i’m writing here after some hours (on multiple days) googleing to find a solution to my multi monitor issue (and not finding it of course):
I’m on a “brand new” (for me) pc with 5600x and rtx 5050 gpu, with CachyOS (fresh install, and new flavour to me), KDE, Wayland and atm 2 monitors, the primary AOC 27" 2k resolution on 1st Displayport and a secondary display (a crappy TV with 1366x768 connected through HDMI) that i turn on only when i watch movies or Youtube video from the couch.
If i have main monitor on, secondary can be either on or off and everything’s fine.
But if i turn the main off (when i want to watch smth from couch on the seconday) system recognize this and switch main desktop to the crappy TV!
I really want to avoid this!
Until few days ago i had 3 monitor setup (a old Samsung 24" as main monitor and a Dell 23") on MX Linux, KDE, X11 on an ancient i5-3570K with a gtx 1060 and never had this problem in years, even when i was on a Manjaro KDE setup…
IS there a way to avoid main monitor switching when it’s turned off? Yes, i want mouse to move on the other desktop even if monitor is turned off.
yeah on wayland the power button looks like a disconnect so kwin sticks primary on whatever is still lit. that never bit me on my old x11 box.
check:
-blank the aoc from power management (sleep display) instead of the power button so the dp link stays up
-or turn the tv on first then reopen display configuration and set the aoc as primary again
-kscreen-doctor -o shows the outputs if u wanna shove priority from a script after it settles
hard cutting the aoc at the wall always remaps for me. blanking keeps the desktop pinned.
It would be nice to have a concept of marking a screen as “permanently attached” so that Plasma (maybe really kwin_wayland?) always treats it as present. That might require creating a dummy output for it when it’s not attached.
Right now it seems like Plasma always tries to adapt to the currently connected set of screens, which makes sense on a laptop where you want to switch as seamlessly as possible between internal and external screen, but not so much in the use case described here.
if blanking and resetting primary didnt hold, id try a cheap HDMI/DP EDID dummy plug on the AOC. it keeps that output present while the TV is on, so kwin doesnt move the primary desktop over. no software change needed, just leave the dummy on the port the AOC normally uses.
P.S.: this old thread, last post, is pointing to a script that may cause the activation of main monitor switching. The script is still there, even in a different folder, i’m tempted to try to rename it but not no idea if i’ll screw all system
