Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why I came running back

[GreyGeek]

Re: Going back to Windows after 4 years of Kubuntu and the reason why

...
So I just installed a different distribution of Linux. Running rock solid with a different distribution, no problems at all.
....

Well, don't keep us on pins and needles! Which distro did you switch to?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

@OP
Wow!

That is quit a collection of problems. My first thought was that some piece of your hardware was going toes up, but I supposed you ran the usual memory tests and checked the logs for indications of hardware or other errors.

Then I noticed in some of your posts that you run a Dutch version (BTW, your English is very good!) and my new theory is that since most of your problems are software in nature the i18n translation function (Qt's tr() function) is malfunctioning for your language. Perhaps reinstalling the Dutch language packages might help.
kde-l10n-nl
language-pack-nl
language-pack-kde-nl
language-pack-kde-nl-base
language-support-writing-nl
openoffice.org-l10n-nl
openoffice.org-help-nl
thunderbird-locale-nl
myspell-nl
language-pack-gnome-nl
language-pack-gnome-nl-base


But, then I noticed that you have decided to try another distro. Remember this... nobody gets it right all the time.

First, I could recommend Kubuntu 8.04, which you said worked perfectly for you. For one wanting a Linux desktop "to get work done" there really is no reason to be constantly updating to the leading/bleeding edge if what you have works well for you. Kubuntu 8.04 should work happily for another 4 or 5 years, or at least as long as your laptop continues running. I only ride the leading/bleeding edge because I enjoy it, as long as I can stay on the bronc. (Ya, ya, I know ... the security updates. Keep a good firewall, which is default on most Linux distros, don't run as root, and don't let anyone socially engineer you into saving, marking execute and then running a bad app and you won't have anything to worry about. If you are concerned run chkrootkit and rkhunter on a regular basis, and check your output ports with "netstat -lp". You'll be fine.)

Barring Hardy, allow me to recommend PCLinuxOS-2010. It's KDE4 based and TexStar and his gang have turned out a magnificent distro. You should especially like the Admin System panel. PCLOS suffered for about a year because TexStar was blown out of Huston by the hurricane and took a year out to rebuild his life, but he is back now. The latest release was developed with him setting in the saddle and it shows. If Kubuntu didn't work so well for me PCLOS is where I'd probably be.

I would recommend Mandriva but their corporation is in a ticklish spot right now and there is no way of knowing how long they'll still be around. Still, you could run it for as long as you want because, like I said, you don't have to change or upgrade your distro every four or six months just because the distro release that often.

OpenSUSE is another excellent distro, (RPM, not deb, unfortunately) but if you are careful to keep Mono out of it you should get good results.

Some have recommended MEPIS. I used MEPIS for about a year, around the time they switched from RPM to deb and the Ubuntu repositories. I believe they've switched to the Debian repositories now, because Debian doesn't cycle as fast as Ubuntu does. Like PCLOS, MEPIS is run by one person, but IMO he is not as good a distro builder as TexStar is. It shows in the MEPIS System admin software tool and the network configuration tool. And, Woodford attempted to create a sustainable income selling MEPIS but it didn't work out, so he frequently is absent from MEPIS while he earns bread for his family.

Fedora 13, with KDE4, has disappointed some of the Fedora/GNOME users. They report the usual troubles with KNetworkManager, but it seems to be, all-in-all a good release.

Or, you could stay with Kubuntu and post more questions more frequently than you have, rather than let the pot boil until the lid blows off with frustration, posting a single msg with a couple dozen problems. But, most of your messages are from 2007, with Hardy!

Kubuntu with KDE 4.4.4 is, in my experience on my hardware, the best, most powerful and flexible Linux distro I have ever run. Unless you've got some hardware incompatibilities (which is possible when you change the kernel, video or sound drivers) I believe it can be the best on your hardware as well.

[Goeroeboeroe]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

Hehe, and that was only a part of my problems!
Thanks for the compliment about my English. I always think it's not too good.
Yes, I checked harddisk and memory exhaustive.

I only upgraded because I needed the new Firefox and thought it was not going to backported to 8.04. And since I read such a lot of things about 10.04 being rock solid, stable, ..., I thought it was safer to use the new distro instead of installing Firefox 3.5 myself. Now I hate myself forever
I was really fed up because I thougt canonical had made an unbelievable piece of #&%$. But I guess I was wrong. The kind of problems I have are so weird, it has to have to do something with my special configuration. That's still bad, but something completely else as delivering a piece of #&%$. Bugs (?) can happen.

I'm busy installing Mepis with KDE3 now.
When installing the nvidia-driver in Mepis I got immediately big problems. I removed it and everything went okay.
Installed it: wrong. Removed it: okay.
So I guess there is something wrong with the combination my computer/nvidia-driver.
In Mepis I used KDE3, and the problems were quite easily solved. In Kubuntu with KDE4 there were just too many problems. That's why I think the combination machine/nvidia-driver and Kubuntu and/or KDE4 make things even worse.

After my last post I was afraid something had gone wrong with backing up. I was right. My /etc folder was moved, not copied. Without any warning or question: pfff, moved. And I swear I really only dragged and dropped, nothing more. Didn't even look at Shift or Control or whatever.
My /home folder was not copied at all, though the back-up took about an hour and the notification panel said everything was going okay. Only the empty folders were backed up. Never seen that before. I didn't check after backing up, because copying went always okay. I used remove safely. But since the back-up is about 6 GB there should be some things in the back-up, even without safely remove.
Really glad I make regularly backups!
In 8.04 the exact same back-up took about 5 minutes, by the way, in 10.04 a full hour. I thought this to be strange, but thought maybe it had to do with the new filesystem, or desktop effect, or whatever. But I didn't care, just let it copy in the background or take a walk.

I guess (just a guess) that the combination KDE4 and/or Kubuntu makes things with the nvidia-driver worse.
Things like not copying and moving instead of copying, are certainly not normal. I mean, if this happened a lot canonical would probably have been burned down by now by angry users. So it must be something really strange in my machine.
(Of course there are some things that have nothing to do with having problems, like Korn not ported to KDE4.)

I'm wondering if it could be possible that the combination KDE4/Kubuntu/nvidia-driver/My-machine-with-an-apparently-powerful-mind-of-its-own can make it possible that Kubuntu gets mouse-clicks I don't give. That should explain a lot of strange things, like all of the time spontaniously changing fontsizes etc. Or moving without any question of the /etc folder. If Kubuntu 'thinks' I've clicked on moving the /etc...

Since I started with Mepis I'm going on with that, for the moment. But I've noted your other recommendations.
I didn't reinstall the language-packs, but I reinstalled several times the whole system. So an error during installation is almost impossible.
And apart from some kind of ghost changing all my settings: the fonts looked not nice too. In Mepis they look like they did in 8.04.
Anyway: I guess everybody understands Kubuntu 10.04 is absolutely unreliable for me, after moving /etc and not copying /home. Maybe I'm going to try the next version, but I let 10.04 pass.

Edit: I forget something. Because I could blew some steam here and because of the replies I've cooled down enough to go on with Linux. Thanks.

[toad]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

Re your nvidia problems - try different drivers, there are about three "current" ones out there depending on your graphics card...

[Goeroeboeroe]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

No, I've had enough of drivers. It's working now, and if I can't play certain games I can live with that.
I'm absolutely sure I used the right driver for my card. I'm afraid if I use a driver nvidia says is not for my card, I'm asking for problems again. For whatever reason there's at least something wrong with their driver. I really love those closed source things.

[Snowhog]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

Edit: I forget something. Because I could blew some steam here and because of the replies I've cooled down enough to go on with Linux. Thanks.

Open Source - Open Minds.

Any flavor of Linux is not a 'one size fits all' solution. If any particular Linux variant doesn't do what one wants with the hardware they have, there are others to try. That is the strength of Linux - variety - and as we have all heard at least once in our lives: Variety is the spice of life. Get that with Windows.

If all KFN was able to provide you with was a place to 'blew [sic] some steam', then a service was provided. We are a community that desires to help others "in what ever capacity" we can.

[MoonRise]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

Don't worry about blowing steam. Better to let it go than keep it in. Leads to better decisions in the long run. I've been trying to get my sister to move to a Linux system for a long time and it was a NVidia issue each time that kept her from continuing. Even though I have an NVidia similar to hers I could never get it hers working. So yes a combination of hardware and KDE "flavor" could cause issue and I have seen that on many OSs. I think it also has to do with how each manufacture decides to "tweak" a chipset to make it "theirs" and even though they say it will use the same drivers my experience is there is always a small detail they leave out.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

I'm wondering if it could be possible that the combination KDE4/Kubuntu/nvidia-driver/My-machine-with-an-apparently-powerful-mind-of-its-own can make it possible that Kubuntu gets mouse-clicks I don't give. That should explain a lot of strange things, like all of the time spontaniously changing fontsizes etc. Or moving without any question of the /etc folder. If Kubuntu 'thinks' I've clicked on moving the /etc...

Maybe your "combination KDE4/Kubuntu/nvidia-driver/My-machine-with-an-apparently-powerful-mind-of-its-own" is indicative of the beginning of a sentient machine! Try talking to it with your microphone... (If it answers ... RUN ... it probably already controls the electrical system in your home!!!)


Your comment reminded me of a sci-fi book I read titled "The Adolescence of P-1". It was about a big computer that suddenly became sentient. When the book was written 4GB of RAM was considered unimaginable.

[MoonRise]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

Maybe your "combination KDE4/Kubuntu/nvidia-driver/My-machine-with-an-apparently-powerful-mind-of-its-own" is indicative of the beginning of a sentient machine! Try talking to it with your microphone... (If it answers ... RUN ... it probably already controls the electrical system in your home!!!)

Machines do have a mind of their own sometimes!

[Goeroeboeroe]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

Well, actually I was serious about my machine clicking itself.
(When I read this over I think I shoudn't forget to make an urgent appointment tomorrow with my shrink.)
Serious: I mean that for some reason 'click-events' were triggered in some randomly way. So when I only dragged my /etc to the external disk, somehow there was given a 'move'-click too.
I had sometimes fonts etc. okay, and then suddenly they changed. I mean, it really looked like somebody in my machine was changing settings. I closed Firefox, reopened and the fonts were smaller/bigger/nicer/uglier. Without me doing anything. Maybe some internal problem gave 'mouse-events' or something like that.
But I guess I'll never know. There are much too many components involved, including a closed source driver.
But too be absolutely sure I'm quitting now and going to open my machine. Maybe Hitchkock was right after all...

[MoonRise]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

Have you tried a different mouse? I've had weird behavior and thought it was the USB port and turned out it was the mouse.

[Goeroeboeroe]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

Yes. About the only thing I didn't check was the graphical card itself.
There's a small chance that some piece of hardware is malfunctioning, but not always. That's the kind of thing that's very hard to find. I've never had problems with my mouse before, and it's working now like it should too.

I really think it was in the combination for whatever reason. As a matter of fact: my dragging with Shift/Control/Control+Shift never worked in 8.04. No problem, because it NEVER worked. In 10.04 it started randomly working, even if I didn't use Shift or Control. That's a real problem, because copying is not reliable anymore (moving my /etc to the backup-disk in stead of copying).
Now in Mepis for the first time it works ALWAYS.
So it's just a thought, but it looks there might have been something imitating mouseclicks.
Sound is working okay now too, but that's another thing. It wasn't the missing sound that wat driving me mad, it was changing the wildest settings, everything good (though the fonts were never really good), restarting Firefox or whatever and whoops: without any dope or alcohol I saw the strangest things.
It was a nice computer for people like Lou Reed on the wild side of life. I'm too old for wild fonts, running folders and jumping toolbars (now I exaggerate a bit).

[MoonRise]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

As far as sound I had to dump the entire XINE backend and go with the gstreamer backend. After finding all the library's and such I needed for that my sound works flawlessly.

[Goeroeboeroe]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

I didn't really look at the sound. I know there are sometimes problems and most of the time it's not too hard to solve them. Had some when installing 8.04 too, if I remember well. But it's a bit hard to look at sound if you suddenly hardly can read what you hear. The problems with vmware/visualbox were solvable too, I guess. But without a proper monitor that's of little use. I just started with the not being connected with Internet on reboot, also a probably minor problem, when everything was distorted again.

What I forget all of the time: the settings never changed, nowhere. It was just the appearance that changed. Going to some setting I had to change it first so I could apply it, and then I could put back the correct value and apply it. And sooner or later that changed again, but not the setting I could see.
I'm not very good in Linux, but I've beta tested programs for Windows, so I know a bit what strange things can happen. But I've never seen such strange behavior.
There are programs to copy only the directory structure in Windows, so I guess in Linux you have at least 327 commandline options to do the same. I don't know them. But from my home folder was only the directory structure copied. And that took about one hour. Without any error, it was exactly the correct structure. But completely empty. I've really not the slightest idea how this was possible.
I've been troubleshooting computers for elder people. I doubt if I really had believed what happened if some of that people had told this kind of things. But this was my own computer and I've seen it myself.
I mean, I can make a mistake of course. I can make several mistakes. But even I can't make so many mistakes during over two weeks.

[handheldcar]

Re: Leaving Kubuntu after 4 years using it and the reason why

Workrave has no sound.

I'm having this same problem, and it's the only problem I'm having. The Workrave wav files work in Amarok, and other apps such as Kontact and Firefox play sounds; but Workrave will not play sounds during breaks or in the preferences box. I know Workrave can start without the sounds check boxes checked, but all of mine are checked and enabled. The preferences volume usually works at 0%, but moving it up and down, all the way to 100 doesn't make a difference. The sounds were working in Ubuntu. Although Mepis sounds tempting, it's a slightly extreme solution to one little problem after a couple days worth of configurations. I've also asked for help on the Workrave mailing list and Ubuntu forum.