I’m running Plasma 6 under X11. I normally disable Kscreen2 because I don’t want KDE moving apps around when I power-down or hot-plug a VDU. Yesterday I noticed a lot of messages being logged from kscreen_backend_launcher. The messages were probably due to a desktop/plasma/nvidia fault that dropped a monitor from the desktop, which appears to be a one-off/low-probability occurrence (it hasn’t happened again in 24 hours).
As part of avoiding a repeat of the issue, I’d like to rule out kscreen_backend_launcher from being part of the problem.
My questions are:
What does kscreen_backend_launcher do?
If I’ve disabled Kscreen2, why is kscreen_backend_launcher running?
If it’s not needed, how do I disable it?
As I type this, I’ve killed kscreen_backend_launcher, and the desktop seems unaffected and I can suspend and toggle power on monitors with no issues.
I know that disabling kscreen2 or, even worse, killing off parts of the desktop, isn’t a recommended/supported action. But I’d add that one of the reasons I’ve stuck with KDE is that it has always offered options that can often be tweaked to cope with use-cases its developers had not anticipated. The flexibility has been much appreciated over the years.
kscreen_backend_launcher is a component of KScreen, which is the screen management software for KDE Plasma Workspaces. Its primary purpose is to handle screen configuration, monitor setup, and resolution adjustments. KScreen aims to be as automatic as possible for users with basic needs while also allowing customization for those with specific requirements. When you connect or disconnect monitors, KScreen dynamically adjusts the display layout, resolution, and other settings to accommodate the changes. kscreen_backend_launcher is responsible for launching the appropriate backend (such as KSC_XRandR.so, KSC_KWayland.so, etc.) based on the available hardware and configuration.
I haven’t had any further occurrences of the issue I described, so having kscreen_backend_launcher running doesn’t seem to be having any detrimental effects.
I suspect there is something busted in my pre-KDE6 config files which might have contributed to this issue and other more recent issues I’ve encountered when switching to and from text-consoles. I’ve tried a more recently created account and it doesn’t exhibit the same issues.