This week in KDE: “Make multi GPU not suck”

This Week in KDE 3 Minutes

This week a lot of bugs and other issues got fixed, including a major overhaul of KWin’s multi-GPU infrastructure for Intel and AMD GPUs in Plasma 6 to make it “not suck” anymore! Big thanks to Xaver Hugl for this impactful work.

And here’s a sampling of other cool work:

New features

When performing an action that would otherwise automatically activate a window on another virtual desktop, there’s now an option to not switch to it at all. This can be useful for workflows such as opening a lot of links from an email client in a web browser located on another desktop, because then you won’t have to re-focus the email client after every link you open (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 6.0. Link)

User Interface Improvements

The “Highlight Changed Settings” feature in System Settings now works on the Flatpak Permissions page (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)

The Emoji Selector window is now significantly faster to appear when you launch it with Meta+. (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)

Authentication dialogs now have a streamlined style to better focus the parts that matter (Devin Lin, Plasma 6.0. Link):

When a Folder View widget is using its popup list form, its items are now always opened with a single click because this is a menu style UI and menu items are always activated with a single click (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 6.0. Link)

On the System Settings’ KWin Rules page, various properties’ settings are now explained much more clearly (me: Nate Graham and Ismael Asensio, Plasma 6.0. Link 1, link 2, and link 3)

The Breeze icon theme now includes icons for .abc Alembic files (Áron Kovács, Frameworks 5.106. Link)

Significant Bugfixes

(This is a curated list of e.g. HI and VHI priority bugs, Wayland showstoppers, major regressions, etc.)

In the Plasma Wayland session, Spectacle is now faster to take screenshots and never ever ever includes its main window in screenshots that it takes (Noah Davis, Spectacle 23.04 with Plasma 5.27.4.1 or newer. Link)

Setting screen refresh rates higher than 60Hz when using AMD GPUs is once again possible, working around an issue in the open-source AMD drivers (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.27.4.1. Link)

Fixed a major memory leak that could, under certain circumstances, quickly gobble up all memory when an external display was plugged in (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)

When an offline system update fails, you’ll no longer be endlessly notified about it on login even after you click the “Repair System” button in the notification that Discover shows you about it (Aleix Pol Gonzalez and me: Nate Graham. Link 1 and link 2)

Discover no longer sometimes mixes up the order of the “from” and “to” version numbers for Flatpak apps, or incorrectly states that an upgrade from one version to the next one is a refresh of the existing version–though sometimes it actually is a refresh of the existing version, so it isn’t always a bug when you see this (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)

Fixed a cause of excessive memory usage that could even crash Plasma when using KRunner to search for unusual things (Fushan Wen, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)

Widgets can now be properly centered between two flexible Panel spacers places on vertical panels, not just horizontal panels (Niccolò Venerandi, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)

Discover now succeeds at applying several types of firmware updates that would trip it up before (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)

Other bug-related information of interest:

…And everything else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.

How You Can Help

If you’re a user, upgrade to Plasma 5.27! If your distro doesn’t offer it and won’t anytime soon, consider switching to a different one that ships software closer to its developer’s schedules.

If you’re a developer, consider working on known Plasma 5.27 regressions! You might also want to check out our 15-Minute Bug Initiative. Working on these issues makes a big difference quickly!

Otherwise, visit https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover other ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

And finally, KDE can’t work without financial support, so consider making a donation today! This stuff ain’t cheap and KDE e.V. has ambitious hiring goals. We can’t meet them without your generous donations!

Published by Nate

Published

15 thoughts on “This week in KDE: “Make multi GPU not suck””

  1. The “Highlight Changed Settings”… Makes me remember of that much desired “Reset Plasma” feature that would fit wonderfully in a Plasma 6.0 release…

    About Spectacle: does this mean that, if I want to effectively take a screenshot with Spectacle in it (imagine I want to report a bug in Spectacle itself), I can’t?

    Like

    Reply

    1. You can still deliberately take a screenshot of Spectacle by opening a second Spectacle window. What it won’t do anymore is take a screenshot of itself when there’s only one Spectacle window.

      Like

    2. > About Spectacle: does this mean that, if I want to effectively take a screenshot with Spectacle in it (imagine I want to report a bug in Spectacle itself), I can’t?

      You need 2 instances of Spectacle to take a proper screenshot of spectacle, same as always (use “spectacle -i” or “spectacle –new-instance”) The thing that actually changed is that you won’t occasionally get Spectacle in its own screenshot part of the way through its own window close animation.

      Like

  2. I have a AMD+Nvidia notebook, and when connecting an external monitor with the internal panel powered off, it is completely unusable. It has like 2s of lag in the monitor. Funny thing is if I use mirror setting, and turn the brightness of the panel all the way down, it works fine and it even turns off the panel.

    Hopefully this will be solved now. Thanks!

    Like

    Reply

  3. Hi Nate.
    I have two regressions regarding gpus.
    1) My system includes two amd gpus. When I bind vfio-pci driver to primary gpu, then on the secondary gpu (which should stay a single one in system) there is no image of sddm (hanged at message loading graphical target).
    Is it a sddm bug? Or I should report it to the kde bugtracker?
    2) After waking from sleep, my hdmi monitor no longer gets signal.
    The workaround is to toggle the power button of monitor twice (to off it when there is no signal, then to on it).
    Another workaround – disable monitor in system settings, then enable it again.
    Do you know about such regression?

    Like

    Reply

    1. Personally I don’t have any experience with multi-GPU or even dGPU as I make sure to only buy systems that only integrated GPUs for simplicity and low power consumption. If you’re experiencing issues, bug reports would be appreciated. The first one may be a KWin bug if you;re using SDDM in Wayland mode; if not; KWin isn’t involved ant it’s an issue either in SDDM or the X server.

      If something is a regression, make sure to mention the last Plasma release when it worked.

      Liked by 1 person

  4. kde 5.27.5.4, frameworks 5.105, qt 5.18 – fedora
    KDE wayland doesn’t remember per display DPI settings after logout.
    Also the taskbar and start menu are blurry on the display with modified DPI (125%).

    Is this going to get fixed? Fundamentals are so broken….

    Like

    Reply

    1. Per-monitor scale factor (not DPI; there is no per-monitor DPI setting) works for me on Wayland.

      A certain amount of blurriness has to be expected when using fractional scale factors like 125%; there’s no way to not have some blurriness when you’re asking the system to render content on fractional pixels. It’s already been improved substantially for Plasma 6, and I hope to investigate a change to make it even better at some point soon.

      Regardless, bug reports generally represent a more effective ways to report bugs compared to leaving comments on blog posts. 🙂

      Like

  5. Proposal for the Authentication dialogue: Wouldn’t it be better to write Administrator (root), so that the termin could be translated and the normal users who do not understand the root-terminologie understand what it is meant.

    Like

    Reply

    1. The text comes from the app, actually. So Partition Manager itself would have to make that change. But yes, it’s possible.

      Like

  6. “Fixed a major memory leak that could, under certain circumstances, quickly gobble up all memory when an external display was plugged in (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.27.5.)”

    Nice! Hopefully this fixes my case that, after a few days of wake up-plug monitor-unplug monitor-sleep cycles, used memory starts going up.

    Like

    Reply

  7. I am facing a distorted screen issue when I connect an external monitor to Intel + Nvidia system(ThinkPad gen P1 gen 5). If this is fixed can. We port this change to KDE 5.27 as KDE 6 release will take more than 4 months.
    Distorted image –> https://photos.app.goo.gl/p6Lzk3EhFgyzaU5T9
    “`
    Aug 07 21:55:59 LAPTOP kwin_wayland[3261]: kwin_wayland_drm: Failed to create AR24 framebuffer for multi-gpu: Invalid argument
    Aug 07 21:55:59 LAPTOP kernel: [drm] [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000100] Framebuffer memory not appropriate for scanout
    Aug 07 21:55:59 LAPTOP kernel: [drm] [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID 0x00000100] Framebuffer memory not appropriate for scanout
    Aug 07 21:55:59 LAPTOP kwin_wayland[3261]: kwin_wayland_drm: Failed to create XR24 framebuffer for multi-gpu: Invalid argument
    Aug 07 21:55:59 LAPTOP kwin_wayland[3261]: kwin_wayland_drm: Failed to create gamma blob! Invalid argument
    Aug 07 21:55:59 LAPTOP plasmashell[3439]: qt.qpa.wayland: Wayland does not support QWindow::requestActivate()
    Aug 07 21:55:59 LAPTOP plasmashell[3439]: qt.qpa.wayland: Wayland does not support QWindow::requestActivate()
    Aug 07 21:55:59 LAPTOP plasmashell[3439]: qt.qpa.wayland: Wayland does not support QWindow::requestActivate()
    Aug 07 21:55:59 LAPTOP plasmashell[3439]: qt.qpa.wayland: Wayland does not support QWindow::requestActivate()
    Aug 07 21:55:59 LAPTOP plasmashell[3439]: qt.qpa.wayland: Wayland does not support QWindow::requestActivate()
    “`

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment