Bug 477769 - Non-interactive Power Profile item under some conditions always appears in Power Management applet when such feature is not supported
Summary: Non-interactive Power Profile item under some conditions always appears in Po...
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Alias: None
Product: plasmashell
Classification: Plasma
Component: Power and Battery widget (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: 6.0.0
Platform: Arch Linux Linux
: NOR minor
Target Milestone: 1.0
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords: qt6
: 489073 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2023-11-30 13:10 UTC by Patrick Silva
Modified: 2024-12-18 21:23 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:


Attachments
screenshot (22.89 KB, image/png)
2023-11-30 13:11 UTC, Patrick Silva
Details
screenshot taken on Arch Linux running Plasma 6.2 beta (30.63 KB, image/png)
2024-09-13 17:25 UTC, Patrick Silva
Details

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Description Patrick Silva 2023-11-30 13:10:35 UTC
SUMMARY
As we can see in the attached screenshot, a useless "Power profile" section is present in the Power Management applet when such feature is not supported.

EXPECTED RESULT
Hide Power Profile section from Power Management applet when such feature is not supported

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: Arch Linux 
KDE Plasma Version: 5.90.0
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.246.0
Qt Version: 6.6.1
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Comment 1 Patrick Silva 2023-11-30 13:11:03 UTC
Created attachment 163652 [details]
screenshot
Comment 2 Natalie Clarius 2023-11-30 13:47:39 UTC
This was intentional so that when there are no batteries either the applet wouldn't be completely empty and broken looking. But I'm open to removing it if people find it just adds unnecessary noise.
Comment 3 Natalie Clarius 2023-11-30 20:32:54 UTC
Fwiw, it doesn't *always* appear in this case, only if we have nothing else to show.
Comment 4 guimarcalsilva 2023-12-01 00:29:35 UTC
(In reply to Natalie Clarius from comment #2)
> This was intentional so that when there are no batteries either the applet
> wouldn't be completely empty and broken looking. But I'm open to removing it
> if people find it just adds unnecessary noise.

I think it's good to show it. I'll tell a personal anecdote: When I first started using Neon I noticed games weren't performing very well, and since I didn't know what was wrong, I just assumed Linux drivers weren't as fast as Windows's. One day I had an epiphany and thought: "I can control the power profile on Windows, I wonder if I can do the same on Linux to improve performance". I had to Google a ton and it turned out Neon wasn't shipping the power-profile-daemon package. I installed it and Voilá! It fixed my problem.

If Plasma showed power profiles were at least a possibility back then I could've solved the issue much earlier, unfortunately, it didn't and if I hadn't thought about changing the power profile I would still have the same problem until someone remembered to fix Neon.

Maybe what could be done is showing an informational message explaining why power profiles are unavailable (eg. "your hardware does not support changing power profiles "or "power-profiles-daemon is not installed"), but I do think it's a good thing to show it even if you cannot interact with it. Also, in the screenshot, the only information available is that power profiles aren't available. If that got removed the applet would just be completely empty and it would look broken.
Comment 5 Jakob Petsovits 2024-09-13 15:48:39 UTC
Is this still an issue with current Plasma 6 releases? Other screenshots of missing power profiles that I've seen (e.g. attachment 173468 [details] from Bug 492859) include a helpful text underneath.
Comment 6 Patrick Silva 2024-09-13 17:25:24 UTC
Created attachment 173631 [details]
screenshot taken on Arch Linux running Plasma 6.2 beta

I see what the screenshot attached to this comment shows.

Operating System: Arch Linux 
KDE Plasma Version: 6.1.90
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.5.0
Qt Version: 6.8.0
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Comment 7 Bug Janitor Service 2024-09-28 03:47:04 UTC
🐛🧹 ⚠️ This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least 15 days. Please provide the requested information, then set the bug status to REPORTED. If there is no change for at least 30 days, it will be automatically closed as RESOLVED WORKSFORME.

For more information about our bug triaging procedures, please read https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Bug_triaging.

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Comment 8 Natalie Clarius 2024-10-08 01:37:05 UTC
The fact that it confusingly doesn't show anything is fixed with https://invent.kde.org/plasma/powerdevil/-/merge_requests/430.

With this is should show "Not available" again. So far noone else complained about it, so I'm inclined to keep it. 

> Maybe what could be done is showing an informational message explaining why power profiles are unavailable (eg. "your hardware does not support changing power profiles "or "power-profiles-daemon is not installed"

When the daemon is not installed, we already show a corresponding message. We could add a generic "Power profiles are not supported on your device" message when ppd is installed but still no profiles are available, though that would make take up more space and look slightly more depressing.
Comment 9 Bug Janitor Service 2024-10-08 01:58:41 UTC
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/powerdevil/-/merge_requests/436
Comment 10 Natalie Clarius 2024-10-08 02:12:35 UTC
*** Bug 489073 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 Natalie Clarius 2024-10-08 02:15:53 UTC
(In reply to Natalie Clarius from comment #8)
> So far noone else complained about it

Correction: One other bug reporter did.

Ideally we would have a way to hide it manually, but a config option to hide uninteresting parts of the UI seems a bit like overkill.
Comment 12 Nate Graham 2024-10-15 22:01:54 UTC
https://invent.kde.org/plasma/powerdevil/-/merge_requests/436 is merged now; is there anything else we can feasibly do here? I'm not coming up with any bright ideas.
Comment 13 Nate Graham 2024-12-18 21:22:58 UTC
Not sure there's much else we can do here, yeah.