Mikeserv Support Forum

Plasma 6.2.0 default wallpaper looks like this:

Fuck, that looks as stupid as ever. In fact KDE looks stupid out of the box, I hate the default look, especially 6. I guess most people like stupid things, so fugly is always the default for everything. (except Cosmic)

I never understood why most environments have such hideous default themes, it's nearly as ugly as Windows 7 Starter Edition which didn't have Aero.

Indeed, Windows 7 Starter Edition (saw it on some low end systems like netbooks) was horrible looking.

I liked Aero Glass, especially with a nice wallpaper theme. I made my own theme, it had controls to adjust all kinds of things (colours, transparency etc.) and save them in a theme pack file.

Windows 8 was pollution.

It's almost as if they tried to make it as boring and ugly as possible. It couldn't be much more boring or ugly than that.

I have this in my Arch VM now, I got it from pacman -Syu before I started. (I use that VM to build Firefox for the old computer... need vanilla toolchains because mine are built for alderlake and built in compiler runtimes break it for older CPUs, even with -march=nehalem or plain jane x86-64 specified)

It seems to run well. I have some hardware acceleration through virtio/virgl, enough for desktop compositing, card game animations and other light GL usage.

I'm spared the fugliness though, as I already have it configured

P.S. I just noticed a widget I sure don't like. A clipboard widget that seems to store a record of every copy/paste operation I've ever done, including both text and files in the file manager. That has to go (not just hide, but gone so it can't track that stuff)

Grogan wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 9:28 pm I have this in my Arch VM now, I got it from pacman -Syu before I started. (I use that VM to build Firefox for the old computer... need vanilla toolchains because mine are built for alderlake and built in compiler runtimes break it for older CPUs, even with -march=nehalem or plain jane x86-64 specified)

It seems to run well. I have some hardware acceleration through virtio/virgl, enough for desktop compositing, card game animations and other light GL usage.

I'm spared the fugliness though, as I already have it configured

P.S. I just noticed a widget I sure don't like. A clipboard widget that seems to store a record of every copy/paste operation I've ever done, including both text and files in the file manager. That has to go (not just hide, but gone so it can't track that stuff)

I put if on my tumbleweed VM today just to try it. Haven't used plasma for a long time.Seemed a bit buggy for a while but smoothed out nicely now. Runs very nice. I'm using virtio but couldn't get 3D acceleration to work. Even as is, it's fine for the stuff you mentioned. Very slightly dodgy on full screen1080p youtube videos, but no problems.
I do have that little clipboard widget too. I'll leave it alone, those things have come in handy at times.

I updated Arch on my primary machine last night and got it. So far so good. I've been leaving it in Wayland, it's much more stable than when Plasma 6.0 first came out, at that time I went back to X11 until 6.1.0.

There are a few things you have to do to get acceleration working.

Firstly, you're using AMD so there may be a BIOS setting to enable the IOMMU (it may be enabled with an "auto" setting by default). Those CPUs actually have a real IOMMU unit. You won't need anything on the kernel command line like I do with Intel (intel_iommu=on iommu=pt)

Secondly, your mesa in the guest OS needs to have virgl (virtual gl) enabled at compile time. I don't know about SuSE, it might be a separate package. The host OS doesn't use virgl.

Now, there are two places you have to enable this in Virt Manager (assuming you're using that)

Firstly, under "Display Spice" you need to be using the Spice server and have the OpenGL box checked. Your video card should be in that drop list.


Secondly, under "Video Virtio" you need to select the Virtio driver and have the 3d acceleration box checked. (I'm guessing you have those enabled)

It won't be fantastic, but you should have some 3D acceleration.

Thanks for that Grogan, yes Virt manager, think I had all the boxes checked properly but I'll go through it again later and double check the bios setting.
I'll let you know it I get it working.

all the right boxes were checked.
IOMMU was set to auto in the bios. I changed it to enabled.
I'll put a screenshot below of what I have in MESA out of the box. I don't know if what I need is installed. (green checks)
This behavior happens in any VM though, so I'm wondering if it has something to do with the host OS (I'm using an NVIDIA card)
I've tried some things but as soon as I set open gl and 3D , the vm runs, but black screen.
Like I say it runs fine without 3d acceleration, so not a big deal. I don't really use these Linux VMs for anything I need. Just play around and try to get them running as close to real install as possible.
I only mentioned this one because I know you don't mind a mystery...

By rights, that's a Gallium driver (virgl) so it's probably in Mesa-gallium

My guess would be the Nvidia driver as everything else checks out. I think you do need Mesa on the host (though not using the virgl driver on the host) for virgl to work as it uses the host's libgl and libEGL at the back end. The Nvidia driver doesn't use Mesa (unless you're using the Mesa Nouveau driver). It's a bit tricky as you're not totally virtualizing your GPU.

Thanks G. Yep that's probably where the glitch is. I'm gonna leave my Nvidia driver where it is.

I'll just remind you that you probably should set your IOMMU bios setting back to Auto. You don't necessarily want your hardware programmed that way for normal use.

Myself, I add those intel_iommu parameters to the kernel command line (in grub.cfg) and reboot when I want to use it, then I take them out again and shut down and power right off at the PSU to clear hardware state/registers. I don't want my hardware programmed that way.

Grogan wrote: Mon Oct 14, 2024 7:52 pm I'll just remind you that you probably should set your IOMMU bios setting back to Auto. You don't necessarily want your hardware programmed that way for normal use.

Done.. I'm happy to take your word for it. thanks again

LOL... I got thinking about that. "Auto" probably just means "if the installed CPU supports it". So for you Auto = enabled. I don't know for sure, but it's a setting you changed unnecessarily (not going to use it) so it's prudent to change it back to what it was.

I was thinking I could probably disable it altogether as from the little bit I read about it, it might not matter for me as I always give my VMs lots more memory than they need and I only run one at a time, but as you said, leave it where it's been since the beginning.

btw, I see a bit of typical kde plasma nonsense on that VM, especially when editing desktop borders. a couple of times the whole screen flipped upside down for some reason when changing the position and the border disappeared all together once and I had to reboot it to get it back. It seemed to have settled down now. Probably me, I've never had much stability with KDE.

Maybe some stupid gesture or shortcut key or something. Sounds like xrandr settings at play ("resize and rotate")

I hate shortcut keys while fumbling, but "gestures" are even more of an abomination.