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Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

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    Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

    I installed Kubuntu 9.10 not long ago and was very ecstatic about switching over from a Gnome desktop to KDE. I had no issues with any Gnome desktop regardless of distro, compiz enabled or not, but KDE has always had some sorted clipping and jagged rendering issues. It is highly apparent within this newest install and it is very frustrating to say the least.

    In essence, I will be using the desktop and the display is perfect with no issues. Any action after roughly 10 minutes causes the screen to go into a mess of broken triangles, distortion and perspective lines until the screen is roughly nothing but a white screen with partial broken images as shown below in the attached image.

    I am running a Nvidia PCI card with the Nvidia 185 (recommended) driver installed and a HP Pavillian 22 inch monitor. The resolution is 1900 X 1200

    To be honest, I really do not know what to do at this point anymore. I have tried every configuration that i can think of to possibly bring it around but nothing seems to stick. I have disabled all desktop effects, transparency..etc...with little or no desired result.

    I am hoping that somebody else out here has had similar issues and can provide a solution as KDE was a primary desktop for me for many years in SuSe, and then I got sucked into Gnome in Ubuntu which never gave any issues to me until the last "upgrade" (long story..lol)

    Thank you for any help regarding this matter!
    Attached Files

    #2
    Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

    Time to check your graphic card's cooling system

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

      Have you tried to reproduce this using a LiveCD from an alternate distribution? You mentioned that previous distros didn't do this, so perhaps try one of them as that would offer you a "known good" state and eliminate hardware as the culprit.

      If you have no video problems with a different distro, then it's probably a software memory leak -- check the files in /var/log for anything that corresponds to the time when your video goes on the fritz, particularly Xorg.conf, kern.log, kdm.log and syslog. If you find any diagnostic info, open a bug report at http://launchpad.net. If you don't find any diagnostic info, I'm unsure where to steer you.

      If the problem persists with different distros, then it's likely a hardware issue. As the other response suggests, check the video cooling system.


      Comment


        #4
        Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

        I had something similar at one time and it turned out to be a memory issue. Which if it is onboard, then you'd have to replace the graphics card. Hopefully it will be as easy as a cooling issue as THHHB stated.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

          Wow, thanks for the replies guys, much appreciated!

          The card itself is running at 45 degrees on a consistent level. I had suspected this was the issue from the start, but since I never had the issues present themselves in Suse running KDE after disabling compiz at the time, I had assumed Compiz was at fault or, just a very poor graphic card trying to do more than what it could handle. Those suspicions were once again thwarted when I installed Ubuntu a couple years ago and ran Compiz without any issues (except of course poor animation at times, skipped frames...etc...which was a result of having the card set for high quality...not the best card mind you..lol..)

          The live CD never had any of these issues and I really ran it pretty hard just to make sure I was not installing a possible distro that, after I finially got comfortable with it and started installing and adding this or that, it would need to be reinstalled or removed (similar to what happened to my Ubuntu installation after the latest upgrade)

          When I noticed the problem, it seemed to occur after the installation of the Nvidia 185 driver. After I posted my question, I decided to "roll back" and simply remove the 185 driver completely and use what Kubuntu selected. So far, as of this writing, I have had no issues yet, but...I have only run the machine now for about a half hour under some load and about 1.5 hours in screensaver/plasma clock mode.

          So..maybe that is/was the problem all along. The Nvidia 185 driver not working as expected..........



          Comment


            #6
            Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

            Originally posted by tmeehan

            If you have no video problems with a different distro, then it's probably a software memory leak -- check the files in /var/log for anything that corresponds to the time when your video goes on the fritz, particularly Xorg.conf, kern.log, kdm.log and syslog. If you find any diagnostic info, open a bug report at http://launchpad.net. If you don't find any diagnostic info, I'm unsure where to steer you.

            If the problem persists with different distros, then it's likely a hardware issue. As the other response suggests, check the video cooling system.


            I went through a mountain of log file data within the Xorg.conf file, and found that the NV driver seems to be the one I should stick with. Apparently the 185 Nvidia driver for whatever reason is not correctly working for my Nvidia geforce 6200 card. I realize it is an old card, a crappy card at that, but...for Linux, it really seems to do just fine, as long as I can get a driver to play nice with it. I will check Nvidia's site as well and see if there is any corresponding issues pertaining to that card and a possible driver to enable Kwin again, as the default NV will not allow that to take place.

            Again, many thanks for the help and advice!

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

              That is possible for a newer driver to cause issues such as running the card hotter than normal and also accessing memory wrong. If you have no issues with the older driver and are pleased with the performance from it, I would just leave it there.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

                Originally posted by MoonRise
                That is possible for a newer driver to cause issues such as running the card hotter than normal and also accessing memory wrong. If you have no issues with the older driver and are pleased with the performance from it, I would just leave it there.
                Is 45 too hot for a PCI card? Im not all that familiar with proper running temps on graphic cards.

                I would like to at least enable some aspects of Kwin however (or even Compiz) due to the fact I kind of spoiled myself to a degree with just a few of the minor aspects of the enhancements Compiz or Kwin provide.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

                  My old Gateway m675prr with an ATI Radeon ran between 42 and 47 degrees, as the fan cycled on and off.
                  "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
                  – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

                    Originally posted by GreyGeek
                    My old Gateway m675prr with an ATI Radeon ran between 42 and 47 degrees, as the fan cycled on and off.
                    Interesting....this Nvidia runs a pretty constant 45 as I used the Nvidia tool to check it quite frequently before I reverted to the NV driver. I used to run ATI in this very computer but grew pretty tired of the driver support and wonky issues that transpired with those very drivers. I wound up pulling that card and installing this Nvidia card which now seems to run pretty flawless using the NV driver.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

                      not too sure as I don't track that. It still could be bad memory more than anything in my experiences.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

                        According to the documentation
                        http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree8...ppendix-a.html
                        the GeForce 6200 SHOULD be supported

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

                          I am running a Geforce 6200 with the 185 driver and I have no issues. Runs Kwin or Compiz just fine.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

                            Card issues then. Memory? Overheating (and not reporting temp correctly)? All possibilities which really says time to replace, unfortunately. It happens.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Display issues in KDE Must see to believe

                              I''ll wager it is a card issue. NVidia is notorious for problems with their 7x,8x and 9x series, and some suggest their problems started more than two years ago with the 6x series. Last I heard they are defendants in a $200M lawsuit brought by the OEMs that used their chips.
                              "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
                              – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

                              Comment

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