Hello, I am relatively new to Linux, and I am having some issues. Recently my HDD crashed forcing me to replace it. I have been wanting to switch from Windows to Linux for a long time now, so I tried some distros on my new HDD. I ran into many frustrating problems with all of them, but some of my linux friends encouraged me to try Kubuntu. The last distro I had installed was Mint 14 64bit, and I was told I could just format my / partition and install Kubuntu. After installation, I tried installing the Nvidia drivers, and it gave me an error about broken packages, then I tried installing Firefox, and all of my system resources maxed out for a very long time. Should I have formatted my /home partition as well? I'm not really sure what to do anymore, and I am on the verge of accepting my eternal servitude with Microsoft.

do you have anything you need on your /home? you should always have at least a / and a /home partition and probably a /swap (Google there). I'd make / 20gb but it depends on you hd and how much stuff you load (apps, dev packages, de's). I don't think you should need to format /home but if there's nothing of value there it wouldn't hurt,

My suggestion would be to work with one of your Linux friends and install what they use as this will give you some local support. I'd also suggest 64bit instead of a 32bit, as it's really a 64bit world.

It's hard to comment on you issues as you don't provide much info nor the actual error messages

Nvidia - my understanding is that Kubuntu in the install provides the Nouveau drivers and most everything should work graphically, you are best served by updating to the Nvidia proprietary ones, (K)ubuntu provides tutorials for this you should use.

FireFox - was being installed using the package manager ? If you open ksysguard (similar to MS's task manager) you should see what process is maxing out your resources

Other then Nvidia and FF is everything working?

sometimes it help to mention your hw especially the graphics installed.

I should also point out that as these are distro specific problems, not KDE, you might be best served on the Kubuntu forums

google01103 wrote:do you have anything you need on your /home?

Not really, it's a pretty fresh install.

google01103 wrote:My suggestion would be to work with one of your Linux friends and install what they use as this will give you some local support. I'd also suggest 64bit instead of a 32bit, as it's really a 64bit world.

My friends are using the same distro and also 32bit. I was trying 64bit previously, but realized that I don't use any 64bit apps, and my ram is only 4gig. They are trying to help me as best they can, but I seem to be running into issues they've never seen before.

google01103 wrote:It's hard to comment on you issues as you don't provide much info nor the actual error messages

KDE was somewhat broken from possible incompatibilities between Mint and Kubuntu. I was told to do a "rm -rf .kde" command line before I logged in. Apparently, that fixed the resource issue and also the error trying to install the Nvidia drivers.

google01103 wrote:Nvidia - my understanding is that Kubuntu in the install provides the Nouveau drivers and most everything should work graphically, you are best served by updating to the Nvidia proprietary ones, (K)ubuntu provides tutorials for this you should use.

I am going to check out those tutorials, because everything is not right when I installed the Nvidia drivers. All my icons got huge and I was unable to get to certain menu options (the startmenu wouldn't change lists for some reason). The response time was also very slow, but my HDD wasn't being constantly accessed, so not sure what that was.

google01103 wrote:Other then Nvidia and FF is everything working?

I was able to install the updates before everything broke after the Nvidia drivers. So, I think everything was working before that happened.

google01103 wrote:sometimes it help to mention your hw especially the graphics installed.

Is there an easy way to grab that info without hand-typing it all out?

Intel core2 6700
MSI P965 motherboard
GeForce 7600 GT
Seagate 2 TB HDD
4gig DDR2 SDRAM
SB Audigy
I'm using a samsung flatscreen 28", which is only about a year old for a monitor.

couple of quick comments:
- you have plenty of hw (ram and graphics are the ones usually helpful when resolving issues)
- you have more then enough ram to do 64bit (no reason to switch), some apps do run faster but more ram is used
- pretty much all the apps in a 64bit release are 64bit
- graphics info (hw and driver) can be displayed in Konsole with glxinfo | grep OpenGL, post results here

Couple things to try:
- before logging in clear your kde cache /var/tmp/kdecache-user_name
- If you can create and test a new user it will tell if there's something bad in ~ that was not in ~/.kde
- use ksysguard to see what process are eating cpu and i/o and slowing things down

google01103 wrote:- graphics info (hw and driver) can be displayed in Konsole with glxinfo | grep OpenGL, post results here

I get a cannot open display message when I tried this command.

google01103 wrote:- before logging in clear your kde cache /var/tmp/kdecache-user_name

What is the appropriate command for doing this? Do I use "rm -rf {directory line you supplied}"?

google01103 wrote:- If you can create and test a new user it will tell if there's something bad in ~ that was not in ~/.kde

I created the new user, but that didn't seem to work. Everything was still non-functional as before.

google01103 wrote:- use ksysguard to see what process are eating cpu and i/o and slowing things down

I'm not quite sure how to use this?

I appreciate your patience with me on this, I know it can be difficult sometimes helping out a n00b like myself. I will do some searching to find a way to uninstall the Nvidia drivers.

the glxinfo command, maybe you included a "," at the end

Code: Select all

 glxinfo | grep OpenGL

if the new user functions the same as your account then clearing the kdecache is not the problem

ksysguard is a KDE app that you can open it by:
- searching in Kmenu and clicking the resulting icon
- typing ksysguard in konsole, using an "&" at the end starts it as a separate/background process ie ksyguard& and does not tie up that konsole session
- opening krunner (alt+F2) and typing ksysguard (the & will not work here, it will keep the app from being found)

you can try turning off Kwin window effects/composting by clicking shift+ctrl+F12, composting might help

Well, I reformatted / and did a reinstall of Kubuntu. I knew whatever nvidia driver I installed would super-size my fonts, so my friends suggested I force the font size to something smaller than 96dpi. I rebooted and all my fonts were super small, I went back to the fonts manager and increased font size until they were just right. Apparently, jiggling the handle really does work. Everything looks great, and that weird issue with the navigation and selection being broken never came back. I still haven't done my updates, but I don't forsee any issues with that. Thank you for your help, and putting up with my n00b'isms.