Laptop won’t restart using menus, only solution I found was to add restart=bios
to the applicable grub file line. Would rather a less forceful method.
Install the Mate DM instead of KDE and try again. This will prove if the fault is with KDE or deeper. If the fault persist, try a distro that doesn’t have systemd as default init-process, like Devuan (essentially Debian w/o systemd), Funtoo (Gentoo but cutting edge) or Slackware.