the old engines were more complex but also easier to repair. The new stuff is more combined with electronic and computers. All due to innovation and having new features.
If we put that now to Software and especially to KDE we saw many iterations of itself and how it envolved. The Kool Desktop from Germany made it mainstream. And with other desktop environments out there having a standard is more complex as you’re not alone to drive it forward. Also a lot of influence is happening from outside - community and other projects. So KDE wants still to be Kool. However they changed their slogan to “Simple by default, powerful when needed” overtime.
KDE with its approach in Frameworks, Plasma and Apps (Gear) is a nice construct. Especially Frameworks is used in other projects like LxQt and JingOS. The Apps you find also in Microsoft Store and other platforms. Plasma is great to use. Also lately Companies using KDE software more often. Partly also cos Qt is some sort of industry standard and backed by a company. So if it is user and community driven you expect more features out of it. Corporate driven it will be more focused on the needs of a company and stability. Plasma LTS finds a great middle way for that. Kubuntu and Suse Leap a great examples of solid distros using LTS branches.
Lately it is not all rosy. Also Gnome has its ups and downs. As soon as you add extensions the shell might break if 3rd party developers don’t catch up with changes made by the upstream project. You also see those split-off projects like Mate, Cinnamon, Budgie and many more. FOSS is great, as if you don’t agree you fork or create some new.
Maui-Shell is using KDE Frameworks but add some own UI for the Nitrux Distribution. Plasma Mobile brings Plasma on Phone and Tablets and Plasma Bigscreen to the TV. However new ways may need new designs which creates also fragmentation within the project. So the current focus is still more on desktop side but also on mobile due to the SteamDeck. Maui-Shell tries to be a glue and adaptive to be used on Mobile and on Desktop with the same UI design. Phosh and Gnome on Mobile try to achieve the same with libhandy and libadwaita. With each new tech new ways of how you use your PC will happen. You either participate with those changes and report issues early or accept that changes might take more time to establish the used stability it once has when the focus was only on one thing - the desktop.
XFCE is not fancy, doesn’t has many features but it is stable and simple as its community and developers only focus on minimal improvements and changes to keep it solid.
So ya - software can always be fun to use. If you keep it close to the design of its developers and use similar hardware as they do you’re fine. If you more into adventures you have to step up and give back - at least with documentation of the issues you may have.
Also there is the tend to talk more about what is not working or got broken rather what got improved or new invented. Humans simply have a small problem to adjust to changes. We like all our established habits …
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@philm - You are spot-on - exactly my point.
While it is possible to apply a different theme, add extensions to the kernel add specialised graphics and engines targeted gaming
- the same customisation requries the user to have a deeper undstanding than the mere application of the customisation
- the user has to educate him-/herself to understand
- only after such education it is possible to understand why it sometimes goes awry
Plasma is a framework upon which componenents are added using layout definitions and qt-script (based on ecmascript) - so when a component uses framework calls which has been altered or deprecated the system no longer function as expected.
Such framework changes reaches the user when the system is synced with newer packages and as such the user blames the sync and thus the distribution.
The reality is a lot more nuanced as it could very well be the theme or the widget which has to be rebuilt to new framework.
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people using KDE for theming and customization ability, otherwise what’s the matter the changing DE?
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And that is fine by me - my point is - knowledge - know your system - be prepared to troubleshoot your customisations - Plasma developers does not test each and every theme for backwards compatibility - that is a task for the maintainer of the theme or if unmaintained - the user owning the system.
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That somehow is a typical american thing to say - for classic fuel type vehicles at least. 
Only people getting many notifications seem to be affected - that’s why you might not see it.
Apparently 5.26.x keeps on biting people. The following user is using the default theme, by the way, so there’s no point in shoving the blame onto customization anymore. 
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Interesting… Probably just the (un)luckiness of the draw then…? 
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I am having problems with 5.26.2 as well, when booting up with a second monitor connected, my system fonts are wrong, my taskbar is just completely green, many items (As the ones on the desktop or in the application launcher) dont have icons anymore, …
I hope the next updates address this, its pretty much unusable atm.
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5.26.3 has just entered the Testing branch right now, so it won’t be long anymore before it hits Stable.
No guarantee that it’ll fix things, of course.
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Just as long as it isn’t…a direct hit…! 
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I had zero issues with plasma 5.25, however the update to 5.26 caused some problems, see All Icons are missing. A downgrade to 5.24.7-LTS (thanks for creating this!) solved the issue.
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I was running 5.25.x, I noticed no issues.
I’m now on 5.26.2, the only issue I’ve had was 5.26.2 seemed to ignore the Window rules I’d set on 5.25.x… but only for some windows.
I simply deleted the old rules and recreated new rules.
Other than that, everything seems boringly normal.
Operating System: Manjaro Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.26.2
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.99.0
Qt Version: 5.15.6
Kernel Version: 5.15.76-1-MANJARO (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 4 × Intel® Pentium® CPU N3540 @ 2.16GHz
Memory: 7.6 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® HD Graphics
Manufacturer: Notebook
Product Name: W54_W94_W955TU,-T,-C
System Version: Not Applicable
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Stable…? 
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any bug report for desktop notification what freeze kde complete system?
I believe there is, yes, but I’m too busy to check right now. But be my guest and check out bugs.kde.org.
I never had issues with 5.25 or 5.26. I run both AMD and Intel systems, All are single monitors, resolutions HD and 4K. All run Breeze with minimal widgets (Digital clock and an extra panel as a launcher dock). Hopefully keeping it simple helps, I’ve sure read some tough threads here about these issues; thankfully they haven’t hit me yet.
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