I have a new Asus Vivobook with a ScreenPad. This is a touchpad which interacts with the active screen and sort of acts like a dual screen. The BIOS configuration has no way to turn this back to a normal touchpad. Supposedly F6 or Fn-F6 should toggle it, and does in Windows, but not in Linux, which is annoying and unexpected because laptop Fn keys usually operate independently of the OS. A fresh cauldron install on this machine appears to use Wayland rather than X (xinput list reports "no running X server"), and switching systemd display-manager to SDDM gives a split screen DM which is unusable. The right side of the screen shows the right side of a normal SDDM display, but the left side shows a distorted version of the display which is on the ScreenPad and which overlays the input fields of the normal SDDM display. I have no way that I can find to disable Wayland and revert to X, so I can't tell whether the problem lies with Wayland or with the fact that the ScreenPad is active, but I suspect Wayland with SDDM because GDM does not exhibit this behavior. If we're going to unconditionally use Wayland, then we should make sure that it works with all the DMs we support, especially SDDM which is supposed to be our default. If the problem is no or insufficient Linux support for ScreenPads, then Wayland needs to disable them until support is available.
The h/w configuration you describe is weird. Can you please post the O/P of: $ inxi -SMGxx to summarise it. You do not say what ISO you installed, nor what desktop(s). We do not use Wayland by default at all except for Gnome (which offers a 'Gnome on X11' fallback). I think you really have to do something to get Plasma to use it - and that is only experimental. I am not sure that Wayland is operative for the display manager. You cite GDM as OK; can you install & try LXDM and LightDM ? As for SDDM, it is the default display manager in systems with Plasma - again, I think.
CC: (none) => lewyssmith
It's a network install, not an ISO. I always install all desktops (Custom with all boxes checked), and apparently GNOME forces GDM as the DM. I usually manually switch it back to SDDM. I'll try with the other DMs. [root@ftglap ~]# inxi -SMGxx System: Host: ftglap Kernel: 5.10.4-desktop-4.mga8 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 Console: tty 5 wm: kwin_x11 DM: GDM, LightDM, LXDM Distro: Mageia 8 mga8 Machine: Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: VivoBook_ASUSLaptop X532FLC_S532FL v: 1.0 serial: L8N0CX06N633333 Mobo: ASUSTeK model: X532FLC v: 1.0 serial: L833NBCX008E07MB UEFI: American Megatrends v: X532FLC.304 date: 12/18/2019 Graphics: Device-1: Intel UHD Graphics vendor: ASUSTeK driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:9b41 Device-2: NVIDIA GP108M [GeForce MX250] vendor: ASUSTeK driver: N/A bus ID: 02:00.0 chip ID: 10de:1d13 Device-3: IMC Networks USB2.0 HD IR UVC WebCam type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus ID: 1-5:2 chip ID: 13d3:56cb Display: server: Mageia X.org 1.20.10 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: intel,v4l resolution: 1: 1920x1080~60Hz 2: 1080x2160~50Hz s-dpi: 96 OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics (CML GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.3.2 direct render: Yes [root@ftglap ~]#
Thanks for that background information. (In reply to Frank Griffin from comment #2) > It's a network install, not an ISO. I always install all desktops (Custom > with all boxes checked), and apparently GNOME forces GDM as the DM. I > usually manually switch it back to SDDM. I'll try with the other DMs. Yes, I had forgotten: a new peculiarity of Mageia 8 is to use GDM as the default display manager if Gnome is also installed! But I do not think that implies Wayland for other desktops. To find out: $ loginctl SESSION UID USER SEAT TTY 3 ... 1 sessions listed. $ loginctl show-session <from previous command> -p Type Type=x11 (in my case). or: $ echo $WAYLAND_DISPLAY which prints nothing if wayland is not used. or (in my case): $ echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE x11
Once inside Plasma, I get the same results as you. The question is what GDM is using.
(In reply to Frank Griffin from comment #4) > Once inside Plasma, I get the same results as you. The question is what GDM > is using. By default, on Intel and AMD video chipsets, GDM uses wayland session. On Nvidia, wayland is blacklisted, so it uses a X11 session. Your hardware is another Optimus-like system with a dual graphic-chipset : one Intel (from processor) and a Nvidia one. Technically, when such system is detected by the display manager, it should use X11 session. If Wayland is the preferred chosen one, I invite you to report upstream back to GDM/GNOME developers for screenpad support.
CC: (none) => ouaurelien
Hi Aurelian, You miss the point. I don't care whether ScreenPad works on GNOME or any other DE. What bothers me is that the presence of ScreenPad breaks SDDM, which is supposed to be our default. If the presence of a ScreenPad device causes our existing stuff to break, we've got a problem.
I think we know where we are. You install mutiple desktops (so do I); because Gnome is present, GDM is the original display manager; but all the others are available as well. You switch to SDDM, and see the trouble you report. Having followed the same path, without no special video setup, no problem. So I doubt that the presence of GDM per se is the factor. Since double video controllers are relatively common, can you ask on QA-discuss - if you are subscribed; I think you are (I am not, for e-mail volume reasons) - whether anybody else sees the same problem? Can you for interest try the other display managers (I know, it is painful, you normally have to re-boot). Assigning anyway to the KDE group.
Source RPM: SDDM => sddm-0.19.0-3.mga8.src.rpmAssignee: bugsquad => kdeSummary: SDDM doesn't work with Wayland/ScreenPad, GDM does => SDDM doesn't work ScreenPad, GDM does
All of the others (xdm, lxdm, lightdm) work fine. The problem is only with SDDM.