Bug 442620

Summary: Touchpad disable icon gone, device with trackpoint.
Product: [Plasma] plasmashell Reporter: retired <pepko94>
Component: System Tray widgetAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null>
Status: CLOSED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: normal CC: materka, nate
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 5.22.90   
Target Milestone: 1.0   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description retired 2021-09-17 22:30:24 UTC
SUMMARY

Today after preparing a meal after work I powered on my T430 to unwing a bit.
Turns out I can't disable touchpad with single click at tray, icon is gone.
Oh well, it's a device with both touchpad and trackpoint.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Look for touchpad control icon in system tray.
2. Become confused at it's disappearance.

OBSERVED RESULT

Can't disable touchpad from tray.

EXPECTED RESULT

Touchpad control icon should be waiting for me in tray.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS

Operating System: Arch Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.22.90
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.86.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.14.5-zen1-1-zen (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-3720QM CPU @ 2.60GHz
Memory: 15.4 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa DRI Intel® HD Graphics 4000
Comment 1 Nate Graham 2021-09-21 19:45:54 UTC
The "disable touchpad" applet was deleted in Plasma 5.23 because it was causing people to brick their computer by disabling their touchpad *using* their touchpad, leaving them no graphical way of enabling it again. Hopefully it should be obvious how distressing this would be to a typical user. :)

You can still set a global shortcut to toggle or separately enable and disable your touchpad, and if your keyboard has a dedicated "disable touchpad" button, that should still work. But we thought that this feature was far too dangerous to have a default GUI method of using it.
Comment 2 retired 2021-09-22 04:30:01 UTC
I strongly disagree with this resolution.
This function was present on laptops as far as I remember, Windows XP era.
How about users start using their brains instead of clicking everywhere, isn't that a job of hover popups to warn them?

I would like to propose a compromise, how about hide it by default and don't remove a useful function? Why are old users supposed to adapt?

It's a matter of preference, same as change of windows being solid on moving, I had to revert it myself as well.