Xamine and Xperience - Xenial Kubuntu 16.04

[oshunluvr]

Hi Newbee here. I found two issues after upgrading to xenial.
1. clock is showing random times after reboot. Adjusting the time or adjusting the time-zones did not yield any result.
2. I have 12GB ram; but 'KInfocenter' is showing only 3.8GB RAM on the first screen. When I click the 'Memory' tab, it is showing correctly as 12 GB.

I found rolling back the updates is very complicated and always not accurate. So tomorrow, I will format my machine and re-install 15.10 stable.

My suggestion: for distros under development [like xenial] there should be one button somewhere, to revert back to previously installed, working version.
My 2c
Thanks.

Since you brought it up, it's very clear that Xenial is development release. It's not intended nor should it be expected to be stable, usable, or even easily installed. The intention of a developmental release is to allow those of us (the linux world) who want to participate in bug hunting or just want a preview of what's coming. There's no way I would install an alpha or beta release of anything and expect much from it.

However, since you're using Linux, why not partition your hard drive and install the beta version along side your favorite stable release? Then you can boot to the stable install when you want to use your computer but boot to the developmental release when you're in the mood to play. Best of both worlds. If you're really ready to rock, format your drive with BTRFS instead of the ancient EXT_ format and install as many *buntu flavors as you like to the same partition.

Another option might be using VirtualBox to test out the beta release in a virtual machine without damaging your stable install.

BTW, with BTRFS you can also take snapshots as often as you like along the install/update cycle and revert to a previous version whenever you need to.

My method is to first test out a new release in VirtualBox. Once it installs there and seems stable enough for bare metal, I do a parallel install of the new release to the same BTRFS partition as my current one. Once the new install is ready for "prime time" (usually a couple months after leaving beta when most of the obvious bugs have been hammered out), I move it up to default boot status and leave the older version intact. This way I have a backup in case I bork my main install. But, since I use BTRFS I try to make snapshots as I update or install anything major to avoid having to return to the lower version. As I add new versions, I delete the oldest one leaving three installs all the time: Historical (for backup), Current, and Future.

You can always use the dist-upgrade feature to move to the next version once it's released, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you're also using snapshots. Just my personal preference.

[drmaria]

Since you brought it up, it's very clear that Xenial is development release. It's not intended nor should it be expected to be stable, usable, or even easily installed. The intention of a developmental release is to allow those of us (the linux world) who want to participate in bug hunting or just want a preview of what's coming. There's no way I would install an alpha or beta release of anything and expect much from it.

Yes, I realized it later; as I told you I am new here on this forum; but not really new to kubuntu. I was using since 13.xx or so; every year downloading the latest version; just install from start, format and then install etc. Never had any issue. I did not realize this is still under development, just did not bother to read info on download pages.

Another option might be using VirtualBox to test out the beta release in a virtual machine without damaging your stable install.

- this is a very useful suggestion. I do have a working Oracle VMbox installed. and on top of that win10. Now I will try with the distro I want to try. - Thanks

I really should have joined this forum a few years back. But really I never had problem with kubuntu; switched to linux around 2009 and then to kubuntu since last 3 yrs or so. I just keep using it, do not experiment with the system itself.

What is your view on 'updates' - I am fed up with updates on windows and that is why I switched to linux. Now kubuntu also doing the same thing - daily one or two messages pop up saying security updates etc. What should we do? OS footprint will be getting bigger and bigger? Of course, I have no problems with space etc; I use a very latest laptop - i7 skylake; 16gb ram; 512gb ssd - Dell Inspiron 17 7000. But concerned with these daily updates.

BTW - I just re-installed my old distro 15.10 back. It just took 20 minutes - I used systemback; tada! everything including data, user settings, preferences - all back to normal.

[NoWorries]

After all the comments regarding failure to install the latest iso images, I decided to have a go as it is over three months since I have done this. I downloaded the iso file for the 11-Feb-2016 and created a boot usb using the command:

:~$ sudo dd if=xenial-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=16M
[sudo] password: 
86+1 records in
86+1 records out
1445363712 bytes (1.4 GB) copied, 413.052 s, 3.5 MB/s

The system booted to present the Install Xenial option. At the first screen is gives the options for network connections etc, but when I click OK the install crashes with the error message which I photographed and is shown below.



So it looks like it is currently impossible to try Xenial until this is fixed. A very sad state of affairs.

[oshunluvr]

@NoWorries: Scroll up to my post on this thread and try that edit. I haven't tried it with the newer ISO, but it worked a week ago.

[NoWorries]

Well, finally got it to install. Using the 01-28-2016 daily ISO, I found this solution on launchpad and sightly modified it. Grab the 01-28 ISO if you want to try it out.Boot to the Live Image, then before launching the installer, open a terminal and enter this one one-liner:

sudo sed -i '344 s/^/#/; 347 s/^/#/; 348 s/^/#/' /usr/lib/ubiquity/plugins/ubi-prepare.py

This fixes a secure boot key error when trying to install to a Vbox machine. I don't know if you need it for a bare metal install.

I tried this on an installation over an existing Xenial system. This time there was no crash with ubiquity. However it did not give partition options nor internet connection options. It continued though to the installation step and stopped, ie it did not proceed to install.

Edit:

Had another go. This time I copied the above line into Kate and stored it on a usb stick and thus before starting the installation of Xenial, I launched Konsole and copied the command into it. Looks like I made a typo in my first attempt as this time it worked.

So to do an installation with the current ISO's, one has to use the dd command to get the installation system up and then open a terminal and enter the above sed command before starting the installation.

[NoWorries]

Since the first beta is due for release on Thursday, I decided to download an try the 23 Feb 2016 build. I used usb-creator-kde to make the boot usb and it worked without a hitch.

Thankfully, No more hoops to jump through using the dd command and the sed command.

Congratulations to the developers on a job well done. After a bit more testing I plan to install it on my main production system as I am becoming increasingly impatient with "features" in Wily.

Edit:
I forgot to mention, as an insignificant side-note, there was a Thank You for choosing Kubuntu 15.10 in the installation process. A minor oversight. BTW, I have now installed Xenial on my main production system and all is well.

[MoonRise]

Since the first beta is due for release on Thursday, I decided to download an try the 23 Feb 2016 build. I used usb-creator-kde to make the boot usb and it worked without a hitch.

Thankfully, No more hoops to jump through using the dd command and the sed command.

Congratulations to the developers on a job well done. After a bit more testing I plan to install it on my main production system as I am becoming increasingly impatient with "features" in Wily.

Edit:
I forgot to mention, as an insignificant side-note, there was a Thank You for choosing Kubuntu 15.10 in the installation process. A minor oversight. BTW, I have now installed Xenial on my main production system and all is well.

Based on your glowing report here I decided to download current image and make a boot USB.

I agree, this is unlike any Beta I've tested to date.

Great going guys!!!! Really Impressive.

[claydoh]

use mkusb, or dd, the flashing tools often don't work on recent *buntu versions. Mkusb and dd have never failed for me.

[MoonRise]

I used it a good bit today at work. What I noticed compared to past version and others with PLASMA5 is I had no crashes. Most everything worked. On dual monitor was a little quirky but finally behaved.

I'm impressed and actually can say this will be the version I finally get my desktop upgraded with.

[NoWorries]

Hah!

Taking a step back + a nice glass of Italian wine can solve all kinds

I decided to limit my wishes and install the US version, that worked!

So the problem I ran into has to do with the Netherlands localisation.

This is brought to you from Xenial.

Edit:
Next problem is the additional driver feature doesn't work to recognise the nVidia card.
So I installed a driver from Muon and on reboot it lived on the external monitor.

But it has become a monitor without background or means to edit it.

So glad you got it to work with the help of the Italian wine. I hope that you have been able, after the installation, to change your location to Netherlands.

I now have Xenial installed on my laptop which has an Nvidia and an Intel video card. I have an external monitor that I connect to via a VGA cable. I decided to install the nvidia-331-updates driver and that also added the nvidia-340-updates. On reboot I could not login as it rejected my password. When I unplugged the external monitor it then booted up OK, but when I connected the external monitor it went back to the login screen from which I could not proceed.

I then tried the hdmi socket on my Laptop to connect to the external monitor and Xenial booted up successfully. However, my default panel shifted onto the external monitor and moving the cursor between the screens caused the screen contents to move onto the default laptop screen. The movement depended on where I located the cursor.

Edit:
I found that if I made the external monitor on the right side, there was no problem with the cursor left/right movement changing the desktop screen position. Also my panels were in the correct location. The main problem was that when using LibreOffice Presentation, it did not recognize two screens and behaved as though there was one screen with advancement using the arrow keys.

I don't think is pays to be a left handed.

So after all this trouble I have now reverted to using my Intel video card and I hope the nvidia driver is improved to handle external monitors.

On a positive note, I now have VLC working as it should and I no longer get an error message every time I exit Konsole. I have had Plasma crashes associated with the above Nvidia card testing. It has all settled down now.

[NoWorries]

I have being trying numerous options and I found it interesting that when I added the edgers ppa, I still got the latest from the Canonical repository. My muon location for the edgers ppa is http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu.

The nvidia driver that I had installed is nvidia-352_352.63-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb. I now have the nvidia-352-updates installed. I still have the problems with the external monitor being on the left. The other problem is that LibreOffice Presentation doesn't display any Slide Show controls on the primary monitor.

So I will just have to wait for more progress on the Nvidia front.My Intel card works well and if I have to change to another external monitor, and my only option is hdmi, I know how to get by.

[NoWorries]

Glad you have the 352.79 driver working for you. Unfortunately, it behaves the same as the previous one I used. I remove Nvidia drivers with a purge, ie

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo apt update; sudo apt full-upgrade
sudo apt-get autoremove

I then reboot and make doubly sure that everything is removed. I then use muon to install the new driver. As a general precaution I also remove the file ~/.local/share/kscreen.

With the new driver, I then go to system settings to locate the screens side by side and then apply.

I have found that the NVIDIA X Server Settings only shows one display - the external monitor. Perhaps, if it showed both, it might work properly.

The NVIDIA card that I have is the Geforce GT 630M.

[NoWorries]

Thanks for the possible insight into my problem.

What I have found is that if I have the NVIDIA selected with no external monitor, glxgears gives about 5,000 fps. If I connect the external monitor to the hdmi output of my Laptop, I get about 60fps with glxgears. This is the same rate that I get with the Intel card selected.

When I use the VGA connection to the external monitor and the NVIDIA driver, I get about 3,000 fps with glxgears which indicates that the NVIDIA card is being used.

From this I tend to think that the crux of the problem is the way the driver deals with an external monitor with two different video cards which is correctly handled by M$.

I will have to see if the bumblebee package solves the problem

[NoWorries]

I have not been successful with bumblebee as it was not able to find my GPU which lead to a black screen.

I have found that all the NVIDIA drivers that I have tried work with the VGA line. However, there is no sound or webcam usage available, ie all silent. System settings shows in the Multimedia option, all the sound and webcam grey out. I must say that after I installed nvidia-352-updates, the sound and webcam worked. BUT, on reboot they no longer worked. BTW, everything works fine if I do not have an external monitor connected. When it is connected, I am presented with the login screen about 3 times before it proceeds to start the desktop.

So I am back to using my Intel Video card which works but is not as fast as the NVIDIA card. I will wait patiently for fixes to these problems as I am sure the developers are aware of this.

[TWPonKubuntu]

I've taken the plunge and installed 16.04 on my 80Gb laptop drive (an alternate drive). I used mkusb to burn the iso and it installed with minimal problems, mostly because I switched my root and home drive partitions and had to redo the install once.
Total install time was less than 30 minutes with USB 2.0.

So far, the only real glitches are some screen tearing and slow application loading. I have seen some problems with various tools, like Firefox, not seeing the contents of the folder "/media". I had to move a file off the USB stick to my downloads folder to get it to see the file.

I hate the default splash screen... Ugly is being kind.