Hi All

I'm strugling getting KDE Neon installed, I'm pretty sure it's my fault

I've downloaded the ISO from https://neon.kde.org/download
The 'User Edition'

Code: Select all

neon-user-20200123-1116.iso

After downloading i've used 'BalenaEtcher' to flash the ISO to my usb drive

I want to get rid of an old Windows installation (you know because it's Windows).
So after plugging in the USB drive in the Windows pc I've rebooted the device an made it start from the USB drive.
Unfortunatly I only have the option to boot KDE Neon directly from the USB drive (this works by the way), I have no option however to install it on the pc like you would with any other OS. I've used Ubuntu before and that kind of worked well.

Do I use the wrong ISO file for this?
Was using 'BalenaEtcher' my mistake?
Or am I supposed to do something else?

Your help would be appreciated, and i'm realy looking forward to use KDE as my new OS.
Regards

KDE Neon live media is not a direct install media.
You just have to start the installation program after you have booted to Plasma desktop.
The icon of installation program is located on the desktop or you can find it also in the "start" menu.

Thank you for the quick reply.
I'll give it a try and come back with my findings.

I was able to install Neon without any problems.
however after rebooting I get a black screen, no cursor, nothing.
I've google a bit and CTR+ALT+F2 doesn't get me to the consol either.
I'm using a wirless keyboard and mouse with a USB dogle, might this also be an issue?
I'm running an Nvidea GPU that might be an issue

Removing my Nvidea GPU did the truck, want workarounds of you cannot remove your gpu?

Dear Ongenae,
Thank you for your valuable post. I am so curious to find out if you ever managed to get the blank screen to go away after the fresh installation?

I have just finished downloading the KDE Neon ISO from the same URL which you have mentioned in your post (https://neon.kde.org/download), and me too am about to try out the User Edition.

I decided to read through the community forum first, before stepping on further with the installation, that is how I found your post on here. I am having an NVidia Graphics Card on my laptop too (NVidia GPU), so I am a bit hesitate now about trying out the KDE Neon, however I decided to give it a go and then come back here and update you with my findings too (I wonder if I would end up with a blank screen or whether I would succeed reaching the Plasma Desktop, I think either way it would be a great adventure) .

Frankly, I have also downloaded Balena-Etcher, to burn the ISO on my USB Pen-Drive. So I really feel this is going to be an interesting experiment, later one we can both compare our findings.

Currently I am running two operating systems on my laptop, dual boot options. That is Windows 10 installed on my SSD drive, and ZorinOS (Linux Distro based on Ubuntu 18.04) installed on partition on my internal HDD drive.

So, my plan is to first use "Balena-Etcher" to copy/burn the ISO on my USB Pen, then attempt to boot my machine using UEFI secure boot option (currently those are the boot settings configured on my computer's BIOS). If all goes well, then I would like to attempt to install the new KDE Neon over my current "ZorinOS" partition.

Fingers crossed, I shall begin my attempts and will come back later on to share my findings.

Thanks once again Ongenae, and thank you Acrux for your feedback.

I'll catch up with you folks in a little bit.

~Sam~

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Dear Ongenae,

I am now back with a followup update (adding it here below my previous post above).

Following the same steps as planned earlier, that is copying the downloaded ISO file (KDE Neon User Edition ISO file) to a USB Pen-Drive using "Etcher", and then booting my computer using this USB Pen-Drive. This has all been successful.

Then, once I am on the KDE Plasma Desktop, I saw one single available icon on the desktop, somewhere on the left top area of my screen, now I can't remember precisely the given title of that particular desktop icon, but I do remember it contained the word "Install", so by single-clicking on it (I am used to double-clicking with my mouse, but it turned out I only needed to do a single click), this brought up a wizard like dialog window which guided me through the installation process . So far all went well.

Finally, after the installation is over and restarted my computer, just before the computer restarted I was instructed on the screen to remove my installation media and then press <ENTER>, which I did, and the computer successfully restarted and I then logged in into my new KDE Plasma Desktop, I had to enter my username and password which I created during the installation process.

Well, I am glad I didn't end up with a blank screen, that was a great relief for me really.

However, so far I am still trying to figure out two things, I have been looking into the "Settings" and "Help Center" hoping to find a tip on how to accomplish the following (of course I have been experimenting with trial and error hoping to get it to work):

A) Getting my secondary monitor/TV to work, it is currently connected to my computer via HDMI cable/port. Thus far unsuccessful. When I press the keyboard key combinations (Win + P), I do get a rectangle-in-shape window to choose switching-to-external monitor, however none of the options available on this rectangle-shape window, have any positive effect on my secondary monitor/TV ,

B) Second thing I am still trying to work out is Switching between my Virtual Desktops (currently I have created four virtual desktops), I found the option to add/remove virtual desktops in the "Settings" (simply typing "Settings" in the KDE Menu (pressing Win-Key) ) brings it up (In Microsoft Windows terminology it is called the "Start Menu", so I am calling it here the KDE-menu, probably it has another official known name which probably I am not yet aware of, I am still a newbie to this amazing Linux OS Desktop environment world). I have tried to dabble with the "Global, Standard and Custom Keyboard shortcuts", I thought perhaps there would be a way to create my own keyboard shortcut to switch between these virtual desktops, so far I haven't figured it out, but I am still trying.

And that's it thus far, my findings and installation experience via the USB Pen Drive. I shall come back to share any solutions I may come across for solving the above (A) and (B).

Thanks once again to you both Ongenae and Acrux.

Best Wishes,

~Sam~

For B) you can switch to other virtual desktops by using the key combos Ctrl+FX where FX is a function key and X is the virtual desktop number (F1 for first, F2 for second, and so on). Another alternate (and a mouse solution) is to add the Pager widget to either the taskbar or desktop (the later is not very convenient).

To add the Pager widget, first make sure Widgets are unlocked (right click on the taskbar and select Unlock Widgets). Click on the Configure Panel... icon in the lower right corner, then select the Add Widgets... button. Type "Pager" (no quotes) in the search box. Then drag Pager (not Activity Pager) to the task bar where you want it. The Pager widget shows a miniature version of each virtual desktop (outlines of windows on each). The current virtual desktop is shown with a different color. Hovering over each will show a list of windows present on that virtual desktop. Clicking on one will switch to that desktop.

You can also configure other keys to switch virtual desktops - go to System Settings, Workspace/Shortcuts, Global Shortcuts, and KWin. Enter "desktop" (no quotes) into the search box to reduce the number of items in the list to just the ones related to desktop. You will see Switch to Desktop 1-4 ones are currently configured to Ctrl+F1-4. There are other ones like Switch One Desktop to the Left or Right (not configured by default) that you may desired.

Can't help you with A) as I don't run multiple monitors. I once did back when I used Mint 13 KDE and 17 KDE, and it just detected the second monitor when it was there and it was easy to configure (i.e. relative positions). Problem was it didn't like it when the second monitor was turned off and on (usually crashed the system, or started showing dancing triangular shards, which couldn't be recovered from except by hard booting the computer). The situation improved from 13 to 17, but was never 100% stable. I just stopped using a second monitor long ago (so I never tried it with Neon).

Dear Thunder422,

I would like to first express my deepest appreciation and thank you for such an informative reply, fantastic tips. Thank you. Those were indeed very very helpful, and I am still going through the learning curve of the KDE Neon environment. Frankly, it has been such a fruitful, fun, productive and exciting experience all together.

I am happy to share that I successfully followed your guide to add "Pager widget" onto my taskmanager/panel (I have it at the top on of my screen), I can also use my CTRL+F1 and CTRL-F2 to switch between my virtual desktops succesfully. And even better, I have successfully (thanks to you) enabled the "KWin shortcuts" from within "System settings" and now I can use "Win-Key + CTRL + Left-Arrow" and "Win-Key + CTRL + Right-Arrow" both to navigate through my virtual desktops. Absolutely super Thank you once again Thunder.

Other good news I would really like to share, is it turned out that there is this BIOS setting called "Secure Boot", for some reason unknown to me it somehow affects the discovery of my HDMI TV screen, and as I was trying out different solutions to get my secondry screen to work, i gave that a try and turned off "Secure Boot" on my BIOS, and lord be hold, the HDMI secondary monitor worked wonderfully without me doing anything else within my KDE Neon, and even audio/sound works too on my HDMI TV . So this is amazing.

I also made few tweaks here and there to make it easier for me to work with, I have vision impairment, so things like enabling night-light and making fonts larger, are very important for my needs, and I also like the dark-theme, I like that it was so easily and simple to switch to the "Breez Dark" by simply typing "themes" in the Start-Menu (KDE Neon Start Menu), and it came up with "Global Themes" option, clicked on it and then easily switched to the "Breez Dark". Awesome really .

Furthermore, I went to "Display Configuration" and changed the "Global Scale" to 150%, this made it much more comfortable for me to work and operate my KDE Neon.

However, when it comes to Night-Light/Night-colour option, I went on and installed "RedShift" from the KDE Package manager/Software Manager (Discover), I find "redshift" works best for my needs.

I like the feature of being able to set different desktop wallpapers for each screen, so now I have a boats on the beach wallpaper (Evening Glow) for my laptop built-monitor, while having the (Cold Ripple) wallpaper for my HDMI TV Screen. very nice indeed.

Another interesting experience I would like to share as well, is with a music cloud player called "Olivia", I managed to install it from within (Discover) the Software Manager, however when I playing YouTube videos on Olivia, they play without Audio/Sound, it turned out there is a command (i think called a "bash" command or a command that needs to be run in the terminal), to allow "Olivia" to use the audio output on the computer, I found out about this fix from the Olivia GitHub page, under "Issues" section, thanks to the active developer and users feedback. So now I can play video and audio with Olivia on my HDMI TV screen. yayyy! very cool.

That's it for now. Never stop learning.

Thank you once again Thunder.

Best wishes,
~Sam~