HELP! Love Kubuntu but some basic stuff is driving me CRAZY!

[adamissimo]

There are a few things that I would really like to fix. I just switched over from Windows and may never switch back if I can get everything running they way I want it to. So far, so good. Almost.

Here are a few things that I beg you all for help on...

1. Enabling Direct Rendering

I have an nvidia graphics card running on a Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop (Pentium processor). I actually had this working at one point. I'm not sure when it stopped, but I have tried everything I have found out there on the subject and nothing seems to work. BTW, I originally installed Ubuntu, then KDE, then kubuntu-desktop on top of that. I have attached my xorg.conf if that is any help. I have tried tinkering with it a million different ways (royally screwing things up a few times) but haven't been able to get this working. I tried commenting out the Load DRI line in modules, then putting it back. I tried adding the DRI section to the end, and commenting it out. No luck. I do appear to have the nvidia drivers installed correctly as far as I can tell. I would really like to get this working as I would like to play some games (specifically StepMania). I would appreciate any help anyone can give me on this!

2. Weird Font thing

The fonts in KDE look terrible. For some reason, if I load up the Gnome desktop and THEN load KDE, they look great. I don't know why, but if anyone does I would love to know how to keep them always looking the way they do when I have first logged into Gnome. Any suggestions?

3. Compiling from source code

I haven't once been able to do it. I manage to get past the ./configure part with no errors, but when I try to make, errors ad infinutum. Can anyone give me any advice on how to do this correctly? I attached a log of my latest try with a Desktop theme...

4. KXDocker/KSmoothDock looks choppy

I would love to have a docker that looks good and has 3d animation. I had one working on Windows that looked beautiful, but I can't seem to find one that doesn't look choppy on Kubuntu. I'm not sure if that is due to the software itself or my settings. Suggestions on this?

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU ALL in advance for any help you can give me on any of these.

Cheers,
Adam

[askrieger]

Re: HELP! Love Kubuntu but some basic stuff is driving me CRAZY!

1) Please see this HowTo for instructions on getting nvidia drivers installed properly.

2) Are you trying to use Gnome fonts in KDE? In general, play around with default fonts and font settings in "System Settings">"Appearance">Fonts.

3) The example of Make errors that you included with your post, seem to be attributable to one bad file, blended.h. Before tossing out Gnu Make, I'd check blended.h!

4) I'll leave this one to someone who knows what you're talking about.

[adamissimo]

Re: HELP! Love Kubuntu but some basic stuff is driving me CRAZY!

Thanks a lot for your suggestions!

I managed to get DRI working again by uninstalling kubuntu-desktop and everything associated with it. Too bad I don't know what exactly was causing the problem, but I am pretty sure it had something to do with that.

Of course, that doesn't solve my font problem REALLY, because I don't have KDE at all anymore, but I may try to reinstall it at some point.

Thanks again!