Hello,

I am new to Linux Distribution. I was using Windows 7. Due to videos posted on youtube, I switched to Kubuntu 13.04.

Can anyone guide me on how to use KDE based applications and KDE provided applications. I really don't know.

Also I want know, how to recover the machine or restore it to stable state if something breaks down.

Regards,
Gaurav Dighe

The exact procedure needed to fix a system usually depends on how it is broken - there is no fixed guide to it.
With regards to the applications in KDE, you might find Userbase (userbase.kde.org) to be of help to you.

Thank you very much. I will definetly look forward in Userbase.

But if anything is broken, what steps do i need to take. One of my friend upgraded Ubuntu12.10 to 13.04. After upgrade, he was getting compiz error..and had to perform clean installation and lost vital data. Good news was he was having backup. But if anything as such happens , then what can we do?

obviously you should always backup your data no matter the OS

when you installed did you place /home on it's own partition? if not you need to do so, this alleviates the overwriting of your data by a clean install since the OS and the data are on different partitions. your friend, in the case of a compiz error, should not have had to reinstall the OS - either reseting compiz to defaults or reinstalling all compiz related packages may have sufficed.

if you get an instable OS or desktop environment you need to Google and/or post here or on your distros forums as there's many different reasons for failure. also your distro might have on it's website a trouble shooting guide for example here's openSUSE's http://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/h ... 01apa.html

The most important thing was already said -- put your /home directory on a separate partition. That way, should you really run into trouble, you can reinstall the OS without losing any of your data or desktop settings.

As a general rule of thumb which just represents my personal opinion, if you want to minimize the risk of breaking your system, don't do dist-upgrades on distributions with releases. Keep your system as it is (i.e. just install security updates) and install the new version from scratch when you want a new one. I myself have run into trouble with dist-upgrades various times already, and I also hear about a lot of problems from other people.
If you'd like to have a system which is very bleeding-edge and up-to-date, consider using a rolling-release distribution such as Arch Linux, which is designed to be upgraded always (although not with zero maintenance effort either).

But in general, just enjoy your new system and worry about what to do when it breaks if it breaks Just backup your data, the system itself is always repairable.

Greetings,
Sven

On top of all the good advice already given I'd recommend www.kubuntuforums.net for distro specific help!

Sir,

Thank you very much. I would definitely take care of above mentioned things.
Sir, I have installed Kubuntu 13.04 and used the whole disk-space(500GB). Is there any possible way to partition the disk now, so that I can keep my /home in different partition, so if in future i need to upgrade my data will be safe.

Kindly suggest.

Sir,

Thank you very much. I would definitely take care of above mentioned things.
Sir, I have installed Kubuntu 13.04 and used the whole disk-space(500GB). Is there any possible way to partition the disk now, so that I can keep my /home in different partition, so if in future i need to upgrade my data will be safe.

Kindly suggest.

as you're a noobie and if your install is new you might be better off starting from scratch and using a new install process to properly do this. you should probably Google a bit and see what partitions and which sizes should be used (I like 20gb for /, 5gb swap (I found I needed it for hibernation though others will disagree))

fixing your current setup it is not trivial and once again make sure you backup any data - basically you will need to boot from a livecd, resize your existing partition, create a new /home partition and then copy /home from the old to the new, at which point you'd want to shrink the old / so you don't have a / partition with too much unused space but you'll have a block of unused space on your drive between / and /home. If you were to do this you'd be better off copying /home to an external drive and then shrinking /, creating a new /home and then copying /home from external to the new partition and of course editing /etc/fstab to properly mount the new /home

-> there are a multitude of tutorials available on howto , some are Ubuntu/Kubuntu specific (just Google)
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Parti ... ome/Moving
http://www.howtogeek.com/116742/how-to- ... ng-ubuntu/

.... you meant /etc/fstab

IMO a distribution's installers should suggest using a separate /home partition by default, so it's bad luck yours didn't. I agree it's a bit complicated with this partition resizing, so maybe you want to do it only later. Just keep a backup of your /home directory and you'll be fine.

Even it your system should break horribly, you can always boot from a live-CD, click your hard disk and backup the whole /home directory -- even after it broke. So it's not that important. It's just easier with the separate partition.

Greetings,
Sven

@scummos - thanks, fixed the typo it in the post

this is complete tutorial for learning or how to use KDE :
https://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials

gauravdighe wrote:how to recover the machine or restore it to stable state if something breaks down.

I had fiddled with the panels and the solution provided here : http://ubuntu.5.x6.nabble.com/How-to-re ... 10536.html
worked for me. For quick reference, I'm giving the steps below.

1. logout your kde desktop
2. open console session by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1
3. give username and password
4. rm -rf .kde/share/config/plasma-*
5. now you can logout console session by logout command or pressing Ctrl+d
6. now go back to your default graphical session by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F7
7. now login and you will see your fresh new default panels