The screensaver would possibly be an explanation. Also check the configuration of Powerdevil, which may be trying to turn your screen off.

I also wasn't aware the VGA/VESA drivers supported any size above 1024x768. It may be the advanced visuals are causing the system to run out of video memory, resulting in items not being displayed. Try reducing the resolution of your screen. This would explain why XFCE works.

bcooksley wrote:The screensaver would possibly be an explanation. Also check the configuration of Powerdevil, which may be trying to turn your screen off.

I also wasn't aware the VGA/VESA drivers supported any size above 1024x768. It may be the advanced visuals are causing the system to run out of video memory, resulting in items not being displayed. Try reducing the resolution of your screen. This would explain why XFCE works.

Powerdevil must be a SuSE program, because I'm pretty certain that Slackware doesn't have it. Just checked. I don't have any such beast. But I think I know what you're talking about. Right now, I've gone back to running XFCE, and am enjoying a pain-free desktop. If I feel like trying KDE later, I'll try and check the feature you're talking about. But for right now, I'm going to enjoy not having to deal with this!

Xavian-Anderson Macpherson
Shingoshi

Edit: I just checked systemsettings while in XFCE, and found that I had "Enable display power management" set. I've unset it and will try this later. But the thing is, I had each of the options separately disabled.

Powerdevil was shipped alongside KDE 4.2. Its configuration can be found in System Settings > Advanced > Power Management.

bcooksley wrote:Powerdevil was shipped alongside KDE 4.2. Its configuration can be found in System Settings > Advanced > Power Management.

You're right. But it's complaining about an issue with D-Bus or Powerdevil not being started. Not surprising, since I've had other issues with D-Bus as well.

Xavian-Anderson Macpherson
Shingoshi

Does a new user behave differently?

Also, can you try a lower screen resolution? ( 1024x768 for instance )

I finally just gave up and went on to use XFCE. I figure I don't need this headache any more. I'll wait until Slackware has formally upgraded to KDE4, and all of their packages reflect that change, before I try this again. If it's still a problem, we can deal with that later.

Xavian-Anderson Macpherson
Shingoshi

This is something that I've posted in #xfce and #kde.

This is REAL funny! I just started plasma in XFCE!! I'm running the KDE panel now, instead of XFCE's.

I'll wait a while to see if this thing crashes like it has before. But simply doing Alt-F2 in XFCE, and typing "plasma" quickly replaced my panel with the one from KDE. If this works here, I may go back and try KDE again.

Shingoshi

Well I went back to trying KDE again. And after many hours, the panel just went blank again. Creating a new would be a pain because of how complex my desktop is. Maybe that's not an issue. But I still feel like it's a pain. So I will likely go back to using XFCE and ditch KDE.

Shingoshi

After a long time of not seeing this happen, I just came to my computer to find that the situation had returned. I am now using KDE-4.2.3 on (upgraded to) Slackware64.

Shingoshi

Are you running SuperKaramba seperately ( as a process ) or just loading Superkaramba applets in Plasma?
You should not be running SuperKaramba seperately, it could be causing the issue.

I've just happened upon this thread, I experienced something very similar on my system and believe it is caused by desktop effects.

Desktop effects were not enabled on my system by default so I went and enabled them and after that things started to go wrong, over a day or so it got gradually worse with my desktop and panel disappearing and reappearing; my system was unusable.

The fix was to switch to a login shell and disable desktop effects by editing the file kwinrc (you will need to edit the file as root).

On my system it is located in .kde/share/config

In the section headed [Compositing] change Enabled=true to read false. Quit and save changes then reboot.

After this everything was back to normal.

I think someone found a permanent solution in this post (but I haven't tried it yet):

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.p ... =3102748.0

Nick

Can someone please try and reproduce this on Trunk? I haven't been able to. If they are, please report it as a bug at bugs.kde.org if it hasn't already been filed.

NickElliott wrote:I think someone found a permanent solution in this post (but I haven't tried it yet):

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.p ... =3102748.0

An update - I tried the advice in the above thread, unfortunately it didn't make a difference so I will continue to run without desktop effects.