Marc Chamberlin composed on 2022-06-24 20:22 (UTC-0700):
You second version of the magic incantation for update-alternatives does allow me to select IceWM, thank you! I don't grok what the difference is between selecting a default display manager and selecting a default xsession desktop. It feels like having these two variants is an unnecessary complication, not intuitive, and doesn't provide a user friendly method/need for selecting the type of desktop environment wanted. Anywise this is not an issue that needs to be discussed, I will accept it and move on. ... I removed everything in ~/.cache and again no joy. KDE/Plasma fails to give me a login screen at all so I cannot try using an alternate user.
KDE/Plasma doesn't give anybody a login screen. That's the job of the installed and configured DM. Which DM you get is the result of: update-alternatives --config default-displaymanager You should rarely or never need to use this again, unless for troubleshooting, or you just want to switch from whatever you've been using. It's on the login screen presented by the DM that a user-friendly choice among session types may be selected from a menu after logging out or booting, the same session types you see from using: update-alternatives --config default-xsession.desktop You should rarely or never need to use this again, unless for troubleshooting. Once you've made your first selection of xsession type, the default will no longer be relevant, except to a new user, /or/, if you login on a vtty and use startx to try to open an X session. It is necessary to open an X session as a different/new user to determine whether or not the kdeinit5 issue has anything to do with user settings. That choice should be made via the GUI login greeter, whether it's SDDM, LightDM, GDM, XDM or something else available when running update-alternatives --config default-displaymanager. SDDM is the normal DM used with KDE installations. Did you try switching with update-alternatives --config default-displaymanager to something else (e.g. LightDM) to see if Plasma would start from it? Do you get the same error if you boot with a 3 appended to the linu line at the Grub menu striking the E key, then login and try: WINDOWMANAGER=startplasma-x11 startx If no joy as normal user, what about as root user, or as virgin user? I'm out of other ideas how to troubleshoot this, and those new network/firewall issues will need a new thread to draw people with experience troubleshooting those areas. If it was me at this point, I'd restore from a good backup, or more likely, do a fresh installation, and skip up to 15.4. You might give an upgrade to 15.4 a try rather than a fresh installation. Given the relative lack of interest in this thread by other people, it's probably prudent to try elsewhere, either forums.opensuse.org, or KDE forums. -- Evolution as taught in public schools is, like religion, based on faith, not based on science. Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata