Is it worth persuing my panel applets problems? Possibly just to reveal
underlying issues?
I've had trouble with panel applets since I upgraded in stages (that is, I
upgraded with most of KF5 already present) from 13.2 to Tumbleweed last April.
I've planned to fix them by doing a fresh install of Leap next November, but I
inadvertently, temporarily fixed them when I killed a wedged plasmashell, and
restarted it in konsole, forgetting I had su'ed to root.
Some of the problems:
Notifications don't work. Never seen one in the notifications panel, though
some applets such as weather use what I believe is a fallback popup to
announce network timeouts.
Power applet initially worked, but quit when I replaced the battery. It
generally shows the charge status as of the last resume. Sometimes it updates
randomly, though not lately. Ususally it shows the charging/discharging icon
correctly, but does no text update. Occasionally, it has worked after a
Tumbleweed update, but failed again after the next one. "upower -d" always
works.
Network. This is the one I noticed working correctly when I ran plasmashell
as root. It is also one that failed back in the KDE4 days. It is
intermittent. It generally goes as far as "connecting" or "configuring
interface" depending on where you look, with a spinning icon and stops there
even though the interface is up. Sometimes it works just for the BT interface
or the WiFi interface, but usually it doesn't work.
Bluetooth. This looks like multiple deeper issues not related to applets.
For one thing, it is always powered off on resume and I have to "fix" it. For
another, it tends to refuse to stay on for more than a few seconds or minutes
after a reboot after most but not all Tumbleweed updates. I've thought it
might be a hardware problem with the dongle because it tends to start with
(from journal)...
Sep 20 01:08:13 sgt.decathlon.org kernel: usb 1-3: USB disconnect, device
number 3Sep 20 01:08:13 sgt.decathlon.org kernel: usb 1-3: USB disconnect,
device number 3
...but then, it does work after some Tumbleweed updates.
In any case, I can persue any of these issues with anyone on the list who is
interested, or I can wait 'til November and swich to Leap. It's basically a
workable system.
--
Tom Hardy