I don't think many of those removals will have any impact on power consumption - at least not unless you're using them right now. Removing a non-default task switcher (if you don't use that currently) or theme (e.g. "Plasma Air") will help with maintainability of the code and more time for other work than hunting down issues in that task switcher or theme, though. This might result in freeing up time to work on other stuff. So, indirectly: it's possible.

I've had a quick look at the code, there doesn't seem to be a way to change the "default" currencies, they are hardcoded. See https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/kunitconversion/-/blob/master/src/currency.cpp and search for "addCommonUnit" and "addDefaultUnit".

You can specify your target (e.g. 11 USD in INR should work), however I don't know how to change the defaults or if KRunner is "smart" enough to automatically include INR in those conversions.

I'm not sure (not the author) and I think syncing config is a lot more difficult than it would seem at first glance. Eg Panel Layout: Imagine syncing between a multi-monitor-setup (work PC) and a single-monitor-setup (Laptop) - how's that supposed to work? The panel might be on the second screen on the PC, but once synchronized to the Laptop, that would mean either

• missing panel (off screen)
• double panel (stacked on top of each other)
• hidden second panel (one below the other)
• ...

Syncing .config would (at first glance) work best for device independent settings (e.g.: Indentation in Kate with Tabs vs. Spaces) - but even "fonts" in Kate might already not be a good idea, as a font might not be installed in both systems (and it might get worse with font-sizes, scale-factors...)

The proposal isn't mine, I just read and shared it :-) The blog post has a paragraph or two about multpile subfolders, as I read it, the specification is not clear on whether thats supported? But actually: at first glance I think this would be better to have, because it would possibly make synchronizing to a new PC/Laptop even easier. However, this only works if any machine-specific settings (e.g. "offset /size of window") are not stored in config, as that might break if you sync config between a multi-monitor setup and a single-monitor setup. This requires a lot of thought...

Just for clarification: this would be a one-time process per application, right? I'm sure this will work for 99% of users, but there'll always be the one (or a couple of users) that synchronizes their .config directory, then doesn't update all machines at the same time and all hell breaks loose - a.k.a https://xkcd.com/1172/ :-) But I'd say that's probably not worth losing the advantages of a cleaner .config-directory, so this might be one of those "tough-luck" situations... 🤷

If you're interested in the full change log, see https://kde.org/announcements/changelogs/gear/23.04.3/

Not a plan, but a wish has been made: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=469779

In the cases with the cursor still showing (and maybe even in the cases with the half-frozen sddm screen (it's actually probably going to be a lockscreen, not sddm)): Can you still switch to a TTY (e.g. CTRL+Alt+F2 or F3)? If so, you could try to run export DISPLAY=:0; killall plasmashell; sleep 5; plasmashell --replace and see if this resolves the issue?

Yeah, it's not a great name, either, I agree...

"Itinerary" is so hard for me (German) to pronounce... Couldn't it be renamed to something like "TravelSKedule" or something a bit more "flowing"? The work in it seems awesome (and a very good example in working together with other FLOSS communities, like OpenStreetMaps etc.)

OP said

(note, in settings > energy saving the option to change screen brightness on battery power is unchecked)

So either that setting is ignored or there's two competing energy saving modules active or there's a but in the setting or something completely else...