A real room upgraded to 0.1.45 and came up as stock Debian Plasma with
the old Waybar across the top, mako still catching notifications, and a
lock screen on an account that has no password.
The cause was one line, and it was in the lab: the harness handed the
session under test XDG_CONFIG_DIRS by hand, so every result it had ever
produced was a result about a machine somebody had already configured.
On a machine SDDM starts the session through PAM, PAM does not read
/etc/environment.d, and Debian's own plasma-workspace env.sh then set the
variable from scratch — so the classroom's settings directory was not in
the cascade at all. No layout, no lock policy, no Kiosk restrictions.
The settings now arrive the way Plasma delivers them, through a file in
/etc/xdg/plasma-workspace/env. Around that: the look and feel is
immutable on its own key so a stale profile cannot answer for it; the
palette is composed into the package, because naming a colour scheme does
not produce one and the dark bar had been coming from a technician's
hand; the desktop reset converges another desktop's appearance state and
keeps the room's own; and classroom-migrate stops, deactivates and masks
the old shell, including the D-Bus activation that brought mako back
while the panel was down — found only by killing the panel on a migrated
machine.
device.conf loses COMPOSITOR and comes off the hyprland channel, which
would otherwise have handed the room the experiment back.
The lab stops flattering the package: it restarts the machine, lets SDDM
actually autologin, and asks a fresh install and a machine upgraded from
the Hyprland package the same sixty questions. Both answer identically,
twice, and the panel still comes back from eight SIGKILLs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
All 1920×1080, captured with grim from a real running session in the
container lab. See ../classroom-v2-experiment.md.
The desktop
v2-idle-desktop
the idle desktop: the wallpaper, one bar, nothing else
v2-from-package
the same desktop, produced by installing the .deb on a clean machine
v2-dark-bar, v2-light-bar
the bar in both themes
v2-theme-compare
the two, one above the other
v2-testpage
a maximised browser, edge to edge above the bar
v2-wonderink
Wonder Ink as an application, in its own profile
Application state
state-1-closed
both launchers closed: no indicator
state-3-behind
one active (teal), one running behind it (grey)
state-4-minimized
minimised — measured identical to behind, which is why minimise was removed as a route
state-5-restored
back
v2-both-apps
both applications, one button each, from the packaged install
labelled-tasks
the labelled task manager, evaluated and rejected: it shows changing page titles rather than application names
Parent Call
pc-icon-vs-notifications
the Parent Call mark beside Plasma's notification bell — the comparison that decided it
pc-mark
the mark at 32, 48 and 64px, beside the two marks it replaced
pc-panel
the whole bar: Parent Call left, applications centre, status right
pc-ready
the card, ready, in approval mode
pc-waiting
waiting for a volunteer to approve
pc-sent
Sent to sanctuary — never "displayed"
pc-rejected
not approved, offering Try again
pc-off
the coordinator's mode is off
pc-nobroker
the broker is unreachable
pc-typed
a name in the field
icon-candidates-2
sixteen Breeze person icons at real panel size, none of which meant Parent Call
DVD
dvd-panel
DVD in the row with the applications, out of the status area
dvd-cover
the DVD launcher's tooltip on the packaged install
v2-dvd-overlay, v2-layershell
the loading cover: a gtk-layer-shell overlay under KWin
Windows
v2-secondary-window
a window a page opened, floating over an untouched browser, with its own close button
v2-print-dialog
the system print dialog, over the page that raised it, offering only Elmer
v2-fullscreen
fullscreen video: the whole display, panel covered
v2-layershell
a gtk-layer-shell overlay under KWin — what the DVD loading cover is made of
v2-notification-crop
a notification card, top right
Administration
admin-terminal
the maintenance terminal, opened by its chord's action
admin-terminal-bar
the bar with the terminal open, and after closing it: a task button while it runs, no launcher ever
Reliability and lockdown
recovery-after-8-kills
the panel after eight consecutive SIGKILLs
recovery-after-kwin-kill
the session after KWin was killed twice; the application window survived
recover-panel
the bar rebuilt from the layout script after its configuration was deleted
lock-desktop-rmb
right-clicking the wallpaper: no menu
lock-panel-rmb
right-clicking the bar: no menu
lock-krunner
KRunner asked for, and not there
The migration
migration-before
what a real room got when it upgraded: stock Debian Plasma, kickoff, a pager, a system tray, the Debian wallpaper. Reproduced in the lab by taking one line out of the harness.
migration-after
the same machine after the fix — a Hyprland-era install, upgraded, rebooted
migration-after-bar
its bar, at the size a teacher sees it
migration-parent-call
Parent Call on the migrated machine, saying it cannot reach the church network rather than pretending it can
theme-light-live, theme-light-after-logout
the room's own light theme, and the same room after logging out and back in. The first attempt at this pass lost it.
Failures, kept
—
keyboard injection never reached the nested session, so every interaction in this experiment was driven by the pointer. It is why Parent Call has never had a real key pressed into it, and why that is the first bench test.
m-closed, m-minimized
the pair whose pixels were sampled to show that Plasma draws minimised and closed differently, but minimised and behind the same
