History of Plasma 6 KDE with X11 on Tumbleweed

The only think really remaining was the problem of the displayport driven monitor going blank from time to time. The fun with the hardware is documented in the blog although I think some if that may have been unnecessary now I have established ... X11 is stable wayland is not! The new user is now configured to X11 formats and has been stable since I switched over. Toggled back to wayland earlier and the right hand monitor stated blanking and with 'display configuration' up you can see it's mimic going on and off. So something software wise is getting messed up when talking to the hardware which X11 is perfectly happy with. I do wish now I had not 'followed the advise' and even tried wayland. I can see a couple of possible plus features, but now I am better in control, I've got the same results in X11 which also does not have the problem of small font size on thunderbird search and other pop-up windows.

The only think really remaining was the problem of the displayport driven monitor going blank from time to time. The fun with the hardware is documented in the blog although I think some if that may have been unnecessary now I have established ... X11 is stable wayland is not! The new user is now configured to X11 formats and has been stable since I switched over. Toggled back to wayland earlier and the right hand monitor stated blanking and with 'display configuration' up you can see it's mimic going on and off. So something software wise is getting messed up when talking to the hardware which X11 is perfectly happy with. I do wish now I had not 'followed the advise' and even tried wayland. I can see a couple of possible plus features, but now I am better in control, I've got the same results in X11 which also does not have the problem of small font size on thunderbird search and other pop-up windows.

Part of the problem here IS the way switching a monitor off affects the rest of the setup. Something that M$ annoyingly copied in windows. Many of my machines out in the field were being used to drive multiple screens, and the 'desktop' was in a screen that did not need to have a monitor attached. VNC is STILL the best way to remote access these types of machine, and the same applies on Linux. The fix was a dongle that emulated a monitor and had a pass through where the monitor was the other side of a KVM switch. Today, while I can see stub dongles for 4k monitors, there is no similar pass-through device, but what we ideally need is a means to 'lock' the display channel on so that is can still be viewed remotely, and is ready to go when switching the KVM back. Both X11 and wayland push things on the inactivated screen to - for example - overlay the copy of thunderbird still running on the right hand monitor. So you can't see new messages while working on the windows box via the KVM. Current kludge is just to close windows on the central monitor before switching.

One little plus is that the wireless mouse is working a lot better than any of the wired ones I'd used, even a new one just bought, although just how old that stock is may be questionable. Right click has always been intermittent on the desktop, something that was put down to the mouse, which is why I'd tried a number without a fix, but the wireless one is working crisply so there may be something in it. Occasionally the pointer does jump a long way from where I'm using it. I've put a clean sheet on the mousemat, but it's still doing it, so as long as it does not happen too often I can live with it. The keyboard is a lot crisper as well and most of my time is there rather than on the mouse anyway.

My next step I think is to clean up the crib sheets for the applications I am using. Only active ones have been moved to the new user although just when one is installed in user space rather than system space seems random? I also need to document just where the user settings are for some of the key applications. thunderbird is easy and the profile is in system space anyway. Perhaps a move to do the same with some of the others would be appropriate, then if I get in a mess again I can simply reinstate 'lester' over 'lsces' and have another clean sheet.