I recently upgraded kde from 4.1 to 4.2 and experienced numerous problems relating to the kde-window-manager package so I thought I'd post my story here in case anyone experiences the same problems.

First of all I'm using Kubuntu 8.10 64-bit. I added the "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-experimental/ubuntu intrepid main" line to my /etc/apt/sources.list file and ran "sudo apt-get update" and then "sudo apt-get upgrade". Since there were a ton of files to download I decided to start the upgrade and then return to my pc after it had been given enough time to download the necessary files.

I returned about 30 minutes later and when I turned on my monitor I was presented with a popup box requesting my password. The Terminal window was visible behind that popup and it had already completed the upgrade and returned to the command prompt. I clicked cancel instead of entering my password and then noticed that one of the packages in the upgrade had thrown an error in the Terminal window. The package was named kde-window-manager, but unfortunately I didn't write down the actual error so I'm unable to post it here.

I tried reinstalling that package with "sudo apt-get install kde-window-manager" and each time it would result in the same error so it was never installed. And I was never prompted to enter my password again so I don't think that the popup box had anything to do with the kde-window-manager package. After running "sudo apt-get upgrade" again I realized that about 25 packages had been held back so I copied the package names and manually installed them with "sudo apt-get install pkg1 pkg2 etc". After those packages were installed the kde-window-manager was automatically uninstalled which apparently means that one of the other packages lists kde-window-manager as either 'conflicts' or 'replaces' in it's control file.

After the second upgrade was completed I restarted my pc and successfully logged in to kde 4.2. However the first thing that I noticed after logging in was that the titlebar was missing from every single window. I tried opening the terminal, a text editor and firefox, but the titlebars were missing from each window so I couldn't move or resize any of the windows. They were also missing from my taskbar. I also found that I wasn't able to type in some windows and the Kickoff menu exhibited incredibly strange behavior on mouse over events.

Assuming that this was probably related to the kde-window-manager package I tried once again to install it manually and to my surprise it worked. After restarting the computer and logging in to kde 4.2 everything seemed to be working fine. The titlebars were back, the taskbar was working, and the Kickoff menu was working.

So why was the kde-window-manager package automatically removed? And if it was listed under 'replaces' or 'conflicts' in the control file of a different package then why was I able to install it manually afterwards?

In order to get your Window Decoration back, try running this command in Konsole:

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kwin --replace &

You should then be able to use System Settings > Default Applications > Window Manager to select your desired window manager.

If you are unable to run the above command, then your system is broken. You may wish to ensure that all of the needed repositories are available and fully up to date in that case, and then trying upgrading again.

I'm running into a similar problem. I've recently upgraded to Kubuntu 9.10, and seemed to be pretty stable for about a week.

Yesterday and today I was met with a message:

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Kwin is Unstable.
It seems to have crashed several times in a row.
You can select another window manager to run.

The drop-down below that only gives kwin as an option.

I attempted to select another window manager as suggested (I had to run "systemsettings" from konsole). The only option was to switch to compiz or compiz custom, neither of which works (they revert back to kwin, then give the "kwin is unstable" error).

I also attempted to run "kwin --replace &" as suggested. Here are the results:

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danf@skittles:~$ kwin --replace &
[1] 23721
danf@skittles:~$ kwin: ../../src/xcb_io.c:542: _XRead: Assertion `dpy->xcb->reply_data != ((void *)0)' failed.
Application::crashHandler() called with signal 6; recent crashes: 1
KCrash: Application 'kwin' crashing...
kwin: ../../src/xcb_io.c:542: _XRead: Assertion `dpy->xcb->reply_data != ((void *)0)' failed.
Application::crashHandler() called with signal 6; recent crashes: 2
KCrash: Application 'kwin' crashing...
kwin: ../../src/xcb_io.c:542: _XRead: Assertion `dpy->xcb->reply_data != ((void *)0)' failed.
Application::crashHandler() called with signal 6; recent crashes: 3
KCrash: Application 'kwin' crashing...
kwin: ../../src/xcb_io.c:542: _XRead: Assertion `dpy->xcb->reply_data != ((void *)0)' failed.
Application::crashHandler() called with signal 6; recent crashes: 4
KCrash: Application 'kwin' crashing...
^C
[1]+  Aborted                 (core dumped) kwin --replace
danf@skittles:~$

I really don't know where to go. I've run

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sudo apt-get --replace install kde-window-manager

It downloaded and reinstalled successfully, but did not resolve the problem.

FYI: in order to make this post, I had to log into WindowMaker.

You have a severe issue with your X libraries and KDE version. Please make sure that the PPA you used to upgrade is valid for your version of Kubuntu. Please ensure that your repositories are configured correctly, enabled where needed, and have been refreshed to their latest available state. Ensure that all updates have been installed, and that all KDE packages come from the same repository, and are of the same minor version ( 4.3.x for instance )