I got a couple of niggling issues with plasma: first after some considerable time - usually more than a month, new programs opened via application menu stop getting focus and open in background. I tried to fix it by restarting plasma with "kquitapp5 plasmashell; kstart5 plasmashell", it restores normal focus behaviour but creates another issue: I have a single full screen height autohiding panel to the left of my screen, and after restart the space used by the panel when visible becomes unusable - even when the panel is hidden windows just disappear in this stripe. Tried toggling panel autohide off and back on but it didn't help. Is there a way to restart plasma without running into the hidden stripe issue or avoid the focus issue? Plasma 5.12.9 (ubuntu 18.04).

why not log out and back in again? That is usually the best way of restarting Plasma.

FWIW: do you use Ubuntu instead of Kubuntu using Plasma? I suggest switching to Kubuntu instead. The new 20.04 LTS also comes with a much more recent Plasma, yours is fairly old now

Hi!

Perhaps it is not plasma what's making problems but the window manager (KWin). You can replace it by

Code: Select all

kwin_x11 --replace  # or
kwin_wayland  # has to be killed before new start as it is the session itself

Also have a look at the log files to track the issues and solve the underlying problem(s) first.

Bad idea to use Wayland, he is using a far too old Plasma for this to work well.
How about updating to Kubutnu 20.04 first? It is also LTS and you can upgrade from 18.04 smoothly.

Mamarok wrote:why not log out and back in again?

I want to avoid closing running programs.

Mamarok wrote:FWIW: do you use Ubuntu instead of Kubuntu using Plasma?

I use kubuntu.

for this works:
kquitapp5 plasmashell
kstart5 plasmashell