SUMMARY Whenever a disabled screen disconnects / reconnects itself, it causes the layout to update. Some monitors, such as in my case the Gigabyte G27Q will attempt to disconnect and reconnect every 10 seconds or so when disabled. It will do so for roughly a minute or so. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. have at least 2 display of which one with the behavior above 2. disable the display with said behavior, alternatively manually unplug the monitor OBSERVED RESULT Screen / panel layout gets updated, causing stutters / minor flickering. EXPECTED RESULT The display layout does not get updated, as none of the active displays encounter changes. This is especially problematic if you want to re-enable the displays, as it imposes a deadline of less than 10 seconds to make changes. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Windows: macOS: Linux/KDE Plasma: kernel 6.7 KDE Plasma Version: 5.91 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.247.0 Qt Version: 6.7 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION I have had this issue for a while, but it was masked by other problems / with reconnecting and disconnecting screens.
I can't reproduce. What I did was: 1. have an external monitor (Dell U2718Q) connected through docking Dell TB16 on a XPS13 laptop. External is configured as main. 2. have both displays connected 3. Go to settings, display config, unselect "Enabled" on the external monitor. 4. The screen focusses on the built-in screen as expected. No flickering on unexpected behaviour. The monitor tries to find a signal and finding none, it goes into sleep mode. 5. Wait until the display config times out as it does not get a confirmation (takes 15secs). 6. the system defaults to original settings, which has the external display as main and the monitor comes out of sleep mode. Let me know if I tested correctly or what I should do. I don't fully comprehend what the G27Q is doing. Operating System: KDE neon Unstable Edition KDE Plasma Version: 5.91.90 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.248.0 Qt Version: 6.6.1 Kernel Version: 6.2.0-39-generic (64-bit) Graphics Platform: Wayland Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-8565U CPU @ 1.80GHz Memory: 15,3 GiB of RAM Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® UHD Graphics 620 Manufacturer: Dell Inc. Product Name: XPS 13 9380
Please note the issue on KDE's side is not the monitor's behavior which is odd and probably rare. The update of the layout will not cause huge issues, but panels do get redrawn which is visible, and it can make re-enabling more difficult as you only have until the next cycle to click on enable and apply. It may cause other issues at times as well, in some unknown edge-cases. Furthermore, I don't know if there is any technical reason why the layout needs to be updated at all when an already disabled display gets disconnected or reconnected, after all it is not being used either way.
> Some monitors, such as in my case the Gigabyte G27Q will attempt to disconnect and reconnect > every 10 seconds or so when disabled Who on earth approved this feature!?! >:C It's almost like we need a quirks database of known stupid monitors so we can work around their bad behavior...
Please attach the output of drm_info and your KWin log (journalctl --user-unit plasma-kwin_wayland --boot 0)
Created attachment 164822 [details] output of drm_info
Created attachment 164823 [details] KWin log