My 4.8 Experience BAD!!!

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4.8 broke me bad too. Non-responsive. I upgraded from 4.7.4 (11.10). Wiped and started over (home on separate partition). Not a happy camper but I should know better than to upgrade just days after release. I'm sticking with 4.7.4 for awhile .... a LOOOOOOONG while.

[GreyGeek]

...
their ability to update the driver for newer versions of xorg. since they share no info with the developers of nouveau , xorg, kde or anyone else the best "we" as a community can do is reverse engineer their stuff.

Or, more than likely, their willingness. They have to sell drivers than drive Windows displays. We are rapidly approaching the release of Win8, which requires "certified" hardware. Microsoft is the one that approves the certification. If they cooperate with Linux developers they could find that their Windows drivers suddenly have problems being certified. Remember, the EUFI is BIG and BUGGY. It's a perfect dodge when they want to exclude a particular vendor or device.

[cavedweller]

Thanks Liquidator for the great info. However, my desktop was completely useless. I was upgrading from KDE 4.7.4. Even when I completely wiped and installed Kubuntu, I did all the updates then did the 4.8 update. I know there are usually problems with new versions. I usually wait until versions like 4.8.1 after some bugs are fixed. I can wait until a later version but the nvidia problems really have me looking for a different version of Linux. I've tried Ubuntu 11.10 and nvidia drivers work fine. Dreamlinux worked fine as well. I'm trying Arch now. What I don't really understand is why put Nouveau in a free choice OS and take your choice away on using what video driver you want to use. Sounds like a Windows tactic to me. Oh well, thanks again for your advise.

Interesting i actually moved to Kubuntu because of all the video issues I was having with anything based on Ubuntu 11.10 running Gnome 3. The nvidia drivers weren't fine with Ubuntu. There was actually a huge issue with lagging drivers from nvidia and AMD/ATI. I had three machines with those video adapters. Tried Ubuntu 11.10, Mint 12 and as soon as the drivers updated that was it. I ended up buying 2 new laptops and installing Mint 10 on my desktop.

If Ubuntu 11.10 works fine for you. Why not install it and also install KDE 4.7 as a back up environment to Gnome and Unity. Might want to try Mint 12 with cinnamon. It is a little more like Gnome 2.

Sometimes you just have to say well that didn't work and just install what you know does and then wait for time to iron out the issues yo are having.

[eddieg538]

Well it's been over a week and I did a fresh install of kubuntu 11.10, did the updates to 4.7.4. I added the backports for 4.8, updated and the exact same non-responsive thing again. One thing I did notice is that when I clicked on the K icon the Nepomuk icon popped up on the toolbar by the clock but the machine is useless after this. Anybody else experiencing this?

[The Liquidator]

At the risk of stating the obvious, it looks like nepomuk might be contributing to this. It could be indexing the files. Unless you want semantic desktop search you can turn it off.

To check try either of the following immediately upon boot:

Hit ctrl+esc to see a list of running applications or

Start Konsole and run top

Both will list the running applications. If nepomuk (or also you may see virtuoso) is the culprit you can turn it off, although you'll need to access the kmenu to do so. Have you just given it a few minutes to finish it's 1st indexing session before trying anything?

I assume this problem did not mainfest itself whilst you were using 4.7.4? If so, you may want to go back to it, even if it's only to turn off nepomuk so you can upgrade again to see if that fixes it. If you can get at a konsole terminal you can try this

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

once that is done

sudo ppa-purge ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports

That will reinstate 4.7.4 for you.

[eddieg538]

Thanks Liquidator, I tried your suggestions. Here is what happened:

This is really curious. I hit ctrl+esc and nothing happens until I click the "K" icon. I see what's running but the % numbers don't change until I click the "K" icon. I tried to end processes but have to click the "K" icon to highlight the process the "end process" button highlights, when I click it nothing happens until I click the "K" icon in the lower left corner on the tool bar then it pops up the authorization box which is barely visible until I click the "K" icon again. I put in my password which does not show up until I click the "K" icon again then the black dots show up and I click ok and I have to click the "K" icon and the process stops. I clicked on the new activity up in the upper right corner but nothing happens until I click the "K" icon and this time I tried it with and other icon, the ones by the clock and then the menu appears. Could this be a video problem, maybe driver related? It is the nouveau driver on a new install.

The ppa-purge did take me back to a previous version but it was 4.7.1 and said there was a dependence problem, so it would not boot into kde so I did a fresh install again. This is really bugging me. Someone have any ideas what's going on?

[The Liquidator]

Did you upgrade straight from 4.7.1 to 4.8? If so you have jumped several versions and imho hugely increased the risk of something going pear-shaped.

I have read (on an opensuse forum) that some folks are having trouble with nepomuk in 4.8 consuming all CPU time - if that applies to you I would not be surprised at all to find your desktop sluggish in the extreme.

Here is what I would do:

upgrade to 4.7.4 - this may be by way of standard update. However, if not, you might need to use this ppa

ppa:kubuntu-ppa/ppa

Once you are running 4.7.4 properly you can then turn off nepomuk by hitting the kmenu and typing strigi in the search box. Select it. and uncheck all options in the resulting pane. Also I have just opened this for the first time since upgrading to 4.8 and I note they have now included an option to index e-mail. I wonder......

Anyway when you are happy you can try the backports ppa again (remember to install the ppa-purge package as well) and if that does not go well I would stick with 4.7.4 until the release of 12.04.

Is it nouveau? I don't know to be honest as my graphics card is an intel. However, the general consensus seems to be that whilst the open source community has made good progress with it it lags some way behind the official nvidia driver in terms of performance.

HTH

[eddieg538]

I upgraded 4.7.1 to 4.7.4 before I upgraded to 4.8. I did turn off nepomuk before the upgrade to 4.8 but it performed exactly the same way. Is strigi and nepomuk the same program or run with each other? Are there plans to update 4.8 before 12.04 comes out?

[james147]

Are there plans to update 4.8 before 12.04 comes out?

Kubuntu normally ships with what ever version of kde was released at the time kubuntu hits its package freeze. From past experiences this is normally x.1 or the x.2 release of kde.

[Guest]

Just as another data point, I'm having the same experience as eddieg. Clean install of 11.10 with new /home partition. Did an apt-get upgrade. Added PPA. Did apt-get upgrade, then apt-get dist-upgrade. Everything is frozen. I can get the launcher to pop up sometimes, but nothing else.

I'm running an Intel E8400 dual core CPU
nVidia GeForce 8600 GT

Has a bug been entered for this?

[bra|10n]

Well it's been over a week and I did a fresh install of kubuntu 11.10, did the updates to 4.7.4. I added the backports for 4.8, updated and the exact same non-responsive thing again. One thing I did notice is that when I clicked on the K icon the Nepomuk icon popped up on the toolbar by the clock but the machine is useless after this. Anybody else experiencing this?

While this WAS not my exact issue I did experience something very similar. Like you I did a fresh install of kubuntu 11.10 and updated to 4.7.4.
I also added the backports for 4.8 and updated without a hitch.

In an attempt to overcome the GTK / oxygen theme issue I installed oxygen-molecule from the repository, where it is described as follows;

Oxygen-Molecule is a theme for GTK+ applications to provide a uniform look when used under the KDE desktop environment, as long as the Oxygen style is used.

It was at this point that I began to experience problems somewhat similar to those described.

I like to use Synaptic as a package manager and noticed that when I hit Reload to refresh the package list, the progress bar would not show. Nor was there the usual "Downloading file 1 of 113" and Synaptic seemed stalled. It was only when I hit the Details dropdown list I noticed "failed" connections in the list but the progressbar and text showed with some progress. However this would falter again if the dropdown was closed. Dropdown on / off seemed to agitate its progress, but the whole package refresh process seemed to be interupted. My laptop's fan speed had increased to the point where I could hear it and there was no cancelling or closing Synaptic short of killall synaptic in a terminal.

I uninstalled oxygen-molecule and reverted to gtk-chtheme to achieve my goal. Synaptic subsequently worked as it always had, and without issue.
I can't draw any conclusions here however strange this seems to be.

[eddieg538]

Here is my most updated experience:

I checked Nvidia's site and noticed there was a newer driver but it was actually version NVIDIA-Linux-x86-275.43.run but dated 12-14-11 I believe, which seemed a regression. I thought well Nvidia must have done it for a reason. I downloaded it and did a fresh install of 11.04, upgraded to 4.7.4. Followed the instructions at the end of this writing for installing nvidia. After the install of nvidia my computer ran great with 4.7.4 so I did the upgrade to 4.8, with my heart in my mouth, and it went without a problem and is running fine. I'm sending this from 4.8 and I really am happy. Don't know what fixed it, maybe it was a video problem but never the less, it's working.

Here are the instructions I followed:

For our little endeavour, here is what we are going to do.

We'll blacklist all the culprit modules,
remove all the nvidia* packages and
as an extra step update the initramfs disk because it could be configured to load the modules at startup.

Blacklist the modules. Open the blacklist.conf file.

$ kdesudo kate /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

add the following modules in the file.

blacklist amd76x_edac #this might not be required for x86 32 bit users but if there, leave it.
blacklist vga16fb
blacklist nouveau
blacklist rivafb
blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist rivatv

Save the file and exit.

Remove all the nvidia* packages

$ sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia* Kubuntu-desktop and nvidia-common will be removed. It's safe to remove kubuntu-desktop.

Install gcc and make if not installed already.

Go to Nvidia's site and download this nvidia driver. Then $ kdesudo dolphin in terminal and go to your root and make a nv folder and copy the downloaded driver to nv folder.

Once you are done with the steps above, reboot.

Run in terminal:

$ sudo update-initramfs -u Then reboot again.

Stop the display manager and try to install nvidia drivers:

Press Ctrl-Alt-F1. Once you are in the text mode, log in, stop the display manager. This will end all the applications, so you better close them yourself before completing this step.

To stop the display manager use the following command:

$ sudo service kdm stop

then $ cd /nv

Now, run the driver package that you downloaded from Nvidia’s website.

$ sudo sh NV then hit the Tab key, this will fill in the driver name without you having to type it, NVIDIA-Linux-x86-275.43.run hit enter and follow the directions. When asked at the end to update xorg file, select yes. If the nvidia driver says it detected nouveau driver, let it disable it and then when back to prompt type $ sudo service kdm start then reboot and run the nvidia driver again.

You can $ sudo service kdm start or sudo halt to shut down and then boot.

Things should go smoothly. Fingers crossed :-)

[Guest]

Eddieg, thanks for the update. So, maybe it's an nvidia driver version problem. Where did you find that specific version? I don't see it on their site anywhere. Also, I assume that means you're running 32-bit Kubuntu?

I'm going to do some testing with driver versions to see if I can reproduce/narrow down the results that you had. Unfortunately, I don't want to go down the manual-install path for my main installation, since I don't want the hassle with upgrades.

[eddieg538]

Yes, I'm running the 32 bit version. I understand about manual updates. There appears to have been a kernel update since I posted this to 3.0.0.16.19 and my machine will not boot with this version. So I have to go in grub and use the previous version kernel right now. I'll uninstall it and re-install in the new kernel and see if that fixes it. I got the driver from nvidia's site I believe in the all driver, then betas and older driver area. On Nvidia's support site it says that this driver is like a LTS driver. I do see there is a beta version now 295.20 but I don't like betas so I'll wait for the certified version or when it's in xswat I'll try that. One thing I noticed that's missing now is a new kernel update used to pull over your nvidia module but it's not doing that anymore. Here is where I got 275.43

http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us

[eddieg538]

Ok, here is how I got the new Kernel 3.0.0.16.19 to nvidia driver.

The new kernel did not have the nvidia module because it was in 3.0.015 when I installed it. I had to delete my xorg.conf and reboot in to new kernel, which it did without the xorg.conf file. Then did the installation procedure and now it's working fine. I really can't wait until nvidia gets there updated drivers fixed and it works with xswat ppa installed so it will also update nvidia driver when there are new kernel versions. However, this did work for me and was not to difficult to fix, this time. :-)