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Kubuntu 8.10 + KDE 4 = Failed

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After installing the latest KDE flavor of Ubuntu last night, I am supposed to write my initial impressions about it today, and I expected it to be good. Unfortunately, something unexpected happened. Kubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" failed miserably after the installation.

The installation was uneventful, and it quickly finished without any trouble.


Then came the glitch. I couldn't get inside Kubuntu's KDE 4 desktop. I can only go as far as seeing the splash image...


Followed by this...

"What the heck!"

Then back to the login screen...


I tried logging in again and again and also rebooted, but the same thing happened.

This is really sad as I'm using the same test machine when I tested Mandriva 2009, hence you can't blame it on my hardware.

Is KDE 4 causing the problem? I don't know and I don't care, because at this point in time, I just want something that works!

Anybody out there who's having the same problem with Kubuntu 8.10?

johnV #
Hi Jun,

I don't have such an experience but I do have a question. Apparently you were able to take screenshots during installation. How do you do that? Cheers!
Anonymous #
I just got done installing it and it worked better than Ubuntu did. The only difference was that I installed Ubuntu first then got tired on Gnome and installed KDE 4 from Ubuntu.
Anonymous #
...it also switches your computer screen from square to widescreen at will (i wish i could make my monitor widescreen) and also makes moving back in time possible! from 20:29 you jumped to 20:27.

Maybe they are kubuntu features?
Faryshta #
I use XFCE and don't understand this clicke of KDE and GNome. Specially since XFCE RULES!!!! :-P

I didn't have any issue installing Xubuntu 32 and 64 bits, even when I use the "only free software" option.
Anonymous #
Check your logs in /var/log (ie /var/log/Xorg.0.log). Could very well be a X11/xorg issue with your graphics driver, or some other misconfiguration.
Anonymous #
i had a bad experience with this kubuntu out of the box. my system i fairly standard (dell optiplex gx260, P4 2.4Ghz, 2Gb ram, nvidia 6200 128Mb ram). first off the thing doesnt even boot into the live cd, it shows the bootsplash but then i get the the same distorted desktop u get but worse, waay worse, i mean just random blocks of colors all over the screen, so i had to boot with safe graphics option, which did the installation but when finally booted into the installed system the resolution, with the nvidia driver, doesnt go past 1152x864 no matter what i did (manually editing the xorg file or the nvidia-settings gui), so much for bullet proof X, my system put several holes into it 8). also the kmixer icon in the tray and knetwork manager icon are buggy, sometime they appear sometimes they don't sometimes in between, maybe is just me but that doesnt happen in the mandriva 2009 setup that replaced it right after. so yes out of the box this kubuntu was horrible, and i say this version cause i had the kubuntu 2 version prior installed and it was very pleasant. oh and what's the deal with adept not sorting is search results alphabetically and system settings no longer having the module to edit system services?. any ways thas enough for me, the new mandriva 2009 installation went great out of the box.
Anonymous #
Yeah I had a lot of problems with Kubuntu too. Not this one exactly, but it looks like they have a lot of problems with packaging and even translations are broken. In the end I have just tried Mandriva 2009 (also thanks to your previous review) and I'm now very happy with it. I find it is a more solid distribution.
Anonymous #
Looks like wrong Xorg Driver to me
Anonymous #
Is your computer intel based (800 to 999). Did you try to login by removing compiz and compiz-core

sudo apt-get remove compiz compiz-core
Anonymous #
As John pointed out, you took screenshots during the installation process. Did you install Kubuntu on a VM? Although I can't explain what or why is happening to you, that might be causing the problem.
Jun #
@Nick C.: Yes, I did install Kubuntu in VM just like I did in Mandriva. Mandriva did not gave me this kind of problem.
Sid #
I did not have the problem you had. Though the beta and RC versions did not even go into the GUI. Initially when I tried to install Kubuntu 8.10_amd64 (final) failed after the hard disks were formatted. I think after it gets formatted it was automatically mounted and the install could not copy other files. So I installed Ubuntu first and then installed Kubuntu. But when I tried to install the same Kubuntu 8.10 amd64 after a week, it got installed and is still working fine in my laptop. I can't explain why the same kubuntu 8.10 amd64 version failed earlier.

I m quite happy with kubuntu 8.10 as it boldy brought KDE 4 to mainstream (yes, also Fedora, OpenSuse and Mandriva - but I like Debian based systems because of its superior package management).

But KDE 4, by itself does not play well with nvidia cards, or the other way round might be more appropriate. Kubuntu has very ugly system tray icons, whereas Mandriva 2009 was much better. But the issue with OO, nvidia card and KDE 4 causing vanishing / flickering panel is pretty annoying. Hope it gets fixed soon otherwise KDE 4 will still be a failure.
Greybelt #
I had horrible problems with Kubuntu 8.10, of exactly the kind you had. When it did start, it was impossible to set my monitor to its native resolution no matter what I tried. I switched back to 8.04.1 which recognizes my GeForce 7 board with no problems and is a rock-solid computing experience. 8.10 was very disappointing. I'll stick with the LTS releases from now on for this particular computer.
Anonymous #
hi everybody!
i don´t want to be rude to anybody in any any way but you are writing a blog entry with title "Kubuntu 8.10 + KDE 4 = Failed" containing some 20-30 lines of text and some screenshots without going into much detail.
you are saying that kubuntu 8.10 is altogether failed, although you´d just tested it in a vm. that´s just one fraction of what is going on in kubuntu.

there are so many people putting hard work into this project and you claim it to be crap without even taking the time to install it on a real machine.

don´t get me wrong, i know (since i´m using kubuntu 8.10 on my main pc) that there are still quite a lot problems but i suggest writing a bug report instead of a blog post or at least give a bit more information (which virtualization program, your hardware configuration, under which distribution + version this happened,...).

the really good thing about the linux community (read: us) is that there are so many people helping each other just for fun.

so please write a bit more specific if you encounter problems.

keep up the good work...
martin
Jun #
@Martin: Thanks for dropping by. I didn't judge Kubuntu as a whole. As you know it, my Kubuntu 8.10 experience was cut short so forgive me for writing only a few lines of text.

Refer to my Mandriva 2009 article for the exact tech specs of my VM hardware.

IMHO, Kubuntu did not integrate KDE 4 well compared to Mandriva 2009. By the way, Ubuntu 8.10 has no problem running in my VM, so what the heck is causing the problem?

Bug report? I think it's too late for that. They should have fixed a major bug like this one before releasing it.

Thanks...

Jun
Anonymous #
Why don't you try to debug first? First of all, try to go to failsafe or something else that can fire KDE's system settings without loading the whole KDE desktop. Then try to disable KWin's composition. Or you can disable KWin's composition by finding the config file...
Anonymous #
@fred: Debugging is a way to discourage Linux noobies.
Anonymous #
i had the same problem /w PC-BSD and kde4...
a change of the colordepth from 32bit to 16bit (no difference visible) fixed the issue

seems to be an X issue
Anonymous #
I had a similar experience upgrading from KDE3 but fortunately I'd backed up my / and /boot partitions beforehand.

I'm back in KDE3 and I'm staying here -- at least till Kubuntu 9.04!
Anonymous #
I used Kubuntu until I discovered PCLinuxOS and havent looked back since.

Ill give it a shot this weekend since Mandriva 2009 came out and the first beta of PCLinuxOS 2009 came out recently.

Somehow I doubt that Kubuntu will be able to jump over PCLinuxOS, Mandriva and OpenSuse which are the three best KDE's I've run.

I like Ubuntu and Shuttleworth's stance on free software and I wish them the best.
But KDE is a second class citizen at Ubuntu and Ridgell does great work but I dont expect them to leapfrog the others.

Mandriva 2009 is my first look at KDE4 (thanks for remiding me) and I like where they are going with the new infrastructure (the work they had to do to go from 3 to 4 is staggering) and by version 4.2 I believe will be ready for my parents computer who are on 3.59 right now.
vince #
I have the same problem. The KDE 4 is not working for me. Initially it was struck at the splash screen. I did a apt-get dist-upgrade and managed to get into the desktop. But nothing is working in the desktop . Now planning to go back to ubuntu or try another distro.

Kubuntu 8.10 is the worst distro I have used so far. So many bugs . It crashes every now and then , windows are not responding. Every now and then I have to use Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to restart X . They could have tested it thoroughly before moving to the KDE4.
Anonymous #
My issue was an apparent crash during install.

The installer would just exit eitehr during formatting or when it finished (I couldn't tell). I was installing on an Acer Aspire One (Har ddrive version) from a USB drive and had resized my Windows XP partition from a gparted live CD. I am making an Ubuntu drive now...
Anonymous #
same screen problem but a different pattern. that was it in virtualbox
അനൂപ് :: anoop #
I faced the same problem!! Any solutions pls ?
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