HELP! my desktop exploded....

[wrender]

I came home turned on the laptop... did some updates that came up... restarted. BOOM

My entire desktop has become scattered. There is no wall paper just grey and white checkers, no widgets on the desktop. All the pannel widgets are scattered along the pannel and a my windows have no title bar that I can tell. When I go to restart the computer I noticed the restart icon is missing and has a question mark.

[wrender]

Re: HELP! my desktop exploded....

Oh I noticed that during the update process there was a lot of blocked updates.... what are blocked updates?

[wrender]

Re: HELP! my desktop exploded....

I just noticed that konqueror is running on kde 4.2.96 (kde 4.3RC2)

Not sure how I did that.....


I guess I need to wipe and reinstall.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: HELP! my desktop exploded....

I just noticed that konqueror is running on kde 4.2.96 (kde 4.3RC2)

Not sure how I did that.....


I guess I need to wipe and reinstall.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: HELP! my desktop exploded....

If it is important to you, you certainly should not need to reinstall. There is a problem with the plasma desktop, but that doesn't mean someone can't talk you through a fix in text mode.

It's my bedtime, and I'm probably not the best help here anyway, but like I said, you certainly don't need to reinstall. If it can wait a day or two, I'm sure someone can help you.

[esdaniel]

Re: HELP! my desktop exploded....

Agree re: wait and do not reinstall, meanwhile you may like to verify all updates/upgrades have been applied and for me I had to run the update process twice having specified safe-upgrade prior to issuing the full-upgrade request.

Try:

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude full-upgrade

[Fintan]

Re: HELP! my desktop exploded....

I ahd something similar at some stage.

Boot into recovery mode->root network mode then do:

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude full-upgrade

as suggested above
or:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

if everything goes normally you can then do:

exit

and choose resume normal mode.

If you still have problems report back.

Also if would be helpful if you could give us specs (cpu, ram, video card,etc)

Hope that helps

[wrender]

Re: HELP! my desktop exploded....

Well I admit I freaked out and that dam live cd was so easy and quick to pop in.

So I did a clean install.

I guess the big thing for me is to figure out how I managed to accidentally upgrade to 4.3RC2.

The only things I can think of is that I enabled pre release updates and I followed some online thing to install the latest amarok.

[olembe]

Re: HELP! my desktop exploded....

I think it will be because you added the backports repository to get the latest Amarok, and other updates got pulled through as well. Exactly the same thing happened to me a few weeks ago and I also ended up doing a fresh install to sort things out.

The interesting thing is I have Kubuntu running on two computers: a Thinkpad and a Macbook (The Thinkpad is my main day-to-day computer). It seems with the Macbook I can get away with any sort of tinkering with unreleased software: I've got the latest Amarok running, KDE 4.3, and so on. On the Thinkpad, on the other hand, I've learnt to leave pre-release updates well alone, and am forcing myself patiently to wait until October before getting all the great new stuff that 9.10 promises.

[wrender]

Re: HELP! my desktop exploded....

Is there a way to get the newer amarok with out having to worry about this?

[dibl]

Re: HELP! my desktop exploded....

What happened was you left the backports repo enabled and then ran a dist-upgrade which pulled in a KDE 4.3RC that apparently didn't like your hardware.

So, you can do the same thing as you did before to get the newer Amarok version, but once Amarok is installed, you need to remove or comment out the backports repo BEFORE you run an upgrade or dist-upgrade. Then you'll safe (more or less) from surprises.

[wrender]

Re: HELP! my desktop exploded....

So I add

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/backports/ubuntu jaunty main

to software sources... then what? how do I tell it to upgrade amarok.

Then after I just remove it from software sources?