KDE Plasma issue with Multi Monitor and Multi aspect ratio

Help
1

Hi everyone. I am having difficulty with my multi monitor set up. I am using a dell E6230 with Kubuntu

Operating System: Kubuntu 24.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.11
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.115.0
Qt Version: 5.15.13
Kernel Version: 6.8.0-48-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i5-3320M CPU @ 2.60GHz
Memory: 11.6 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4000
Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
Product Name: Latitude E6230
System Version: 01

with 2 monitors and the internal panel. I can get the 3 monitors to work if I have them all configured with the 16:9 ratio aspect

Screens

Active screen follows mouse: yes
Number of Screens: 3
Screen 0:

Name: HDMI-2
Enabled: 1
Geometry: 0,0,1920x1080
Scale: 1
Refresh Rate: 60000
Adaptive Sync: incapable

Screen 1:

Name: LVDS-1
Enabled: 1
Geometry: 1920,156,1366x768
Scale: 1
Refresh Rate: 60141
Adaptive Sync: incapable

Screen 2:

Name: HDMI-3
Enabled: 1
Geometry: 3286,156,1920x1080
Scale: 1
Refresh Rate: 60000
Adaptive Sync: incapable

But the Dell U2412M is a 16:10 aspect ratio monitor. When I change the aspect ratio to 16:10 the screen goes black .

What can I do - I have looked at xrandr but I’m out of my depth.

Best regards
P.

2

I’m also using Dell U2412M as an external monitor - its a great screen.

X11 multi-screen support was always problematic. Have you tried running a Wayland session?

3

Hi - I have not tried wayland, mainly because kubuntu does not support it -

Plasma Wayland Session in Kubuntu

Do you know a distribution I can read up about which supports wayland - i will search with google as well ;-). And you’re right , the Dell U2412m screen is great. Thanks for replying.

4

“not supported” doesn’t mean “you can’t use it”. It means - if you do that, and it breaks, Canonical will not help you (assuming you’ve paid for professional support, which you probably haven’t - so they won’t help you anyway).

My testing of Plasma 5.27 on Wayland was that it is very usable and will work well for a lot of use cases.

I generally recommend moving to something that offers Plasma 6, where there is much better display support, including top notch Wayland implementation, even better multi-screen, tablet displays, HDR, HDR content on SDR screens (to the extent that it makes sense), full-screen tearing support, explicit sync for Nvidia GPUs, support for displays with built-in ICC profiles (which the U2412M has) and probably more stuff that I forget.

I suggest looking at these:

  • Kubuntu 24.10
  • Fedora
  • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and MicroOS
  • Neon (which is what I use)
  • Garuda Linux (great for gaming)

But before we go replacing your OS, lets look at one more thing: can you please check - when you set your screen to 16:9 and it works, try to run - in the terminal - the following command: kscreen-doctor -o and record the output; then change the configuration to 16:10, and run the same command again and record the output. If you can paste both outputs here in the forum - maybe we can see something that can be fixed.

5

This is for the 22.04 version and you have the 24.04 one.

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