Wierd Artifacts in Overview when Plasmashell not running

Just small issue I’m seeing, not really that big of a deal…

A lot of the time, I use my Thinkpad with plasmashell stopped, because I currently only have 4GB RAM in here, its a very old 2013 X240. It makes a huge difference of not able to run two moderately heavy softwares when plasmashell running, to casual multo-tasking when not running.

It goes from 47-52% memory actively used to 37%, just enough for some stuff to run extremely smoothly.

and I was seeing this artifact in the overview menu when I’m hovering on a window…

This only happens when plasmashell isn’t running… so as mention at the beginning, no big deal, probably not an intended way of doing stuff..

Also this can’t be captured via screenshot, as it only shows up when the cursor hovers over any window (I also have focus follows cursor enabled, but that shouldn’t make any difference here in overview menu)

Was just curious why this might be happening. Still not that much familiar with technical stuff, switched in October and have been learning a lot! It’s been very exciting so far.

(If anyone curious about what that aplonch zen command is in the terminal, It’s just a small script I use to launch softwares, because I find learning complex commands like gtk-launch and flathub run coupled with complex App IDs like com.app.xyz or io.app.xyz etc is a little unnecessary, and in this case I don’t have plasmashell to launch apps normal way, I set commonly used apps once with alias and forget it, also allows me to launch apps via ssh from my phone)


Mod edit:- Please avoid posting images unnecessarily. Be kind to the Server. Image removed. No charge.

It is happening because you are doing something that you shouldn’t be doing, and that also isn’t supported. You’re not supposed to stop /usr/bin/plasmashell. It’s your desktop environment.

If the memory usage is a problem, then either create a (bigger) swap device, find some extra RAM you can add, or choose a more lightweight user interface, like LXQt or OpenBox.

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Yea, I figured that!

You know, it works or me. Everything is functional without plasmashell running, I haven’t come across any issue using PC this way.

All apps I use work, all keyboard shortcuts (global shortcuts) work, I can just launch settings with Meta+I if needed, and most importantly I use Plasma with full heavy customization when not doing video rendering, etc

Yea, It’s on my list - RAM and SSD.

Aesthetics are UI are big part of my Linux experience, and its only need to be stopped until I get more RAM, it’s fine.
This is an ‘e-waste’ entitled laptop by Microsoft, If it wasn’t for Plasma running so well, I wouldn’t have decided to continue finding more RAM and an SSD for it, even after I’m getting a more modern device soon.

Thanks for your reply though, I can see the obvious concern!

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