Update to kernel 5.4.95 from 4.19 broke my activities. No activities menu on the title bar

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1

Hello,

I am using manjaro kde 20.2.1. I have been on linux kernel 4.19 series and recently upgraded to kernel 5.4.95. After upgrade, I lost activities menu. However activities are available. I can switch to different activities. However I can not transfer opened applications to different activities. What could be the reason?

Any help much appreciated.

2

Kernels have nothing to do with Plasma activities.

What is kde 20.2.1.? At this moment, the actual Plasma version is 5.20.5 and 5.21.1 is coming very soon.
Did you mean 5.10.2? If so, you withhold the update too long. So the first thing that created your issue was a massive Plasma update and the second one, too many changes at once, so something may have gone wrong.

Rolling systems are build to be updated constantly, so the next update is applied on the top of the other. Only then it can hold its integrity. If you wait too long, the difference between your system and the latest version may be too big and the update can cause various issues.

At this point, Iā€™m not sure if your issue is simple KDE change or maybe some breakage?

Why donā€™t you simply re-add the activities widget to the panel or whatever it was previously?

3

If you have, indeed it may seem so, broken it by not updating for too long, then Iā€™d suggest a couple of quick dirty options:

  1. Download a fresh ISO and have a recent bootable USB.

  2. Create a new ā€˜testā€™ user to see if itā€™s just something in your /home folder. If so, then back up and then delete all those pesky dotted .config folders.

  3. Carefully re-import stuff from those Timeshift backups.

  4. Install from USB >goto 3.

LTS Kernel 5.4.95-1-MANJARO is the one Iā€™m on now after the new 5.10 gave me grief.

4

Instead of being helpful, you decided to be a little snarky instead? This is the thing that annoys me about the Linux community at times. Just be helpful if your going to respond, donā€™t be an ass. If you go to the download page of the manjaro.org, the iso for Manjaro KDE is;

ā€œGET KDE PLASMA 20.2.1ā€

So, his post saying he is using ā€œmanjaro kde 20.2.1ā€ makes sense.

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cat /etc/lsb-release
Nibia 20.2.1/
I found with this latest update, I had to go back to kernel 5.4.95-1-MANJARO for my stability.

Iā€™m curious whether:

  1. OP tried to create a TEST user and log in to test it there?

  2. Does renaming .config folders and reboot fix it?

  3. Reboot to LTS 4.19 kernel and see if that fixes it.

  4. Is there any journalctl output thatā€™s useful?

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Good questions there. What kind of setup do you have (CPU/MOBO/etc.) that you had to go back to 5.4.95? And, by stability, do you mean reboots? Or? I am running a 3950x/Gigabyte x570 and the 5.11 kernel has been a blessing for me. I have more stability with the latest kernel.

Also, I wonder what else got updated besides the kernel. I would be shocked to see ONLY a kernel update effect KDE like that. I could be wrong thoā€¦

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i3-4130 cpu on a Gigabyte H87M-HD3 motherboard (about 6 years old now).

I was shocked too - maybe Iā€™ll give it another go next week, but my desktop just started frazzling after a few seconds in the most spectacular and strange fashion before needing a hard reboot.

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8

series haswell ( and some older branch before skylake ) has many trouble with kernel > 5.4 ( sometimes 4.19 better) , stay with older version kernels , it can be also microcode

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