I recently noticed a new icon in the notification tray. When I click on it, it brings up a window titled "Plasma Renderer — System Settings Module". It also says "These settings adjust the QtQuick settings used by Plasma. Only adjust if you know what you are doing."



But… I don't know what I'm doing. I clicked the help, and the documentation is missing. Hovering over the tray icon says "Software Renderer In Use; Rendering may be degraded". Should I be doing anything about this?

I'm using Arch Linux. I'm not sure if relevant, but I'm using a NVIDIA card with the proprietary drivers. I also recently upgraded from Plasma 5.13.3 to 5.13.4, although I'm not sure if that is related.

It is: 'KCM for adjusting QtQuick Rendering in Plasma' - https://phabricator.kde.org/D7934

Summary

Does what you imagine it would.
It's akin to KWin's compositor settings, designed to be hidden away and
not used by 99%.

Can be started from the Krunner with the command 'plasma renderer'.

Used when the developer asks: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=347772#c31

At here the default is full auto:

Thanks for that information. However, I still don't exactly understand what it does. What are the implications of each settings, and what settings are ideal for the end user?

Interested too.

But… I don't know what I'm doing

Then why are you running with software rendering? It's not like this message magically appears out of nowhere. Edit: Just read you're using nvidia. Yeah, when the driver breaks after an upgrade or something we fall back to software rendering to keep the desktop working.

what settings are ideal for the end user?

Leaving them alone and keeping everything on "Automatic".

Ok, automatic is fine Thanks!!

kbroulik wrote:It's not like this message magically appears out of nowhere. Edit: Just read you're using nvidia.

Haha… yes, it does magically appear out of nowhere!

kbroulik wrote:Leaving them alone and keeping everything on "Automatic".

Thanks. I've been doing that just to shut the notification up, and haven't noticed anything obviously bad happening.