New Install, Bad Experience In First Couple Hours, Can't Even Post About It!

[Ignotus]

Well, I had a lengthy post written out, and I can't even post it because it says that I cannot post links until I have a post count of 1 and my post count is 0. The thing is, I HAVE NO LINKS IN MY POST! This entire Linux experience has been a colossal waste of time. This has been a horrible experience. I guess I'll try to post this and THEN I'll try to submit my actual post following this one assuming I can post two times in a certain window of time or something. I'm sure something will go wrong.

[Ignotus]

OK, sorry for having two consecutive posts, but this is the only way that I can post my issues. Otherwise, it wouldn't let me post because it insisted that I was trying to post links to something when I wasn't.


Kubuntu 13.04
Not a Wubi installation.
KDE 4.10.5
Grub 0.97-29ubuntu66
Dual boot with Windows 7 on a seperate partition.
Dekstop PC
Intel 64 bit CPU e2160 @ 2.4 GHz
GPU is MSI Nvidia GTX460 v2
Ram is 6GB DDR2
HDDs are 1 internal SATA 640GB partitioned into Linux/Windows 7/Storage, 1 internal IDE 40GB used as Linux swap, and 1 internal SATA 60GB SSD for games.
Optical drives consists of 1 internal IDE Lite-On DVD-RW.

I don't know if developers visit this forum or not, but I mostly just wanted to give some feedback to someone, and this forum is the one that I found. I've had numerous issues, so I'm not sure if help is what I'm really looking for at this point. Tomorrow I may have a different outlook, but right now, I just want to vent and express my frustration with the OS. If anyone has any ideas as to why the Internet isn't working reliably, I may give it a try tomorrow, I don't know. I'm really frustrated right now to the point of trying another distro.

I just installed the OS about an hour ago (as of when I started typing this) and haven't made any changes to it other than selecting KDE Homerun, so I would expect that everything, or most of it, "should" work.

Rekonq just "sits and spins" (the page loading dots on the tab just spin) and it won't load a page. I can sometimes click the link again (and again) and it will eventually load. Sometimes it says "Socket operation timed out". I thought maybe the Internet connection was bad, but the Ookla speed test returned 32.26 Mb/s, which is about right. So I guess Rekonq just isn't working properly.

I clicked the "Mozilla Firefox Browser Installer" under Internet Applications since Rekonq wasn't working properly, but nothing happened (it didn't install anything). I then attempted to use the search function of Muon Software Center to install Firefox. Searching for "firefox" returned nothing. However, manually browsing through the categories I was able to find Firefox, so I don't understand why it didn't find it. I then ran "sudo update-apt-xapian-index -f" to "force a rebuild of the package index that Muon uses". I found this info here on kubuntu forums. I rebooted and tried again and now the search function appears to work. I clicked on Firefox and clicked "install". It looks like it hung on downloading. I canceled it and tried to install it again and Muon Software Center crashed. At this point, I'm thinking "can this get any worse"?

The crash reporting assistant popped up. It says the crash info probably isn't useful. I'm prompted to install debug symbols to help the situation. It has supposedly been downloading this for the last 30 minutes. I guess that is hung too, or proceeding at a VERY slow pace considering my connection speed. It's at 28% of "downloading package files". It has seriously been at LEAST 30 minutes. I can't even submit crash info because the crash reporter won't work and I can't seem to download the debug symbols.

I fired Muon Software Center back up after giving up on the crash report. I attempted to install Firefox again, and it appeared to hang. It showed "installing" with no progress bar. Then, it suddenly says it was successful. I would think a progress bar inside the "installing" box would be beneficial. At least this time it only took about 1 minute and it completed.

There is seriously something wrong with how the Internet is working. A Google search in Firefox took 10 seconds to show results. In Windows 7, I can type in a query, submit it, and have results in a second or two. I don't know what the deal is, but I believe surfing the Internet is something fundamental that should just WORK, and it isn't. Sometimes I click a link and it loads, and sometimes I click a link and it tries to load for a minute or more until I get tired of waiting. I click the link again, and then it "sometimes" loads. Pages are loading so slowly that I'm about to put my fist through the screen; it's infuriating. Even getting access to post here was an exercise in patience since getting logged into Gmail to verify my email took me many tries. I thought my email from that account got forwared to my primary Gmail account, but it never showed up. So I tried to log into the secondary account that I gave when I signed up for this forum. I couldn't remember the password because I don't typically log into it directly. Resetting the password for it and jumping through Google's hoops took me literally 15 minutes or more because the Internet on this OS just isn't working. I almost gave up and used my phone. I finally found the email in my spam folder which explains why it wasn't forwarded. I know the spam thing isn't really under your control, but it was annoying.

At this point, I'm left feeling like Kubuntu, perhaps Linux in general, still isn't ready for primetime. It feels like every time I try it out, they just keep adding more features without making it stable or fixing bugs. I've had a pretty bad experience within a couple of hours of a fresh install. It's pretty late here, so I can't do anything about it tonight, but I'll likely be formatting and either trying another distro, or just scrapping Linux altogether yet again for a while. I'll probably be back in 6 months or a year when I get bored and decide to try it again. These just seem like simple core functionalities that should work. I'm not expecting much of the OS. I want the Internet to work, the Muon Software Center should work without me having to issue commands at the command line immediately after installation, and I should be able to install software without waiting an hour for it to download, which I guess goes back to the Internet issues.

By the way, I find KDE to be a little confusing coming from Windows. I minimize a window and then can't find it without alt-tabbing to get it back up. I'm sure the interface is highly customizable, but I feel like I need to take a class on how to use it. I can't imagine trying to get one of my non-technical friends to use this. Even if everything was working, I'd definitely have to search the Internet for tutorials on how KDE works and what things are or do.

I tried to post this and it said I cannot post links due to my post count. I don't see any links... this whole situation feels like it has been a colossal waste of time.

[Simon]

This forum is basically a help site for people with the KDE Plasma Workspaces (term for all graphical environments provided by KDE) and less about the Ubuntu Linux itself.

I also began my Linux existence as a dual boot user switching back and forth between Windows XP and Kubuntu. After sometime I realized I was doing less productivity in Windows and more so in Kubuntu. I tossed XP aside and did a full conversion to 12.04 and have been running Kubuntu since. In your lengthy article above you talk about frustration and long download times and end with " this whole situation feels like it has been a colossal waste of time."

Which seems like you have already given up and your whole posting just ends up sounding more like a rant than a cry for help. Myself and others here would like to help people ease into the Linux hot tub, but you need to slow down and calm down before anyone here can assist you. Many of the items or issues you made a very general. Even I can tell you that internet download speed could be an issue with ISP or one of the servers you are hopping to get to the distros.

I hope you can get it up and running, but you should also join a Ubuntu forum as well.

Best wishes,

Simon

[tek_heretik]

You've overclocked an old dual-core Pentium, hmm. Overclocking causes stability problems. Did you run every test possibly to see if your O'C'ed machine is stable and reliable? O'C'ing raises the memory speed too (unless it's independent of the FSB), that's what mainly causes instability and errors, I don't O'C' (can't be bothered) but I would buy memory that can be run faster than the machine's default, that way there is 'room' at the top end.

I am not an official spokesperson for the distro or this forum but I have to chime in if I may...first off, any Linux distro is free as in you get what you pay for, secondly, I've been using/testing this distro for several years (been toying with Linux in general since the middle '00s) now and have never had problems like you described. FYI, KDE is written by (voluntary/unpaid) code writers mainly from Germany and it's just a desktop environment, sewn on top of Ubuntu, which by the way, is independent of this forum, this forum is even independent of Kubuntu, it's sole purpose is to help people with questions about Kubuntu and is supported by member donations and ads. Lastly, you sound fairly PC/tech savvy, so I am having doubts about extent of your troubles, my suggestion with any distro you try is to give it a 'spin' 'live' first in your optical drive, if it likes all your hardware and works well, go with it, that's what I do/did. I chose Kubuntu after distro hopping for years (LTS by the way, 12.04.2, 12.04.3 as of a couple of hours ago, lol) because it suits my needs to a 'T', the Ubuntu base is well supported, KDE is most like my former OS (sadly, WinDOHS), etc, etc.

Oops, almost forgot, no offence, but your machine is getting a little long in the tooth, this is from one hardware junky to another, lol.

Oh, one more thing, it looks like you have no shortage of HDDs/SSDs, if you are going to test distros, dedicate one drive for it, even though I love Linux and the apps people write for it, I still don't trust the partition apps and installers, I would hate to have to read your post disaster post if a distro wiped out your WinDOHS install, lol. Let the installer(s) put the swap on the same dedicated drive, it will probably never get used anyway considering the amount of phys mem you have.

[Buddlespit]

I like to tinker with my system. That tends to lead to colossal, non-recoverable screw ups on my part. I have wiped and re-installed Kubuntu 13.04 about 8 times in the last 2 months. Never has any of my "new" installs worked exactly the same. Sometimes I have no widgets on my panel, once I had no internet. Luckily, I have a separate /home partition. So, after I completely bork kwin or lightdm or some other vital part of Kubuntu, all I do is delete ~/.kde, then reboot to my live cd and reinstall. I've had to do that twice on a fresh install. Usually, I'll check or reburn my cd to make sure that it's still viable and isn't the cause of my new install issues.

IOW, make sure your cd is good and reinstall.

[Shabakthanai]

Here is how I would install Kubuntu 13.04.

Download and copy the LiveCD to disk. Verify the mdsum.

Once verified, restart the computer and open the BIOS.

Under Boot sequence make sure that the Optical Drive is first to boot.

Place the downloaded operating system in the DVD and allow the LiveCD to boot.

This usually takes a little time, because the data is highly compressed.

When you get to the page that offers "Trying Kubuntu" or "Installing Kubuntu".

(It sounds like you have made the decission to install, so click on "Install". )

Select your Time Zone and Keyboard type.

Enter your personal information including password.

Choose "Custom Install" to create partitions on your computer.

Uncompressed, Kubuntu is a large Operating System, so I would create a Primary partition in the amount 20GB, set the file system as ext4, and set the mount point at "/" minus the quotes. This establishes the drive your Operating System will be installed in.

Next, click on the unallocated portion of the drive and creat a partition the size of your memory. Under choice of file system, choose "Linux swap". Linux swap is the mount point.

Next in the remaining unallocated space, set the file system ext4 and make a primary partition.

For a mount point, make it "/home". Kubuntu has set up its system to operate best using this as your /home partition's name. Because /home is a separate partition, all your data, photos, movies, etc. will be saved to a partition that will be unaffected if you cras
Click on "Install" and allow the operating system to install. If it is successful, the system will say just that. Restart the computer and open Kmenu>Applications>System>Terminal Konsole.

Right-click on Terminal Konsole and click on Add to Favorites. (When you open the KMenu from now on, you will have quick access to a terminal.)

Select the Konsole and type in:

sudo apt-get update - and wait for the updates to be installed.
Next:
sudo apt-get upgrade - and wait for the upgrades to install. When prompted to say yes, type 'y' without the quotes.
Next:
sudo dpkg --configure -a - this will confirm that the applications have been properly configured.
Next:
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-restricted-extras - this is a big application and will take a while. Click on "y" without the quotes when prompted and "OK" when you agree. This will provide needed applications to improve all your multimedia desires.
Next:
Open a browser and type in medibuntu downloads.
When it opens click on the Kubuntu application you have installed. Install all of the available applications that will install.
Next:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo dpkg --configure -a (this will update and upgrade the additional packages and applications that you installed from the terminal, as well as, confirm configuration.

When you restart your computer, you will be given a choice between Kubuntu/Windows.

Select the OS you wish to run and open your computer.

When you wish to personalize your computer by configuring all your special personal requirements submit a new post and I will help you with that too. After that is done, use your kubuntu system for about 6 weeks without changing anything. If you do, you will find that the newer Kmenu rather than the one that is more like the Windows Start is faster and far superior to use.

Update your computer everytime an update is offered, you are in a stable cutting edge operating system that still benefits from tweaking.

I personally find that every time I update my Windows 7 operating system with just a couple of updates or security fixes, it will take about 10 minutes or more. The updates in Kubuntu may run a hundred and take less time to install and update. And most of the time you will not be required to restart your system to set the changes in kubuntu.

Using Kubuntu for 20 or so years now, I have never installed virus software or spy or adware either. I have never had an event in any of those normal Windows daily experiences. Download and installation of downloads are lightning fast and nothing costs you money. All the applications are highly configurable and cutting edge professional, and all are upgraded to the cutting edge of their stable development when you type in your terminal: sudo apt-get upgrade, and everything that improves an application will be included in the daily updates to your system, none of which cost you anything. You don't have to buy next year's newer version, you already have it.

You should save your current post and read it again in 5 years just to remember what you originally thought about Kubuntu vs. Windows. It will be a little embarrassing for you.

[tek_heretik]

Usually, I'll check or reburn my cd to make sure that it's still viable and isn't the cause of my new install issues.

Good point, I MD5 all my downloads and run the disk self-check on EVERY distro (that has it).

[Ignotus]

Thanks for the responses. I have cooled down after getting some sleep. I was quite aggravated last night when I posted. I just kept running into roadblock after roadblock. It's difficult to deal with the situation knowing that I have a working and capable Windows 7 installation available. I'd like to have a Linux desktop that I can use that is stable and where I can accomplish most of what I use Windows for with the exception of gaming. I don't mind booting into Windows if I want to game. It was just very aggravating that something that seems like it should be simple and working out of the box, Internet surfing, was not really working at all. I figure most people use their computers for surfing and email. It can be difficult at times to have the motivation to tinker with Linux to get it working when Windows works out of the box and does what I need. Now that I've stepped away from it for a bit, I'm going to see if I can get it going without an enormous commitment. I believe Linux will never gain significant market share with the masses if it continues to require a great deal of effort just to get a working desktop that can do basic tasks in a stable manner. With that said, I'm going to invest some time to see if I can get this working. I'm not a typical user, so I am ready to put a little work into this.

Now I'll start with the first response and work my way down. This is long, like my initial post, but I wanted to respond to a few specific comments.

Many of the items or issues you made a very general. Even I can tell you that internet download speed could be an issue with ISP or one of the servers you are hopping to get to the distros.

It definitely was not an ISP issue or hardware issue. I logged into Windows and everything was working as expected, as was my Android phone. So my connection was good and the wiring, router, and NIC are fine. It is a wired connection by the way. I'm wired into a Netgear wifi router. The speedtest ran from within Kubuntu also indicated the correct and full speed that I'm used to seeing, but for whatever reason, I could only surf intermittently and it required multiple refreshes to get a page to load. I still have no idea what was causing it. I did reboot, and there was no change. Today however, Firefox appears to be working OK. I'm not sure what the deal whas, but it was maddening.

You've overclocked an old dual-core Pentium, hmm. Overclocking causes stability problems. Did you run every test possibly to see if your O'C'ed machine is stable and reliable? O'C'ing raises the memory speed too (unless it's independent of the FSB)

Overclocking can cause stability problems. I have not experienced any stability problems. I've been running my FSB and CPU at this speed since I built the machine back in 2007 I believe. My ram is indeed independent; it is not OC'd. I've not ran any stability tests in a long time, but I still run games (Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas, Dishonored, and Borderlands 2 most recently), convert video, convert audio, and use my computer almost daily and have not experienced any issues. I monitor temps with Speedfan under Windows and keep it clean and ventilated.

first off, any Linux distro is free as in you get what you pay for

That is no excuse for a buggy product in my opinion. As long as that type of attitude remains, Linux will never gain significant market share I believe. People that use Linux quite a bit are used to using the CLI and are used to crashes and bugs. If anyone that contributes to Linux ever wants it to take market share from Windows, then the product will need to have more polish. Isn't that the goal? To have an OS or environment that a user can use to accomplish daily tasks without having to invest large amounts of time learning to use or configure the OS? I figure most Linux distros want users, and most of those potential users are currently using Windows. Most of them are not OK with using a command line frequently or having buggy software. I wouldn't expect a free product to be as polished as Windows or Mac OS, but what I experienced last night can't happen imo if a distro hopes to gain users.

Oops, almost forgot, no offence, but your machine is getting a little long in the tooth, this is from one hardware junky to another, lol.

This I agree with. I'm aware of the age of the machine. It still works fine. The CPU drags me down from time to time, but I don't have the money to rebuild, and it would need to be a full rebuild at this point. I'm just using what I have available, and it's fairly capable. I played the hell out of Skyrim and New Vegas and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I'd definitely rebuild if I had the money. Eventually...

IOW, make sure your cd is good and reinstall.

I checked the md5 of the iso that I downloaded; it's good. I put the iso on a USB thumb drive using the Windows tool Rufus and I installed from that. Rufus has never let me down. I believe I'm OK there. I've installed Windows 7, Vista, XP, Ubuntu, used GParted, and intalled this Kubuntu setup using Rufus created thumb drives. I'm pretty confident with it. I apologize for not mentioning that I checked the hash and installed from a USB stick to begin with.

@Shabakthanai, I didn't want to quote your entire post. If I decide to scrap this and start over, I'll follow your advice. I didn't set up a seperate /home partition. I plan to store most of my data on my ntfs Storage partition so that I can access everything from Windows. I still may redo this following your advice. Some of your advice I can go ahead and use either way.

First off, your detailed and long lamentation could really be limited to one sentence; your network connection is terribly slow.
You don't mention if you use a wired or a WIFI connection.
Second, nowhere do I read about you, before installation, trying the Live Disk option.
This can be an important test to see if your hardware is compatible and it also gives you better tools to prepare your disk partitions.

I could have summed it up with one or two sentences, but I was quite irritated. I wanted readers to understand why I was irritated. I wanted the Kubuntu faithful to see one example of why Linux still does't own the desktop. I read just about every year how it's the year of the Linux desktop, and it never pans out. If a typical user had my experience, they would say "forget this" and go back to Windows because it just works. I didn't intend to just post for help with my Internet issues, I hoped that someone out there cares about the user experience, wants Linux to gain marketshare, and would read my comments and see why it's never Linux's year. The OS continues to get better, but I still feel like there is too much focus on features and not enough on fixing bugs before moving forward. That's just my personal opinion.

It is a wired connection to a Netgear wifi router. I should have mentioned that, my apologies.

I didn't mention trying the OS before I installed because I didn't. I had a spare partition from my days attempting to set up a Hackintosh. I got bored and figured I would install Kubuntu to that partition and see how the OS is coming these days. I did boot the Live session, but I didn't really mess with it. I just jumped in.

Now I'm going to spend some time seeing if I can get this desktop set up how I need it. I've got apps to download, things to configure, etc. I will definitely post here if I run into further issues that I cannot resolve. You seem like a friendly and helpful group of people. Thanks again for the replies. I'm sure I came across hostile and everyone was still pretty level-headed and helpful.

[tek_heretik]

That is no excuse for a buggy product in my opinion. As long as that type of attitude remains, Linux will never gain significant market share I believe. People that use Linux quite a bit are used to using the CLI and are used to crashes and bugs. If anyone that contributes to Linux ever wants it to take market share from Windows, then the product will need to have more polish. Isn't that the goal? To have an OS or environment that a user can use to accomplish daily tasks without having to invest large amounts of time learning to use or configure the OS? I figure most Linux distros want users, and most of those potential users are currently using Windows. Most of them are not OK with using a command line frequently or having buggy software. I wouldn't expect a free product to be as polished as Windows or Mac OS, but what I experienced last night can't happen imo if a distro hopes to gain users.

Again, I'VE had very little to no problems. As with any software, including WinDOHS, there is a learning curve. I should also mention, anybody correct me if I'm wrong here, aging hardware drivers in the kernel are constantly being deprecated to keep the kernel bloat to a bare minimum. That's why Linux works 'out-of-the-box', it has drivers in the kernel. When you get sick of the tons of spyware in WinDOHS, license choke, poor support, vulnerabilities up the whazoo, you'll change your tune and embrace what we have, it's worth the learning curve. FYI, if Linux was bad, etc, usage/support would drop off but it just keeps growing, and not just on PCs, Google used Linux to write Android.

Edit: Did you know most of the world's servers run Linux? That's because Microslop's server products are inferior. Apparently Darwin's theory applies to the computer world too, lol, hence the eventual migration of Linux to the desktop.

[Shabakthanai]

Because there are so few configuration capabilities in Windows and so many in Kubuntu, you probably could use some help setting up your desktop. Unlimited backgrounds, very useful widgets that are also configurable, unlimited color combinations, unlimited styles, extended mouse capabilities, and on-and-on. Just figuring all of them out is daunting without a little help. You appear impatient and could use some help in this area. I will attach a modest desktop that contains some useful widgets. The analog clock is handy, especially when you have dual monitors; since you seem interested in download speeds, the widget that shows downloads will give you the download speed of each package being downloaded, the weather widget will keep you informed about impending changes in the weather, and you can have as many cities showing should you have interest in other communities, and HDD and SSD drive space remaining can let you know in advance if you are about to overload a drive. There are many more to chose from too.

[Buddlespit]

Approximately 2.55% of the computers in the world are running Linux of some sort as the primary OS. I will disagree with you about why Linux isn't gaining "market shares". It's not because it doesn't work "out-of-the-box", because it does, but because of GAMES. Very rarely do you see a large game manufacturer also have a Linux version. So a lot of people try a Linux distro, but keep Windows so they can play their games. And since 2.55% of the market share (worldwide) are linux, there's no real loss for game manufacturers to write a Linux version.

My wife just recently moved over to Kubuntu 13.04. She was having issues with Windows 7. I spent a month trying to figure out why she kept locking up after having her system running for 10 minutes. We checked the software. We checked the hardware. We tried restoring. I scoured the interwebz, looking for a fix. I figured that it had to be something hardware related. I got sick of her bitching about her system locking up, backed up her user folder to the server, wiped her harddrive and installed Kubuntu 13.04. Her system hasn't locked up since. My daughter is still the only one in my household not running Linux. And that's because EA Games hasn't released a Linux version of Origin and no one has figured out how to get Origin to run in wine reliably.

[Ignotus]

My initial issue, aside from the rant, was that my Internet connection was working intermittently for surfing and installing packages. Since that seems to have resolved itself after a couple of reboots, I will mark this resolved if I can figure out how. I have run into a couple of new issues that I haven't been able to resolve on my own, but I will start a new thread for that.

[woodsmoke]

Hi Ignotus

I posted a reply in another threazd before I found this one but I would post two simple things...

and for the ol' woodsmoker that is a FIRST!!!

a) I have had experience with MANY distros in which one actually needs to get THE DISTRO....ON....A....HARD DISK......before one could "get on the net"....

This is not a "Kubuntu/Ubuntu" problem.....

The "problem" is that the hardware manufacturerers of some items will not "release" their basic informatiuon to the Philistines.

b) your hardware really IS...."long in the tooth"...

I mean...considering my OTHER post...your hardware....

Even the Gregman, and the Johnnieman( may he rest in peace) have never grabbed stuff off the beltways from 2007......weell yes...I do remember one Maxtor...a 6.4 gig made in Singapore, 10/15/98..... that was somewhat earlier than your hardware....

Basicaally......there is just "so much" data that can be jammed into a cd or a dvd.... the developers have to make "informed decisions"....about what the "average user" needs....

You really are pushing the "previous envelope"....

So....

Here is my advice.....

Just do a "plain install" do not try to get any kind of stuff such as "codecs" or any of that "stuff" to download "at the same time..."

Just get the install onto a hard drive.

Then go about getting the hardware to handshake with the software in that you can get "Synaptic" to work, is in systems, etc. and is your "software source".

Then you will PROBABLY

have to go through SEVERAL...." iterations" of "you need to install these updates"....

just go for it...

AT LEAST you are "on the net"...

If you can't get on the net then you are basically screwed unless you have access to another machine...

but start by getting the OS onto some kind of hardware and then let "Synaptic" kind of hold your hand to get the other necesssary stuff onto the hardware.

and DO NOT BY SHY...

come back with results, questions, etc.

There are many very knowledgeable people who will help you if you post clear questions and reference your software installs and the metal upon which you installed it.

woodsmoke