Trying to get some bugs out post-install

[Sputnikk]

Trying to get a sleek, pretty, desktop OS setup on my netbook to use from my couch after work when I'm feeling lazy. Got compiz up and running beautifully. Here are my caveats though:

1&2) I stick these together because they must be related. I'm not familiar with this new dbus (udev replacement?) - but NetworkManager is PISSING me off. Seemed to work fine but if I needed to restart X (see #3) for compiz crash or otherwise - NetworkManager WILL NOT reconnect to Wifi and sometimes even wired. Wired will work for 30 secs if you enable/disable in NetworkManager but then will stop (ifconfig will still show ip, but can't even ping my gateway). I turned off NetworkManager, went to terminal to dhclient eth0 after manually bringing it up - this time it lasts longer but I believe NetworkManager starts trying to mess with it and it drops off again forcing me to down/up it.

I wanted to get rid of the KDE Network Manager and use the Gnome one per an article I read - but no go. Somehow its clashing with the existing NM stuff? For instance, I get "instance of nm-applett is already running" even though I can't find any entry under ps aux for it. So I went to try and remove NM completely and install WIDC - which doesn't pop up in the packages search.

Trying to mess with these widgets/applets I came upon....

3) KDE4 Plasma - ALL of KDE locks up when I attempt to play with the widget bar. More often than not, just leaving it open (whether you interact with it or not), after about 40 secs all of X freezes. Ctrl+alt+del brings it back

thanks for your help guys

[Sputnikk]

Re: Trying to get some bugs out post-install

ok well i got wiCd working (typo on my part)

I was hoping the widget freeze was something to do w/ NetworkManager/waiting for dbus.. but alas, after uninstalling networkmanager the same thing happens. I got a chance to drag one of the widgets to the desktop (while i had ap ing running to test if i'm going to drop off).. and bang.. everything froze. very annoying.

Edit: tailing .xession-errors .. i added the widget, didn't freeze immediately this time. clicked on the x to close the widget bar - freeze. last thing on my tail before i ctrlaltBS (and there are multiple of these):

plasma-desktop(7231)/libplasma Plasma::FrameSvg::resizeFrame: Invalid size QSizeF(0,0)


Oh wait!! While typing this up I didn't get a chance to kill X yet I got this:

klauncher(7205)/kio (KLauncher): SlavePool: No communication with slave


Edit #2: seems as though in top "compiz (there are 8 PIDs with compiz) pegs the cpu at 99

Really? i needz pretty eyez candiez..

[sithlord48]

Re: Trying to get some bugs out post-install

1&2) I stick these together because they must be related. I'm not familiar with this new dbus (udev replacement?) - but NetworkManager is PISSING me off. Seemed to work fine but if I needed to restart X (see #3) for compiz crash or otherwise - NetworkManager WILL NOT reconnect to Wifi and sometimes even wired. Wired will work for 30 secs if you enable/disable in NetworkManager but then will stop (ifconfig will still show ip, but can't even ping my gateway). I turned off NetworkManager, went to terminal to dhclient eth0 after manually bringing it up - this time it lasts longer but I believe NetworkManager starts trying to mess with it and it drops off again forcing me to down/up it.

compiz has issues w/ Kwin Don't use it.. if you want compositing then use kwin it does all that. see System settings-> desktop effects, also i doubt you have "replaced" kwin with compiz so you more then likley have two compisiting systems trying to use the same resorces... (making more crash and gpu choking problems..)

the not reconnecting if you crash X thing w/ network manager is a known issue. (and is fixed upstream iirc)

#3) See above about compiz.

if you want to use wicd thats fine but you need only to install it via the package manager. (kpackagekit sucks so its getting replaced next version) for a better package manager use either muon(what will be replacing kpackagekit) or synaptic. if you go with synaptic use the command "sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install synaptic" for a smaller download.

[Sputnikk]

Re: Trying to get some bugs out post-install

kwin definetely doesn't do as much eye candy as compiz .

i did disable kwin desktop effects.

what if I used gtk-window-decorator? Would that alleviate the widget bar locking up?

Or is the only way i'm using compiz is with gnome?