Post KDE5 update woes

Martux · Veteran Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 1917

Hello!
I just updated to KDE5 and have some questions, mostly about this horrible new login manager sddm.
Even if I set "start screen" to none, I get a black screen for 10 seconds. Otherwise I can just watch the ugly start screen for 10 seconds. What is going on? This is an i7 with SSD, windows boots in 20 secs, so did KDE4. Any ideas?
Also, I have two users that both just want to login without password. No problems with kdm, sddm doesn't seem to be able to handle it?
Do I have any valid alternatives? This software seems far from being usable.
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Troopo · Guru Joined: 14 Jun 2015 Posts: 310

Martux · Veteran Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 1917

I read both, the article and checked the config file. If it's set to auto-login, it will still display the login screen for 10 seconds or alternatively a black screen just as long.
What annoys me, that it's supposed to be kdms successor but has only a fragment of kdm's features...
_________________
"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."
Albert Einstein
"The road to success is always under construction"

davidm · Guru Joined: 26 Apr 2009 Posts: 557 Location: US

I got the 10 second black screen as well when on openRC. When I switched to systemd it only changed to showing the console display for 10 seconds (with nothing changing -- the last output isn't always consitant either -- expected since systemd does things in parallel) before sddm would finally come up. I considered that it might be related to my GPU (hardware or software) or perhaps something related to the framebuffer.

Regarding the auto-login with two users I'm not sure but I have read that upstream with sddm they have been purposely preventing some things. For instance I recently read that sddm absolutely will not allow a user to login as root now. You might try checking/inquiring upstream.

To be honest KDE5 (Plasma/KF/KF apps) really isn't as stable as KDE4. But it's mostly there only with a few papercuts. I'm running live builds now and I'm noticing it seems some memory leaks are back with plasmashell (currently using 800M with one day uptime -- it was ~ 120M for a while with Plasma 5.3 but there seems to be a regression somewhere - I should try going back to Plasma 5.3 and see if it is still there with the current config maybe?). And restoring sessions with qt5 apps isn't working right yet (qt bugs). The ratings in Dolphin and Gwenview are also mostly borked. Kmail seems to forget I am using bogofilter, etc. but I can still get work done with it and it's not crashing as it once was... If you need absolute stability you might want to go back to KDE4 for a while longer though...otherwise you might get a bit annoyed.

Martux · Veteran Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 1917

Hi!
Thanks for the reply.
I am already using systemd, it booted up my KDE4 system in no time. Not so with sddm...
Interestingly, I have exact same behaviour with sddm on a Kubuntu installation, there the login screen also shows up like forever. I thought it's because that installation was on a hard disk.
Unfortunately going back is not really an option, as it's mutually exclusive. I had to do some stunts to install it.
Do I have options? I can't use kdm anymore, right? What about other login managers?
_________________
"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."
Albert Einstein
"The road to success is always under construction"

furanku · Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 2:12 pm Post subject:

I have that delay with SDDM only if I did a reboot ("warm start") from Windows. Then it remains (even trough reboots) until I turn the laptop completely off ("shut down") an do a cold start into Gentoo. In my case it seems that Windows 10 set the graphics adapter (Intel Haswell in my case) into a mode where the linux kernel has some problems initializing it. See my other post here.

Martux · Veteran Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 1917

That's weird. I can't verify that, though. Dual booting with Windows 7, and it doesn't make any difference. I am using integrated HD graphics and a nvidia-card, but don't even have the nvidia-drivers installed in Gentoo.
Right after showing the kernel messages, the mouse cursor pops up and the screen stays black for some time. Even if I set a theme for SDDM, it doesn't get shown. After that, desktop shows up. I tried it with 2 different users and even a wiped home-directory. Still same result. Syslog also doesn't seem to show anything relevant...
_________________
"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."
Albert Einstein
"The road to success is always under construction"