I use Tumbleweed and the “Resources monitor” plasmoid. I’ve been using it on several computers without problems for over a year.
As you know, Tumbleweed is a rolling-release distribution, and with each upgrade, I get the latest version of Plasma and its libraries.
However, for the last 3 or 4 months, for some reason, after each system update (and therefore Plasma and its frameworks), the panels don’t appear when I restart the desktop. “KRunner” (Alt+F2) works, and applications launch. “Ctrl+Alt+Del” also works, and the mouse pointer moves without problems, but there’s no access to manage the desktop or its panels (which don’t appear).
If I delete the Plasma resource file (kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc) and restart the session, the panels reappear by default, and I can add the “Resources monitor” plasmoid again. But the same thing happens with the next upgrade, and this has happened three times now.
It’s probably something related to the plasmoid, but this shouldn’t be happening. The failure of a plasmoid to load or function should be detected by Plasma and at least inform the user, but this does not happen.
The tests I conducted each time clearly indicate that this is an issue with Plasma’s handling of malfunctioning Plasmoids.
The default Plasma panels appeared without issues for the root user
When I deleted the Plasma desktop configuration file for the user who uses “Resources Monitor,” the default panel appeared without issues
If I manually remove the loading of that plasmoid from the configuration file, the panels load. [Containments][458][Applets][516] immutability=1 plugin=org.kde.plasma.resources-monitor
When manually adding the plasmoid back from the panel (which disappears from the list of available plasmoids) and clicking “Apply,” everything works correctly.
This plasmoid isn’t included by default in Plasma; you have to download it from the interface and install it. I suspect that Plasma might be removing it, causing the panels to freeze as a result.
What I don’t understand about your message is the attached screenshot… what does it have to do with the problem?
I use Debian Testing, which has KDE Plasma 6.5.4 now while Debian Stable has 6.3.5, and sometimes I experience that same problem (everything works except the desktop failing to display anything (no wallpaper, no panel etc.).
But in my case the desktop is fully restored by restarting plasmashell (I use a keyboard shortcut, e.g. Super+Backspace, for the command systemctl restart --user plasma.plasmashell.service).
If the plasmoid you suspect works just fine after restarting the plasmashell in the way you do, it probably means that there’s nothing wrong with that plasmoid.
Thank you for sharing your experience. Yours isn’t exactly the same as mine, because in my case the desktop background for each monitor does appear, and I can even see a ‘sticky note’ I have on the main monitor.
I can’t remember if I tried Ctrl + Alt + [Backspace x 2], but I did try restarting – including selecting ‘debug mode’ – and the situation didn’t change. Only options 2 and 3 of those I mentioned solved the problem.
In any case, I’ll open a bug report on KDE, as these issues with other ‘plasmoids’ have been around for years.
The “Resources Monitor” plasmoid contains something that somehow interferes with and prevents panel loading.
Plasma fails to load the panels when there’s a specific problem with a specific plasmoid during initial loading (as in the case above), although we know in many cases a broken plasmoid does not prevent the panel from loading, but simply the plasmoid appears broken (appearing blank, question mark etc.) .
A week ago, after re-enabling the “Resources monitor” plasmoid, I also added ‘systemmonitor’ (which is “official”) and discovered something else, so I filed a bug report in KDE bug tracker. You can read all the information I’ve gathered there—it might be helpful.
Since I already knew the problem was the “Resources monitor” plasmoid and knew how to fix it, I removed the entry by editing the configuration (desktop configuration with mouse right button is not available) file and ran “plasmashell --replace,” but it didn’t work. Logging out and logging back in didn’t work either, even though I had removed that entry, but I hadn’t removed the new one for “systemmonitor.” I removed it in the same way, and again, after restarting the session, everything worked correctly and I could add the plasmoid without any issues, so I’m certain this is related to plasmoids that display real-time system information.
Thank you for all the help and information you’ve given me; it’s been very helpful as well.
Happens once in a bluemoon to me that the desktop doesn’t fully load. Usually its a widget. I then need to nuke the resource file and rebuild my desktop, or just remove the faulty widget and its corresponding lines in the resource file. The desktop panels really shouldn’t fail due to 1 widget, but I can sort of understand why this happens.
Thank you very much for sharing your experience. I can see I’m not the only one who’s noticed the problem and who believes that a widget shouldn’t interfere with the management of the desktop panels.
If it helps, as I’ve unfortunately gained some experience with this issue, I’ll tell you that I keep a copy of the plasmashell configuration file, and now whenever it fails, I take that copy, delete the lines corresponding to that widget (and its settings), and overwrite the current configuration file (now without those lines). Then I restart the session, add the widget to the relevant panel (I have 3 panels spread across 2 screens) and copy the specific configuration lines for that widget from the copy of the PlasmaShell configuration file into the new one, taking into account the number that identifies that widget (you have to replace the old number with the one Plasma has assigned to the new one). Save, run ‘plasmashell --reload’, and the configuration you had for that widget will now be loaded.
Eventually we’re planning to put 3rd-party widgets into their own process so they can’t damage the rest of Plasma. There’s no firm timetable, but it’s on the roadmap.
Thanks for the update. In any case, I’d like to point out that—as I mentioned in the bug report I filed—this seems to be more related to the nature of the widget (specifically those that display real-time activity) than to the widget’s development origin, because, as it happens (as I also noted in the bug report), I discovered that the same thing occurs with the “systemmonitor” widget included in Plasma.
I’ve been taking a crack at vibecoding an animated replacement for the icon-only task manager with cairo-dock sort of animations, and I found out weirdly quick how touchy it can be to crash plasmashell in doing so adding animations via llm. I saw this thought amen to that. I just hope not some sort of odd vuln and escape with the crash.
I’ve seen this too, several folks here bring up Cairo-Dock and Latte from time to time, so I know there is at least some desire to see this out there if not the mainstream devs.
That said mine so far is a pretty comprehensive overhaul to add various effects, in fact most of them are inspired directly from cairo-dock, and some of the management features of latte. I’d rebased to test directly in my 6.3.3 install currently, but I plan to do so against master to PR eventually if it ends up not being too crappy. I’m still working on it, but in the span of a few nights of mild effort I have it working and stable with all the basic effects, now I’m just polishing the visuals as codex has a somewhat lame perspective on making things aesthetically pleasing.
I am not a dev, probably never really will be, but I’m enjoying the fact that I don’t really have to be to finally be able to diy now to actually “make” things happen with agentic ai vs. begging for features indefinitely. Downside is I really have no gauge for how good/bad the resulting code actually is, but hopefully it’s not offensive to the real dev’s that main work on plasma that it’s summarily disregarded.
