Display and load issues in KDE 4.7.3 [Solved]

[troyvit]

Hi forum,

I just updated (via aptitude full-upgrade) to KDE 4.4 and since I have KDE has become unusable:

- I can open an application but:
- eventually giant blank squares start showing up in the middle of the program's window.
- whole panes in a program (like claws-mail) become blank. Resizing the window sometimes brings it back.
- menus become unresponsive.
- X load goes through the roof.
- examples of 2 programs that behave this way are claws-mail and firefox, but I also see similar behavior when I click the k menu or the launcher (alt-f2).

These problems only present themselves in KDE. Gnome is unaffected.

- Things I've done to try to fix it:
- turn off compositing.
- remove my .kde folder and restart X.
- turn of Sync to VBlank wherever I could find it in nvidia-settings.
- re-build my xorg file using nvidia-xconfig and restart X.
- choose a different KDE theme (Switched to Air from Oxygen).
- Log in using KDE Failsafe (that helps a little bit).

- Stats about my setup
- System76 Gazelle with an external Samsung monitor
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M (that's what my xorg.conf file says anyway)
- uname -a: Linux munin 3.0.0-14-generic #23-Ubuntu SMP Mon Nov 21 20:28:43 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Has anybody else had similar problems? Any ideas of workarounds?

Thanks!

Troy

[troyvit]

Re: Display and load issues in KDE 4.4

Why are you staying at such an old version, Kubuntu is now at KDE4.7.4.

My bad that was a typo. I'm really running 4.7.3. My repos in Oneiric don't show 4.7.4 as being available.

[silviucc]

Re: Display and load issues in KDE 4.4

To get 4.7.4, drop to a console (ctrl+alt+f1) and do:

sudo service kdm stop

(this shuts down kdm and X system)

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo service kdm start

(to restart kdm and X)

I usually update my DE like this, I believe it's safer.

[troyvit]

Re: Display and load issues in KDE 4.4

Thanks. I was missing that PPA. Once I installed it and upgraded all seems well again. I must've accidentally yanked that repo at some point.