Kubuntu freezes

[Stephanvann]

Good day

I have installed Kubuntu last week on my laptop and installed all available updates [up to 2.6.35.25]. Also installed KDE 4.6.

My system randomly freezes every couple of minutes. I can be in a browser, email or any other program when it happens. The only solution then is a hard-reset by using the power button. I have tried to set all display settings to "default" but it still happens.

Is this normal for this release? Can I run some sort of health-check? Re-install just the kernel or KDE?

I have run Ubuntu for some months on the same laptop without this continual freezing-up problems.

Thank you

[The Liquidator]

Re: Kubuntu freezes

Hi and welcome

I assume you are a new user to Linux or Kubuntu?

No, it isn't normal at all for you to experience this. Having said that my experience is that the current kde version (4.6.0) is less stable than the version before (4.5.5) as plasma crashes from time to time- it's not a big deal and I would expect that with any .0 release. By .1 (in a couple of weeks) I would expect a lot of that to have gone.

Now, to your issue: Can you please open a terminal (Konsole) and type the following code

lspci

That will give an indication of whether there is any hardware that is known to have issues. Also, if you have an nvidia or ati graphics card, have you installed proprietory drivers or simply gone with those that came with the install? I ask this because a possible cause of the "freezing" is the xserver which might be addressed by installing different drivers.

One final point, you should very rarely need to do a hard reset. Whilst the system may appear frozen (the keyboard and mouse are both partly handled by the xserver) the rest of the system is probably chugging away. Before doing a hard reset attempt a soft reboot by holding down alt+print screen (sysrq) keys and slowly typing reisub.

HTH

[Stephanvann]

Re: Kubuntu freezes

Hi - thank you for the welcoming and response!

I am new on Linux and must say am loving it! Even newer on Kubuntu/KDE as I have done a fresh install of it a couple of days ago. Must say, I really like Kubuntu / KDE a lot! Think I'm hooked The interface, activities, widgets etc. are so nice and flexible and intuitive. Software centre is great and overall just a very pleasent experience.

After my first post I was prompted by someone else to check my graphics card drivers and after installing the nvidia drivers via "additional drivers" the system stopped with the continual freezing. So you were spot on with that. However, I do find the system slowing down every now and again and then a message about the plasma that stopped working. That is usually after a window-switch.

Thanks for the advice on the soft-reboot - where can one get these nice "workarounds" for Linux?

On another note... I have been playing around with a couple of different Media players but haven't settled on one as yet. I am used to Itunes and Songbird on windows and am looking for something that has good ipod / podcast support and functions. Do you have recommendations?

Thanks
Stephan

[The Liquidator]

Re: Kubuntu freezes

There's some useful CLI info here

http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/cli.html

Having said that, in many instances now the command line is used because it's quicker/more convenient, rather than obligatory. The reisub command is an exception to that because if x crashes you have lost all GUI functionality but it's a great escape.

A couple of very useful commands:

sudo apt-get update

To update your package list

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

To download and install available updates to your installed packages.

I have an ipod classic and to manage that I use gtkpod. I don't know of any kde-centric apps that work as well. I can use amarok but understand that you can't set up playlists on the ipod. Bear in mind that because of changes apple has made to the various ipod models there might be some that you can't make work, but have a play.