Hello, I have a laptop with with nvidia graphic card. I am using the built-in nouveau driver. First I just started the laptop by itself, set up all the panels and widgets as I want it. I have one "primary" panel by default that has the taskbar & system tray.

Then I connect an external monitor via VGA. KDE recognized it, I set it up as multi-head. The external monitor is on the right side of the primary (the laptop screen). I add one panel with some icons only on the external monitor, while my "primary" panel (that has the taskbar and system tray) still on the laptop screen. All is well.

Now one would expect that if one unplug the external monitor then whatever got set up on the laptop screen remains. One would be sorely disappointed. Once I unplug the VGA: 1. The "primary" panel, that default KDE panel that one always started with, that has taskbar & system tray is gone. I don't know where, I can't find it. 2. The window of any application (konsole, xterm, etc) that I start is now located off screen somewhere. I can't move it, I can't do anything. I can see that the application was started (it shows in the list of apps with ALT + TAB), but they are off screen somewhere. So even if I want to try to fix things with system-settings, I can't access system settings window.

The only way to restore this is to connect the VGA again. So now the whole settings is broken if I don't have an external monitor connected.

Has anyone experienced this ? I vaguely remember something like this with F15 when I tried to set up my desktop with multi-head. It's rather disappointing that it's still broken (I eventually gave up and use proprietary nvidia driver there with my F15).

Is this video driver related or KDE related ?

Thanks. AC