Comment # 2 on bug 1174566 from Nick Dordea

Hello Fabian, 

1) I had this configuration for years and I did not have issues, because 
very seldom I used another desktop manager. 
When I had issues at login time, one of GNOME, LXDE, Enlightment was selected
and I had an operational desktop from which I did some research and changes .
Please note that I do not use kactivities.

2) Yes ... krunner is available and can be used .

3) As far as kactivitymanagerd ... the journalctl log shows that it was
successfully started ....
--------------------
Jul 27 14:05:42 suse4Rocco.dom klauncher[4847]: Connecting to deprecated signal
QDBusConnectionInterface::serviceOwnerChanged(QString,QString,QString)
Jul 27 14:05:44 suse4Rocco.dom kdeinit5[4853]: Initializing  "kcm_style" : 
"kcminit_style"
Jul 27 14:05:44 suse4Rocco.dom dbus-daemon[3228]: [session uid=1000 pid=3228]
Activating service name='org.kde.ActivityManager' requested by ':1.5' (uid=1000
pid=4850 comm="kded5 [kdeinit5]                                  ")
====> Jul 27 14:05:44 suse4Rocco.dom dbus-daemon[3228]: [session uid=1000
pid=3228] Successfully activated service 'org.kde.ActivityManager'
Jul 27 14:05:44 suse4Rocco.dom dbus-daemon[3228]: [session uid=1000 pid=3228]
Activating service name='org.kde.kglobalaccel' requested by ':1.5' (uid=1000
pid=4850 comm="kded5 [kdeinit5]                                  ")
====> Jul 27 14:05:44 suse4Rocco.dom kactivitymanagerd[4866]: Config timer
connecting...
Jul 27 14:05:45 suse4Rocco.dom dbus-daemon[3228]: [session uid=1000 pid=3228]
Successfully activated service 'org.kde.kglobalaccel'
===> Jul 27 14:05:45 suse4Rocco.dom kactivitymanagerd[4866]: Setting the name
of  0x5643a45adb90  to  "org.kde.ActivityManager.ActivityTemplates"
===> Jul 27 14:05:45 suse4Rocco.dom kactivitymanagerd[4866]: Setting the name
of  0x5643a45cf9e0  to  "org.kde.ActivityManager.Resources.Scoring"
===> Jul 27 14:05:45 suse4Rocco.dom kactivitymanagerd[4866]: Creating
directory:  "/home/rocco/.local/share/kactivitymanagerd/resources/"
----------------------------

The above directory exists and contains 3 objects 
database
database-shm
database-wal  
and it proves that kactivitymanagerd was active before the message was
displayed 
Jul 27 14:05:50 suse4Rocco.dom plasmashell[4905]: Aborting shell load: The
activity manager daemon (kactivitymanagerd) is not running.

Something happened between Jul 27 14:05:45 when the daemon was active and 
Jul 27 14:05:50 when it was detected that the daemon is not running .
My feeling is that during the intended R update something in KDE was also
updated/changed.   I do not know any of KDE internals/intricacies to understand
what's going on in the journalctl log as well as what KDE component  is the
culprit .  Over the years I understand that KDE is a collection of packages
distributed over many repositories at different versions etc.  

I just noticed that opensuse leap 15.,2 was released.  
I will have a look at 15.2 release notes and see if an upgrade does not require
fundamental changes on my PC. If not, I rather perform an upgrade to 15.2 that
will solve/synchronize/fix all relationships between KDE components with
workable plasma than fixing the actual/broken KDE then 
upgrading to 15.2 .
I did DVD/NW upgrade several times so I hope that the upgrade is not taking
more than 2-3 hours .

I will keep you posted with my decision .

Thank you for your help.

Regards,
Nick