MX Linux + KDE Plasma 6 freezes when shutting down or restarting
On my laptop running KDE, when I pressed "Shut Down," "Restart," or "Sleep" from the graphical menu or the terminal, the system would freeze. The screen would flicker with graphical glitches. The system wouldn't respond normally; it would remain on with the graphical errors and be very slow. It wouldn't shut down completely; I had to hold down the physical power button.
The problem is that KDE tries to call the `systemd` power services via D-Bus, but since my system was using `sysvinit`, those calls failed. The result: the graphical environment would freeze, waiting for a response that never came.
To confirm which init it was in:
```bash
cat /proc/1/cmdline
# Output: init [5] ← sysvinit active
The solution: Switch to systemd; MX allows the use of systemd, but it's not the default. Since Plasma relies heavily on it, changing the init system fixed the problem:
- Back up the current init configuration:
sudo cp /sbin/init /sbin/init.backup
- Create a symbolic link to systemd:
sudo ln -sf /lib/systemd/systemd /sbin/init
- Remove the init diversity package (it blocks changes):
sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq sysvinit-init-diversity
- Install systemd-sysv:
sudo apt install systemd-sysv
- Update GRUB and reboot:
sudo update-grub
sudo reboot
Confirm that systemd is running:
`systemctl status`
` It should display system information, not an error message`