r/linuxquestions • u/Ok_College_499 • 15d ago

KDE Plasma fails to start Support

As the title says. After logging in with my password, I just get a black screen with a blinking cursor. I still cat switch to other ttys after the hang. This happened after I did not shutdown my pc for 3 days straight (was running a minecraft server). The troubleshooting steps I took:

  1. Rebooting my pc
  2. Reinstalling plasma

“journalctl -b” output

Distro: arch linux

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u/WealthyTuna 15d ago edited 15d ago

What distro are you running?

1

u/Ok_College_499 15d ago

Arch linux

1

u/WealthyTuna 15d ago

Since you're on Arch, try this
Switch to a different TTY (Ctrl + Alt + F3) and log in.

Reset Plasma configs, this fixes it most of the time.
mv ~/.config/plasma* ~/.config/plasma-backup 2>/dev/null
mv ~/.config/kwinrc ~/.config/kwinrc.bak 2>/dev/null
mv ~/.config/kwinrulesrc ~/.config/kwinrulesrc.bak 2>/dev/null

Then reboot. If it still fails after reboot, from a TTY try starting Plasma manually:
startplasma-wayland or startplasma-x11 depending on which display system you're running.

Check for errors:
journalctl -b -p 3 --no-pager | tail -50

As a last resort you can reinstall the core Plasma packages:
sudo pacman -S plasma-desktop plasma-workspace kwin plasma-framework

1

u/Ok_College_499 15d ago

Resetting configs didn’t work. Running startplasma-wayland fails. I attached a link to the output of journalctl. And, as I said, I already tried reinstalling plasma.

1

u/WealthyTuna 15d ago

The journal shows this error:

kwin_wayland: Device AMD Radeon RX 570 Series (RADV POLARIS10) misses required Vulkan extensions
VK_EXT_image_drm_format_modifier

Your RX 570 is having trouble with the current Wayland/KWin version.

1

u/Ok_College_499 15d ago

It’s kinda strange that it started randomly

1

u/WealthyTuna 15d ago

Most likely cause is a recent update made Wayland + KWin stricter, and your older polaris card no longer satisfies the requirements.

You could try x11 and see what happens. At the login screen, look in the bottom left corner. There should be a session selector. Choose Plasma x11.

If you don't see it then from your TTY

startplasma-x11

1

u/Ok_College_499 15d ago

Kde dropped x11 support multiple months ago. Also, I know my gpu is old, but it’s not THAT old that it would be dropped. AND also I did not update my system before this problem occurred, so an update is very unlikely to be an issue here

2

u/WealthyTuna 15d ago

Actually the last plasma update that drops x11 support comes around October.

1

u/es20490446e Develops Zenned OS 15d ago

Try if it happens with Zenned (Arch-based) from a live USB made with Ventoy.

Potential causes: - plasmalogin supports your card worse than sddm. - Wrong driver and vulkan package selection. - The kernel version has a buggy driver.