HELP! KDE is unusuable for me!

[DanteAshton]

Hey all.

I really, REALLY want to move to KDE (I like eye-candy and functionailty, so sue me :P) but I'm having two major problems with Kubuntu 9.04. I've reinstalled Kubuntu 9.04 about 3 times, now, every time I get the same problems.

1st problem; Network manager; After I connect to my wireless network (as I'm migrating from GNOME, I was hoping KDE's network manager would be easy to understand, it isnt.) and run the updater (after which I restart) I cannot get back onto the network, it just keeps dropping me out, askes for the passphrase, but still drops me out and asks again...and again..and again. Someone I spoke to thought I'd better switch to wicd, I tried but the package manager told me I'd need to uninstall network-manager before I did that. (1. How can I uninstall my network manager, then try and download the 2nd without a way to connect?) After it said this, it locked up.

2nd problem; I use the Nivda 180 series drivers ( Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 8200M G/PCI/SSE2) but when accessing menu's of programs (like the network managers) with the driver installed it just freezes up the entire system.


For the record, I've tried other distros with KDE.

Fedora 10 wont even load.
OpenSUSE will load, but for some reason my laptop decides I can only use OpenSUSE on it with the screen brightness set to 1.
Mandriva One wont load.


Computer specs;

ASUS X50GL Multimedia laptop. Came preinstalled with Vista Home Prenium.

[Guest]

Re: HELP! KDE is unusuable for me!

How can I uninstall my network manager, then try and download the 2nd without a way to connect?

You can safely install wicd through the package manager. It will first download the wicd package before replacing network-manager with it. (i'm currently using wicd in my kubuntu jaunty now due to some bugs in kde's network manager)

You could also use network-manager-gnome as an alternative.

For your graphic card problem, sorry but i've never used nvidia card before so i can't give you any suggestion.

[DanteAshton]

Re: HELP! KDE is unusuable for me!

Really? It just said to me that I need to remove network-manager first....then locked up. I'll give it a shot later.

In the meantime, I'm gonna test it out with PCLinuxOS (naturally I plan to use Kubuntu, but I'd like to confirm it's my hardware, and not Kubuntu, causing these problems)

[ubersoft]

Re: HELP! KDE is unusuable for me!

Don't use Kpackagekit to install wicd. Use adept if you want a GUI, or just use apt-get install wicd from a terminal.

[sithlord48]

Re: HELP! KDE is unusuable for me!

2nd problem; I use the Nivda 180 series drivers ( Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 8200M G/PCI/SSE2) but when accessing menu's of programs (like the network managers) with the driver installed it just freezes up the entire system.

is this with or with out desktop effects enabled?
you can enable/disable desktop effects in System Settings->Desktop
if it happens only with it on you may want to edit you xorg.conf a little bit, and add this line to your screen secton
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true" and possibly more you search for "nvidia composite xorg" on google and you should find lots of info about tweaking your xorg.conf file and with a bit to editing you should have your issues cleared up.

[dibl]

Re: HELP! KDE is unusuable for me!

It sounds like at least two separate problems -- probably the best approach would be to attack them separately, one at a time, and fix one completely. In other words, if your misbehaving video driver tries to open a window on your malfunctioning network manager, who knows why it locks up?



So, if it were me, I'd want video working right first (since I can wire my notebook to my router and ignore the lack of wireless, for awhile).

I advise you to cease trusting the Hardware Drivers manager, and download and install the downloaded nVidia driver -- 180.51 is fine. I'm presently running 185.18.10 Beta and it is working marvelously. Whatever -- here's your guidance:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...4892#msg164892

You need to do all the preliminaries to disable the prior nvidia-glx-xxx stuff. Follow the guide exactly, and don't add any experiments of your own (i.e. stay away from System Settings>Monitor & Display). Post back if you get stuck or have questions.

Once video is working right, we can take a shot at networking. There's a nice link in the FAQs in my signature on that subject, FYI.

[KeithZG]

Re: HELP! KDE is unusuable for me!

Not to be contradictory, dibl, but might not it be better to install the latest drivers using a PPA instead? That way it's all neat and debian/ubuntu style for upgrading (or if it comes to it removing or downgrading). Myself on my projector computer I need the latest ones to run XBMC with VDPAU, so I'm using Michael Marley's PPA:

https://launchpad.net/~thefirstm/+archive/ppa

You're definitely right about one problem at a time though, although on the other hand it's not a BIG deal to switch to wicd, and I'd echo

Don't use Kpackagekit to install wicd. Use adept if you want a GUI, or just use apt-get install wicd from a terminal.

Myself I've installed wicd on two different Jaunty laptops, and both times it was while they were connected to a wireless network! I just opened up Konsole and typed in

sudo apt-get install wicd

and it handled everything fine.

Edit: Actually although I do like wicd, noticing that DanteAshton is moving from GNOME I'd say just installing networkmanager-gnome and then running "nm-applet" might be the best approach, or at least the most non-invasive one.

[dibl]

Re: HELP! KDE is unusuable for me!

Well ... maybe. I've had 4 different nVidia cards installed in my desktop in the past 3 years. EnvyNG was a marvelous method, while it was maintained -- but it's no longer maintained. Regarding the official repos, when the nvidia-glx-xxx package is working right, it's wonderful. When it's borked, it's a nightmare. I'm all for "the Debian way" .... right up to the point when it doesn't produce the needed result. Theoretically, if I understand jockey-kde, that should produce a hardware driver installed "the Debian way". But I've had about a 50% success rate with it, so .....

Meanwhile, I'm finding each successive version of nVidia's downloaded installer to be better and better -- even the Beta drivers are mostly good to go, on my hardware. So, that's what I do.

[fidesratioque]

Re: HELP! KDE is unusuable for me!

Do not use the new package manager to fiddle with network-manager. I had this same problem:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3104098.0

Arrrgh, it was unspeakably frustrating that the new package manager can't deal with this kind of simple procedure.

I had to get Adept to execute the uninstall of network-manager and wicd install without problems.

[KeithZG]

Re: HELP! KDE is unusuable for me!

Well ... maybe. I've had 4 different nVidia cards installed in my desktop in the past 3 years. EnvyNG was a marvelous method, while it was maintained -- but it's no longer maintained. Regarding the official repos, when the nvidia-glx-xxx package is working right, it's wonderful. When it's borked, it's a nightmare. I'm all for "the Debian way" .... right up to the point when it doesn't produce the needed result. Theoretically, if I understand jockey-kde, that should produce a hardware driver installed "the Debian way". But I've had about a 50% success rate with it, so .....

Meanwhile, I'm finding each successive version of nVidia's downloaded installer to be better and better -- even the Beta drivers are mostly good to go, on my hardware. So, that's what I do.

I'm in pretty much the same boat, same number of NVIDIA cards although I've actually had a 0% success rate with jockey-kde, heh (one time I had success with jockey-gtk I think it was, but that only brings up the rate to about 2% success heh). And definitely their installers have been getting better, I remember trying way back in 5.10 and I swear it took me a day or so to get the damn installer and drivers to work (although I was also much more of a Linux n00b back then too which didn't help).

It's always painful to have to leave behind The Debian Way, but that's why I'm so enthusiastic about finding someone's PPA that's tracking the latest (and hopefully greatest) NVIDIA drivers On my XBMC computer (with an 8400GS 512MB PCI... it's in a PIII 600mHz, heh) I have to keep up with them, and even have-to aside it's nice since many of the releases have been bringing VDPAU improvements and bugfixes which is really really useful on a computer where I'm using the graphics card for HD video rendering!

I had been using the official installers before on 8.10, but when that install broke upon the upgrade to 9.04 I happened upon Marley's PPA and gave that a shot instead (I think at the recommendation of someone on the XBMC forums but I don't quite recall) and it's been a hassle-free experience, especially since the PPA packages support DKMS. I actually had tried the official repos first, but when they didn't work (yeah, not exactly an unheard of occurrence for the NVIDIA drivers) I just added the PPA, upgraded and things were peachy

That's the brilliant thing about PPAs, eh? They let you keep doing things the Debian Way even if what you're doing is too cutting edge for the official repos yet And as long as such PPAs exist there's no need to resort to unstandard installers! Everything stays happy and Debianesque.