[SOLVED] Kubuntu Installer Running Incredibly Slowly

[Mr. Spiffy]

Hello all, long time Windows user and have decided to migrate my old laptop to Kubuntu.



I've spent the better part of a week first testing installing different distros through a VM on my new machine just to make sure I've figured out the installation process. Then I crawled through forums and YouTube videos learning how to set up your computer to install an Ubuntu distro. I downloaded Kubuntu, used Rufus to put it on a USB drive, plugged it into my computer and got Kubuntu to boot. However, boot takes forever (I think because booting from an external drive takes a long time?) and when it does boot the installer typically freezes up if I select "Try Kubuntu" or "Install Kubuntu" in the menu. The OS doesn't freeze as I'm able to move the mouse around the screen but am unable to launch the Konsole or really do anything. The mouse loading wheel just plays endlessly and after letting it "set up" for 24 hours and getting nowhere I just shut the computer down. After several fruitless attempts (one where I did manage to get to the "choose your timezone screen" on the installer before doing the same thing) I'm out of ideas on what's causing my issue. For further information, Windows 10 was installed on the device by default but I made sure to disable fast boot (the only issue I found while researching that seemed relevant to my problem). I've also got the device information below:

Booting Kubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
Not installed through WUBI, though Windows 10 is currently installed.
Honestly, not sure what the difference between KDE and Kubuntu is? (Checked on my VM which uses the same ISO, didn't find any version info)
Not sure what GRUB version I'm using nor have a way to check it (On my VM, the supplied command to check didn't seem to work). I'm assuming whatever version comes with the Kubuntu ISO.

The device is a laptop. HP Envy x360 Convertible
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2500U with integrated Radeon Vega 8 Graphics. 64 bit
No Dedicated GPU
8GB RAM
Device has a 128 GB internal SSD

Any help and advise would be much appreciated!

[jlittle]

Honestly, not sure what the difference between KDE and Kubuntu is?

Kubuntu is essentially Ubuntu (without Gnome) plus KDE plasma. You can run plasma on many distros, and some have it as the default desktop environment. I'd guess only a minority of KDE plasma users use Kubuntu, but that really is a guess.

"KDE" was once the "K Desktop Environment", but now it's the name of a "free software community", that produces lots of software, and "plasma" is the desktop environment. Much of the software doesn't need plasma, and some doesn't even need Linux.

[Jonas]

Hello all, long time Windows user and have decided to migrate my old laptop to Kubuntu.



I've spent the better part of a week first testing installing different distros through a VM on my new machine just to make sure I've figured out the installation process. Then I crawled through forums and YouTube videos learning how to set up your computer to install an Ubuntu distro. I downloaded Kubuntu, used Rufus to put it on a USB drive, plugged it into my computer and got Kubuntu to boot. However, boot takes forever (I think because booting from an external drive takes a long time?) and when it does boot the installer typically freezes up if I select "Try Kubuntu" or "Install Kubuntu" in the menu. The OS doesn't freeze as I'm able to move the mouse around the screen but am unable to launch the Konsole or really do anything. The mouse loading wheel just plays endlessly and after letting it "set up" for 24 hours and getting nowhere I just shut the computer down. After several fruitless attempts (one where I did manage to get to the "choose your timezone screen" on the installer before doing the same thing) I'm out of ideas on what's causing my issue. For further information, Windows 10 was installed on the device by default but I made sure to disable fast boot (the only issue I found while researching that seemed relevant to my problem). I've also got the device information below:
Booting Kubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
Not installed through WUBI, though Windows 10 is currently installed.
Honestly, not sure what the difference between KDE and Kubuntu is? (Checked on my VM which uses the same ISO, didn't find any version info)
Not sure what GRUB version I'm using nor have a way to check it (On my VM, the supplied command to check didn't seem to work). I'm assuming whatever version comes with the Kubuntu

The device is a laptop. HP Envy x360 Convertible
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 2500U with integrated Radeon Vega 8 Graphics. 64 bit
No Dedicated GPU
8GB RAM
Device has a 128 GB internal SSD

Any help and advise would be much appreciated!

Hello, welcome to kubuntuforums.

Install shouldn't take longer then 30-60 minutes depending on your hardware and internet connection. Your hardware look perfectly adequate.

I'd suggest you first check that your download ISO isn't corrupt. You'll find the SHA256 checksums on the download page of Kubuntu, depending on version.

To check on Linux/(K)Ubuntu here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToSHA256SUM

If you only have a windows box, as of now, here's how to do it on windows. I'm not sure if PowerShell come pre-installed on Windows, you may need to install it.
https://docs.precisely.com/docs/sftw...ut_sha256.html
And a video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xpmku3kwjo

There are some known issues, but at a glance I didn't see anything that should be any major issue for you. You can look at the release notes here, with link to known bugs.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JammyJellyfi...eNotes/Kubuntu

As for KDE, Kubuntu and Ubuntu distributions etc, besides from what jlittle wrote, in the link above you'll also see QT mentioned, "Kubuntu 22.04 ships with Qt 5.15.3" , this is the toolkit that KDE uses, which differs from many other Desktop Environments, like Gnome (on Ubuntu), LXDE and Mate for instance, who uses GTK (GIMP ToolKit).
When your Kubuntu/KDE computer is up and running you may see some applications that look different, and this could be because of GTK. GIMP, Inkscape and Firefox among others use GTK. This could cause some issues in the past but these days the GTK-apps run as smooth as any other KDE/Qt native application.
Under the hood, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Lubuntu pretty much behave the same.

/Jonas

[Mr. Spiffy]

Kubuntu is essentially Ubuntu (without Gnome) plus KDE plasma. You can run plasma on many distros, and some have it as the default desktop environment. I'd guess only a minority of KDE plasma users use Kubuntu, but that really is a guess.

"KDE" was once the "K Desktop Environment", but now it's the name of a "free software community", that produces lots of software, and "plasma" is the desktop environment. Much of the software doesn't need plasma, and some doesn't even need Linux.

Thank you for the information! I didn't realize there was a difference between the two. I guess I still have a lot to learn about Linux!

I'd suggest you first check that your download ISO isn't corrupt. You'll find the SHA256 checksums on the download page of Kubuntu, depending on version.

To check on Linux/(K)Ubuntu here:

If you only have a windows box, as of now, here's how to do it on windows. I'm not sure if PowerShell come pre-installed on Windows, you may need to install it.

And a video here:

Powershell does come installed on Windows. I've followed the instructions you provided and the checksum does match up with the provided on the kubuntu website:

As of writing this, I've noticed there's another option for a partition scheme on Rufus that gives me the option to format it as a UEFI only drive. I was fairly sure I was already booting in UEFI mode but maybe there was something going on I was unaware of. I'll follow up with an update soon.

[Jonas]

Ok. I've never tried Rufus but it seems like a good option. If you have trouble with Rufus you could try Balena Etcher, cross platform, FOSS image disk writer.
You'll find it here. https://www.balena.io/etcher/

/Jonas

[bweinel]

It may also be that your USB drive has a problem. Are you using a brand name USB drive? As claydoh has posted on a different thread here, many off brand USB drives have issues... so it's best to use a brand name (i.e.: Sandisk, Kingston, Samsung, etc..) USB drive for doing installations.

Along those same thought lines, have you tried it using a different USB drive? Long data load times with a USB drive would seem to indicate that your system may be having problems reading your USB drive.

Finally, the USB port used on your system will also determine the installation time. Using a USB 1.1 port will likely load much slower than using a USB 3.0 port. (Of course if your USB drive is only a USB v1.1 compliant drive, your stuck at 1.1 speed.)

cheers,
bill

[Mr. Spiffy]

Ok. I've never tried Rufus but it seems like a good option. If you have trouble with Rufus you could try Balena Etcher, cross platform, FOSS image disk writer.
You'll find it here.

Thanks! I tried it out just in case something was wrong with Rufus's setup. Sadly, no dice on fixing my issue.

It may also be that your USB drive has a problem. Are you using a brand name USB drive? As claydoh has posted on a different thread here, many off brand USB drives have issues... so it's best to use a brand name (i.e.: Sandisk, Kingston, Samsung, etc..) USB drive for doing installations.

Finally, the USB port used on your system will also determine the installation time. Using a USB 1.1 port will likely load much slower than using a USB 3.0 port. (Of course if your USB drive is only a USB v1.1 compliant drive, your stuck at 1.1 speed.)

I'm not sure what brand the drive I'm using initially was. I did wonder if that was the case and got a 15GB Kingston drive just to try it out. I also booted Kubuntu using both drives on my newer PC just to check if there was an issue (the older drive formatted by Rufus and the newer Kingston one formatted by Balena per Jonas) and both drives booted just fine. I was able to launch Kubuntu with no issues so I'm thinking there's definitely either a setting I've got wrong or maybe a hardware issue of some kind. I also checked my USB ports and they are USB 3.0.

To reinforce the idea it's a hardware or setting issue, something I noticed while sitting in front of my computer, there's an error of some kind whenever I boot. When GRUB launched I'd just click "install" and leave to let it do its thing. But an error flashes onscreen for just a slight moment before the Kubunto logo appears with the following:

 
[0.519095] tpm_crb MSFT0101:00: [Firmware Bug]: ACPI region does not cover the entire command/response buffer. [mem 0x9d04d000-0x9d0fdfff flags 0x200] vs 9d04d000 4000
[0.519921] tpm_crb MSFT0101:00: can't request region for resource [mem 0x9d04d000-0x9d04dfff]
[1.985679] irq 7: nobody cared (try booting with the "irqpoll" option)
[1.985797] handlers:
[1.985810] [<000000004660e6ee>] amd_gpio_irq_handler
[1.985841] Disabling IRQ #7

I don't know computers all too well but from what I take away from that is there seems to be some issue with my memory? Either that or the handler mentioned is having some unidentified issue? Doing a ton of digging, I found a bug report for Ubuntu back in 2018 where a user was having the same problem with the same device. Turns out, it had something to do with the way it was managing the touchscreen. However, by the end of it a patch had been released and I had noted that my touchscreen works on startup. They also said that the issue was not found on Fedora and I've flashed another drive to double check.

-------

Leaving all my notes up here just to keep a record of my process I guess. As a last ditch before trying to boot Fedora I got a USB to USB-C converter and plugged in my Kubuntu drive once again. I got it to boot and the installer was nice and responsive. Now having an issue with UBI-partman but that's not the issue I stated here. My best guess is both the USB ports on my device are just bad.

Thanks all for the help!

[Jonas]

Searched for the first line there and there's a setting in BIOS, TPM (Trusted Platform Module), come to think of it I think I've had the same issue but disabled it.

Have a look here. https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...esponse-buffer

...and here: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtop...263918#p143116

When your issue is solved, edit your first post. Beside the title text box there's a drop down menu where you can choose the [SOLVED] option, and save. It's nice if s someone else come across the same issue.

/Jonas