Hi, I have a very small (but still disturbing) problem with my installation of Solus plasma. Everything works perfectly fine, but sometimes, like 10% of the time, instead of having a normal start-up of the PC and watching the open session with password screen of KDE Plasma, I'm stuck with a black screen where I have a black cursor for the mouse that I can move, but I can't write anything and clicking with the mouse does nothing. Only solution is to turn off the PC manually, and to restart. Once I even had 2 consecutive black screen with black cursor, and I had then to restart twice to be able to open my session.

I precise this has nothing to do with updates of the system. It's totally random (or at least it seems).

Has anyone already encountered that issue? Is there a way to solve it so it can't happen again?
Can it be because I have a Nvidia card and Nvidia can sometimes be quite tricky to work correctly on Linux (I have the proprietary driver installed and my card is a Ge-Force 3080). If you need more informations, here the informations of my system:


Thanks.

(I precise, if necessary, I already searched if others encountered same problems, and it happened, but I only saw users who got that problem like permanently. What is weird with my PC is really that randomization. I'm not sure if that's not a different problem then...)

  • Please do see if you can reproduce the black screen with the G915 keyboard attached. If it reliably happens with the keyboard, that's valuable information. It should be reported to KDE.

    You should still open a bug on the KDE tracker. Solus packages KDE Plasma, but we don't develop it. We aren't able to fix bugs in the Plasma code that might cause this.

It's properly the combination of NVidia and wayland. Try log into Xorg and see if the problem persist.

    SethStorm666 I'm not sure it could be that, because the black screen, when it happens, happens before I can choose between Wayland & X11 to open my session.

        Akelun Oh, it's before.

        You could try Nvidia beta driver (v570), it's in the repositories. I'm not to much help here as I''m having a Radeon card. But you can give the info about card and driver by;

        inxi -Ga

          Oh? You think the NVidia Beta driver could solve that problem?
          You seem to think like me the NVidia driver may be the cause of that random black screen like me I notice, anyway. ^^

          I typed your command, and here's the result:

          (Text version):

          Graphics:
          Device-1: NVIDIA GA102 [GeForce RTX 3080] vendor: Gigabyte driver: nvidia
          v: 565.77 non-free: 550/565.xx+ status: current (as of 2025-01;
          EOL~2026-12-xx) arch: Ampere code: GAxxx process: TSMC n7 (7nm)
          built: 2020-2023 pcie: gen: 4 speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: none
          off: HDMI-A-1,HDMI-A-2 empty: DP-1,DP-2,DP-3 bus-ID: 2b:00.0
          chip-ID: 10de:2206 class-ID: 0300
          Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.21.1.15 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.5
          compositor: kwin_wayland driver: gpu: nvidia,nvidia-nvswitch
          d-rect: 6000x1440 display-ID: 0
          Monitor-1: HDMI-A-1 pos: right model: Kamvas 24plus serial: demoset-1 0
          built: 2021 res: mode: 2560x1440 hz: 60 scale: 100% (1) dpi: 123 gamma: 1.2
          size: 527x296mm (20.75x11.65") diag: 604mm (23.8") ratio: 16:9 modes:
          max: 2560x1440 min: 640x480
          Monitor-2: HDMI-A-2 pos: primary,left model: LG (GoldStar) HDR WQHD
          serial: 007NTGYF0087 built: 2020 res: mode: 3440x1440 hz: 85 scale: 100% (1)
          dpi: 107 gamma: 1.2 size: 820x346mm (32.28x13.62") diag: 888mm (34.9")
          modes: max: 3440x1440 min: 640x480
          API: EGL v: 1.5 hw: drv: nvidia platforms: device: 0 drv: nvidia gbm:
          drv: nvidia surfaceless: drv: nvidia wayland: drv: nvidia x11: drv: nvidia
          API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 vendor: nvidia v: 565.77 glx-v: 1.4
          direct-render: yes renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080/PCIe/SSE2
          memory: 9.77 GiB display-ID: :1.0
          API: Vulkan v: 1.3.290 layers: 12 device: 0 type: discrete-gpu
          name: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 driver: N/A device-ID: 10de:2206
          surfaces: xcb,xlib,wayland device: 1 type: cpu name: llvmpipe (LLVM
          19.1.6 256 bits) driver: N/A device-ID: 10005:0000
          surfaces: xcb,xlib,wayland
          Info: Tools: api: clinfo, eglinfo, glxinfo, vulkaninfo
          de: kscreen-console,kscreen-doctor gpu: nvidia-settings,nvidia-smi
          wl: wayland-info x11: xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr

          4 days later

          Edit: I just realized your system is not up to date anymore. You still have Plasma 6.2.5, and the stable repo was updated to 6.3.2. First, update your system fully. If the problem persists, read on.

          If you haven't already, please see if there's an open issue on the KDE bug tracker. If you are stuck at that black screen before the password field appears, SDDM (that controls the login screen) may have crashed.

          You might also see if there's a crash for plasmashell or sddm in coredumpctl --reverse. If so, we can help you get more information to use in a bug report to KDE.

          Let us know how it goes.

          It was 6 days ago (so before the latest Friday's Solus update) and I applied the update since and am now in KDE 6.3.2.

          I didn't find my issue in the KDE bug tracker. I have to say, typing keywords lead to a windows of results quite huge and there's a lot to check... XD
          But after searching for a bit, I didn't manage to find something close to my issue.

          Btw... It's been a while since I didn't get a black screen (maybe switching from KDE 6.2.5 to 6.3.2 fixed that... but since it happens randomly, it's maybe too early to confirm). HOWEVER, when I booted my PC this morning, I have the sessions window which were in a very low resolution on one of my 2 screen (it was a normal resolution on the main screen though). It felt really weird, but the problem was fixed once I opened the session.
          Oh! And I type the command you suggested, it didn't show any crash messages.

          Hi! I think I understood... I am not 100% sure though, so... maybe someone would be able to confirm if that's possible... But I have a "Logitech G915" keyboard, which is a wireless keyboard with a battery and... I have the feeling that the "random black screen" before the login window happens only when I start my computer with the keyboard wired to the computer (because I recharge its battery).

          I don't know if that could be the reason (I could try to start and restart with and without the keyboard wired several times, but I'd prefer to avoid restarting my computer regularly to test the theory), but since I opened the topic, I just encountered ONE black screen... and I noticed it was coincidentally when my keyboard was wired... Of course, I don't remember if my keyboard was also wired the times before I open that topic.

          6 days later

          Please do see if you can reproduce the black screen with the G915 keyboard attached. If it reliably happens with the keyboard, that's valuable information. It should be reported to KDE.

          You should still open a bug on the KDE tracker. Solus packages KDE Plasma, but we don't develop it. We aren't able to fix bugs in the Plasma code that might cause this.

          Hi,

          Well, I had another black screen before the sessions screen, and my keyboard wasn't wired. So... It was a wrong feeling, and I still don't know what can cause it... =/

          However, I have to say it really seems to happen less and less frequently after each update. Now, it is very rare when it happens, so... That's an issue I can deal with I think.

          I'll maybe report it to KDE, but... it's quite hard to explain. I mean... the only thing I can really say is that it happens very randomly. XD