Updated: September 18, 2026
Back in 2023, I got myself a Slimbook Executive, a lovely 14-inch laptop with a spectacular form factor, sweet look and feel, a bright crisp display, and lovely, lovely audio. This machine worked impeccably for a while, and then, various updates, mostly the firmware that I didn't ask for, messed it up. The system package manager brought in new firmware, which introduced suspend & resume issues. But not what you think. No. My laptop randomly decides to sleep, regardless of what's happening on the screen. Since, the problem remained, lurking, and kernel patches never quite managed to fix it. But no better firmware, oh no. The crappy version was the last one.
Since, I've written no less than 14 reports on my use of this machine, one per quarter more or less, detailing my escapades, my good fun and my woes. Lately, I've had some nice fortune with this laptop, and I'm truly hoping this would be it, the tranquility that I seek. But as the astute of you already have guessed, judging by the article's title, things ain't gonna be spiffy this time around. Let's proceed.
The random suspend & resume issues are back in abundance
I should keep my mouth shut, it seems. Being so optimistic last time hurt my karma, or something. As it happens, in the last few weeks, I've experienced a whole bunch of extra-annoying instances of this outstanding issue. And they happened at the most inopportune moments, of course.
- The laptop suspended itself in the middle of an update, while apt was running, patching both the kernel and the firmware. Luckily, the process later completed without problems. And no, the new updates did not resolve the problem.
- The laptop suspended itself TWICE while I was typing a password for a webmail service.
- Then, two more suspends, later on the same day.
Makes the usage rather silly and, in a way, almost untenable ...
KCalc has a massive bug
This is how it goes. Open KCalc, use it. Leave it open. An hour or two later, you will notice your laptop being sluggish. You check the system resources, and you will find the plasmashell process running hot at some 90-100% CPU. Kill KCalc, and this goes away. Fully repeatable. Not sure if this has ever been reported, or if it's going to be fixed, but it's a silly problem. Memory leak, CPU cycles leak, whatever. Very silly and not a good look for the Plasma desktop.
The "modern" Wireless network authentication
Back in the day, when you wanted to connect to a Wi-Fi access point, you'd click on it, and Plasma would show you the password prompt in the center of your screen. But this wasn't modern or ergonomic enough, so the KDE team aped Windows, and now, you input your password in the bottom-right corner. Inconvenient and ugly, and pointless, as the UI moves under your fingers (a big ergonomic no-no), plus the list of access point constantly gets updated, by signal strength (another no-no).
What does this mean in practice? When I wanted to connect to an access point halfway doing the list, it took me something like 10 attempts to succeed just writing my password, because the list would keep jumping, and the input field focus would get lost. TL;DR: Here we have yet another example of pointless modern anti-design that goes against simple logic.
Huge problems with power, battery charging
Oh oh. Well, remember how my Titan needed a new charger? Well, the Executive, at almost the same time as the other machine, roughly three years since purchase, suddenly began showing weird symptoms. I would plug the charger in, it would ping correctly, and stay connected, but then, when I'd consult the system tray applet, it would read "Not charging", then switch to "Charging" after a minute or two.
I assumed this is a similar issue to what I experienced with the Titan. But then, check this out. Luckily, I happen to have a spare charger, so I connected that one. That one complained, too! I rebooted the machine, but this didn't help. Plus, even with the charger disconnected, the system tray icon was showing as if the device was charging! The mouse hover-on text read along the lines of "battery charger is not powerful enough". But, but, but, it was not connected at that point, at all. I guess this was a message from before, and the system had somehow not cleared it, or decided to show it at the right time. I also couldn't screenshot the tooltip, because Plasma no longer lets you grab that. Used to be possible. Go figure.
upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0
native-path: BAT0
vendor: OEM
model: standard
serial: 00001
power supply: yes
...
percentage: 51%
capacity: 90,625%
technology: lithium-ion
icon-name: 'battery-good-charging-symbolic'
History (charge):
1787429126 51,000 charging
History (rate):
1787429216 0,000 pending-charge
1787429186 7,895 charging
1787429156 7,368 charging
I powered the machine off, waited a minute, turned it on again. Now, the right battery icon was showing. I charged the laptop, and the process was quick, without any hiccups or occasional disconnects. The next day, I tried again, and I got the weird "charging" "not charging" combo.
I wondered what might be causing this? Did my connector go bad? It didn't seem to be the case. But then, I also had an external DVD player connected to the laptop at that moment, via USB. As soon as I unplugged this device, the charging status went to normal, and the charge time, which read 8-9 hours at this point, shortened immediately to about 40-50 minutes. Apparently, the external device was drawing so much power, the laptop couldn't both power it on and reliably charge its battery at the same time. Weird, and annoying, but at least, it's possible to work around it relatively easily. The ironic part in this whole story is that, back in the day, when laptops came with CD/DVD trays built-in, this would never have been an issue.
Still, there's more to this, a LOT more, so stay tuned for a dedicated article.
Crashes
Quite a few actually. Plasma shell crashed at least twice. WINE wouldn't run, until I manually reconfigured the packages. I guess it's a conflict combo between what comes from the repos, what comes from WINEHQ, and such. This also makes me nervous, as my sweet SketchUp tweaks might stop working some day.
Good stuff, perhaps?
APART from all the issues and problems, everything is fine. Yes. The printing still works, correctly, so the issues brought up in report 9 seem resolved. The laptop works well, all things considered. It's fast and sprightly, just as it was three years back, which is a good thing. I'm using the system quite extensively, so I'm bound to discover stuff. Then again, there should be fewer bugs. Really.
Then, let me tell you about a couple of really nice Plasma features. One, when you're renaming files in Dolphin, if you're in Edit mode (F2), and you use arrow keys (up or down), it will jump to the next file, and stay in Edit mode, so you can quickly move through the files. Two, mouse scroll works for inactive windows, too. So say, if you have Firefox in the background, and you want to move up or down a Web page, the mouse action will work without clicking, so you can retain focus in the active window. These are tiny but nice things.
Conclusion
All in all, the Executive is a very nice system. But with the suspend & resume issue in place, it's hard to rely on it for time-sensitive operations, and I need to keep an eye on the whole charger situation. Now, it's quite possible that the original charger has also gone a-wonk and that connecting a high-drain external device will interfere with the power draw and make battery charging unreliable. Either way, I don't like it, but I hope there isn't a bigger problem afoot. As I said, more to follow. The operating system is mostly great, although occasional problems do make me angry.
Here we are. I still want to keep using this machine, and I'm kind of hoping it will last a good decade. We're still early on in the journey, but my initial impression is that modern systems are less robust. The laptops from the 2013-2016 era seem sturdier somehow. Perhaps it has to do with less sleek designs, which allowed for greater tolerances inside the case, plus the whole removable battery thingie. New laptops are packed tight, they can run hot, and the firmware doesn't seem as stellar as it should be. I'm fully aware that some vendors do a solid job in this space, but by and large, all of it feels brittle, and Linux doesn't help, either.
Thus, my fifteenth report is one of middling joy and frustration in equal measures. Could it be better? Definitely. Is it awful? Nope. But I am disheartened by the lack of predictability in the equation, as apparently, every week can bring a new surprise, and every kernel release could be the salvation that I need, or not all. A toss of the dice, then, and me no gambler. I just want peace and stability. See ya.
Cheers.