Kscreen still sucks with dual monitors

[oshunluvr]

Seems like years that kscreen has been a problem.

In 2018 I had a laptop (nVidia and Intel) and when I attached my external monitor, kscreen would always attach it at 60hz which was unsupported by that monitor and so would have a blank screen. Just for fun, it or whatever also moved the desktop to that monitor so i couldn't fix it. I finally gave up, uninstalled kscreen and used an xrandr script to correctly set the refresh rate and resolution when the monitor was attached. My solution worked great, but annoying that kscreen totally failed to do it's one and only task.

In 22.04 it's no better. I have dual monitors now on a desktop (AMD RX580) and screen power-saving with kscreen installed causes the whole thing to go wonky. Sometimes neither screen blanks at all. Sometimes the left screen (primary) blanks and the other doesn't. Sometimes they both blank but the monitors are re-arranged to mirror each other instead of side-by-side as they were configured. Additionally, I think sometimes else is at play because screen blanking (when it doesn't do any of the above) will sometimes move all the open windows to the right (non-primary) monitor.

Annoying as all get-out <insert numerous swears here>

SINCE I now have 4k monitors I need kscreen to set scaling. Luckily, whatever I set scaling at remains set even after kcreeen is removed. So I install kscreen, make adjustments, and uninstall it. I've been plating with DPI, scaling, and a couple other setting to get the desktop text readable but still retain as much added screen real estate as possible.

Uninstalling kscreen returns normal (mostly) screen blanking behavior wiht the exception of the mysteriously shifting windows. Sigh...

I know I can just - once again - write an xrandr configuration or a full xorg.conf and be done with it, but that feels so 2010. Ever the optimist, I keep thinking the next plasma update will FINALLY fix kscreen. I'm still waiting.

Off to file MORE bug reports...

[claydoh]

Is this 22.04, and Plasma 5.24, or neon and Plasma 5.27? Wasn't there a rant similar to this in neon and Plasma 5.25 or -26-ish?
There IS a decent amount of difference since 5.24. Not sure how much, as (of course) I have not had the same issues, with the RX480, then an RX6600 and now RX6650.

My screens are not 4K, which probably is partly why. But offset that with using Wayland exclusively for quite a while now.
I have had different refresh rate monitors, and at one point my TV - so three rates (60, 75, and 144 at the time) running correctly without any sort of configuration.
No problems with blanking or losing desktop settings at all, though it was happening pre-plasma 5.27. My fix was to make a plasma config file read-only for a bit.

Plugging in my convertible Chromebook running Fedora 38 (an AMD Ryzen 5 system, interestingly) to one of my 144hz monitors seems to have no issue with mixed refresh rates, either.
Again, NOT 4K.

I venture to suggest trying Xorg, or ---shudder--- a wayland session on a separate user account, or test install - in Plasma 5.27, if that is doable.
I don't suggest Wayland in Plasma 5,24 at all so much, though the poop didn't really hit the fan in terms of multimonitor bugs etc until later. And I suggest a different user account on Plasma 5.27 as there can be (or were) differences in monitor IDs when switching between the two.
Which equals a loss or difference in configurations between the two sessions.
I think this has been fixed, as it has been quite a while since I have seen this occur in my random and rare Xorg login sessions, just to see if there was any noticeable difference in my game performance (there isn't).

I personally won't go back to xorg. Just the laptop and tablet autorotation and mixed refresh rates working with zero config sold me on it.
Of course, if I used nvidia I might sing a different tune. but only maybe.
The only reason I got an RX6650 over a similar strength Nvidia was $$$.

[oshunluvr]

22.04/5.27.5 (READ MY SIG PIC WHILE IT'S STILL VISIBLE!!! lol).

I hadn't had kscream (not a typo) installed for a while. Decided to give it a whirl 'cause CLEARLY they fixed it this time...
...not

I can't transition to Wayland - too laggy for my taste and I use a software KVM that needs xorg. Although the KVM thing is starting to phase itself out re. my workflow. So maybe I can try Wayland again.

I replaced my failed nVidia card with the RX580 because at the time (3-4 years ago?) video cards weren't crazy yet and it was a solid performer at it's time. About 6 months after I bought it, I could have sold it used for literally 4x what I paid. It has a bitcoin mining BIOS switch on the card that I don't give a squat about but made it super valuable during that time.

[claydoh]

22.04/5.27.5

I only ask because Kubuntu 22.04 doesn't have Plasma 5.27, and you didn't post in the Neon topic. Plasma version is extremely relevant here, the Ubuntu base not so much.

(READ MY SIG PIC WHILE IT'S STILL VISIBLE!!! lol).

What sigpic??

too laggy for my taste

That hasn't been an issue on any of my systems, including the 13 year old i3 laptop or my main 'gaming' PC.

[oshunluvr]

OK, so I tried Wayland again Not laggy like it was, but...

Deal breakers:

1. Text too small to comfortably read on 4k 28" monitors.
2. "Scaling" does not actually scale. It changes resolution resulting in blurry fonts.
3. Changing DPI (the best way to improve 4k visibility) is STILL not supported even though it was identified 4 years ago as a huge deficit.
4. QEMU/KVM VMs do not scale so are unusably small.

Lesser, but noticeable issues:

1. Xmodmap keyboard mods go away (obviously).
2. Some X apps (Synergy) do not have Wayland support yet.

So I guess I have to put up with quirky X11 for the time being.

[claydoh]

https://github.com/rvaiya/keyd

QEMU/KVM VMs do not scale so are unusably small.

The solution to that is to log in to a wayland session on the VM, at least for Plasma systems. For my Ubuntu one, I switched to Xorg to fix it - the default is Wayland for Gnome.
Mine all scale, just only to certain ratios, so I get letter-boxing unless I log in to the vm with the different display method.
My haiku just scales wonderfully, oddly enough. prob as it uses neither xorg or wayland protocols.

So I guess I have to put up with quirky X11 for the time being.

Basically use the system that has fewer quirks for the specific usage.

I have not used xmodmap, at least not directly, but there are some alternatives that exist that at least partially do similar things. I leaned about keyd, which doesn't care about display servers or protocols, from getting into Linux on my on arm-based and x86 chromebooks, to restore or change keyboard functionality on those devices. My keyboard backlight , for example. The configuration seems easy to understand, but does require a daemon be running. Another rabbit-hole to tumble down.of course.