mint 10 kde flaky or what?

[arjay]

Is it just me or is kde 4.6.0 + some drivers, at least as offered with Mint10, rather flaky? So far|:

1. Changing mouse double-click to single click doesn't survive a reboot - quite irritating

2. Setting the system up to auto login doesn't survive a reboot - even more irritating especially as the WAF went down like a stone (she can never remember the PW).

3. Very poor display with the default drivers - some text unreadable, smudged lines, icons a mere squiggle . Solved by installing Nvidia drivers for my bog-standard 8500 card

4. Now, after logging out and back in, my login screen has switched to German - insert here the German for Blimey Mate - wots all this

5. A few more things like intermittent sound (as in messages saying "can't find the device so switching back to one that never works") - but that I'm used to with several distros since early days of kde 4. Also lost webcam, problems with Skype sound etc etc. Mostly solved by buying an old Soundblaster sound card for 5 Euros, installing it and disabling on-board sound on my not all-singing or dancing 200 Euro Motherboard

Any help (in English) for how to get rid of the German login would be appreciated

[dante19992]

i have the solution (had the same problem there) menu>>system settings>> login screen it will be on the screen tht shows up

[Old Ruler]

Is it just me or is kde 4.6.0 + some drivers, at least as offered with Mint10, rather flaky? So far|:

1. Changing mouse double-click to single click doesn't survive a reboot - quite irritating

2. Setting the system up to auto login doesn't survive a reboot - even more irritating especially as the WAF went down like a stone (she can never remember the PW).

I get both of those so I understand how annoying it is. I noticed the same in the early days of Mint 9 KDE, but after a few weeks or so it stopped happening. Which got me thinking. In the early days of any new release, the developers are still tinkering with improvements. Sometimes their new modifications are to settings files stored at various locations within the filesystem. I noticed one of today's updates (or yesterday's - I don't update every day) was to 'mint-configuration-kde'. If my theory was correct, then I expected some change to my settings. Sure enough, on the next login I had to type my password to log in. The double/single click behaviour had not changed this time though.

So I guess that's it. It would be just too much trouble to merge the changes with those the user has made, I guess. Perhaps it's not the only cause, but certainly one of them.

3. Very poor display with the default drivers - some text unreadable, smudged lines, icons a mere squiggle . Solved by installing Nvidia drivers for my bog-standard 8500 card

Yes. I didn't have it as bad as you with the Nouveau driver and I admire the efforts of the developers, but I always install a proprietary driver ASAP.

4. Now, after logging out and back in, my login screen has switched to German - insert here the German for Blimey Mate - wots all this

That's a new one on me. Hopefully dante19992's suggestion has fixed that one.

5. A few more things like intermittent sound (as in messages saying "can't find the device so switching back to one that never works") - but that I'm used to with several distros since early days of kde 4. Also lost webcam, problems with Skype sound etc etc. Mostly solved by buying an old Soundblaster sound card for 5 Euros, installing it and disabling on-board sound on my not all-singing or dancing 200 Euro Motherboard

Any help (in English) for how to get rid of the German login would be appreciated

One used to have to be pretty careful when buying hardware on which to run a Linux distro. These days it usually works pretty well on anything, which is truly amazing when you realise that the devs get little or no help from hardware manufacturers. What's more; it's all in the kernel (modules)! Which means you can plug your HDD in to any similar PC and it will work. Which is how the LiveCDs work of course...

[colyn]

4. Now, after logging out and back in, my login screen has switched to German - insert here the German for Blimey Mate - wots all this

German is the default. To change it go to menu-system settings-login screen. Under the general tab change it to your preferred language then click apply. You may have to enter your password for the change to take place..

[exploder]

1. Changing mouse double-click to single click doesn't survive a reboot - quite irritating[/quo

Mint-system updates are causing this, this problem should go away.

2. Setting the system up to auto login doesn't survive a reboot - even more irritating especially as the WAF went down like a stone (she can never remember the PW).

Auto log on does not currently work with KDE 4.6.0, hopefully the 4.6.1 packages will fix this when they appear.

3. Very poor display with the default drivers - some text unreadable, smudged lines, icons a mere squiggle . Solved by installing Nvidia drivers for my bog-standard 8500 card

Yeah, the open source drivers just aren't very good... I install the NVidea drivers from the xswat ppa repo and am happy with the results.

4. Now, after logging out and back in, my login screen has switched to German - insert here the German for Blimey Mate - wots all this

I have not seen this one but I know the mint-system updates keep changing my kdm screen back to default and I keep changing it back to the one I want.

5. A few more things like intermittent sound (as in messages saying "can't find the device so switching back to one that never works") - but that I'm used to with several distros since early days of kde 4. Also lost webcam, problems with Skype sound etc etc. Mostly solved by buying an old Soundblaster sound card for 5 Euros, installing it and disabling on-board sound on my not all-singing or dancing 200 Euro Motherboard

Looks like you have all that under control.

Colyn's instructions will get you kdm back to English.

[arjay]

Thanks guys for the help. Don't get me wrong - I love Mint. In fact, ironically, it is the fact that it normally works so well out of the box, that we are surprised when something does not work. There is a well-known commercial product that begins with "W" that I used to find the opposite - I was always pleasantly surprised when it actually worked

Hopefully these other problems will get fixed soon - sometimes I think there is now such pressure on devs to get out the latest and the best as soon as possible - no wonder a few blips make their way through. If we would only wait for a few more months I am sure we would get less problems.

[arjay]

UPDATE: Well, installed kde 4.6.1 from the repos and all the problems I reported above seem to have been resolved. Well done the Mintees (they are the people who work while we are asleep and give us this great distro!)

[smsmith]

4. Now, after logging out and back in, my login screen has switched to German - insert here the German for Blimey Mate - wots all this

German is the default. To change it go to menu-system settings-login screen. Under the general tab change it to your preferred language then click apply. You may have to enter your password for the change to take place..

I always thought that was the oddest thing. All you had to do was open that module and it switched to German.

[arjay]

UPDATE: Well, installed kde 4.6.1 from the repos and all the problems I reported above seem to have been resolved. Well done the Mintees (they are the people who work while we are asleep and give us this great distro!)

Well I spoke too soon - auto login and single mouse click survived a couple of reboots but they have gone again. Wow - is this irritating

[rootkowski]

I have very similar problems reoccurring and very frustrating. Here is what happens (but shouldn't):

1. German on login screen.
2. Login screen theme reset.
3. Auto-login disabled.
4. Font settings reset.
5. Colour theme settings reset.
6. Single click reset to double click.

I thought I had this one figured by first setting kdm as I like (EN GB, horos theme, auto-login), rebooting and then setting all other settings (fonts, colour theme, single click). But it's enough to log out and everything from 1 to 6 above happens. Log out to kdm screen not reboot. The settings usually survive reboots. But I do need to log out from time to time and it's quite time consuming to have to set everything from scratch each time.

Any solutions?

[arjay]

rootkowski - sorry to hear this but glad to hear I am not alone. I have unmarked the thread as [SOLVED] because I added that when I thought my problems were over. They clearly aren't even after updating to kde 4.6.1. JFYI I am running Mepis 11 beta 2 on another PC and no problems like this there at all - already seems pretty stable.

[Arenalgarden]

Opinions are like mother in laws.
KDE isn't a desktop manager. It's a poor excuse of a video game !

[rootkowski]

Thanks for a quick reply arjay. Does logging out and in reverse the settings in your case too? That is if you don't mind checking and possibly having to set everything again...

Btw, it can't be due to file permissions, can it?

[BubbaBlues]

Is it just me or is kde 4.6.0 + some drivers, at least as offered with Mint10, rather flaky?

Absolutely. Wouldn't even make a pimple on Mint 9 KDE's butt. I've tried it twice but there are just too many
things that don't work. Device notifications being one. I couldn't even play an audio cd because my only choice
was Amarok (which doesn't even play cd). No other audio players were even recognized. I still have my Mint 9 KDE
on another partition, which is my primary system and it continues to be flawless. I really don't know why anyone
would give that up for something as flaky as 10 kde.

[colyn]

I really don't know why anyone
would give that up for something as flaky as 10 kde.

Because it works for us..

The only issue I had which I found a workaround for was the /home directory not populating.

Other than that and now with the the above fix Mint 10 KDE is working flawlessly for me and is somewhat faster than Mint 9 KDE..

[mastablasta]

i saw a few minor issues on Live, thought they would go away on install. and some really strange thing were happening after that. so i reformated and installed Kubuntu 10.10. works as it should for most of the time.

[BubbaBlues]

I haven't given up on it. I'm still a Mint lover. I'm just going to wait until it's been out a while, give it time to
season.

[tomp01]

Is it just me or is kde 4.6.0 + some drivers, at least as offered with Mint10, rather flaky?

Absolutely. Wouldn't even make a pimple on Mint 9 KDE's butt. I've tried it twice but there are just too many
things that don't work. Device notifications being one. I couldn't even play an audio cd because my only choice
was Amarok (which doesn't even play cd). No other audio players were even recognized. I still have my Mint 9 KDE
on another partition, which is my primary system and it continues to be flawless. I really don't know why anyone
would give that up for something as flaky as 10 kde.

I found that Exaile, Banshee and Amarok won't play CDs, then again in the case of Amarok it has never worked properly anyway. VLC works but it is not that sophisticated but at least it works!!

[tomp01]

I really don't know why anyone
would give that up for something as flaky as 10 kde.

Because it works for us..

The only issue I had which I found a workaround for was the /home directory not populating.

Other than that and now with the the above fix Mint 10 KDE is working flawlessly for me and is somewhat faster than Mint 9 KDE..

When you say us, do you really mean you?

[colyn]

I really don't know why anyone
would give that up for something as flaky as 10 kde.

Because it works for us..

The only issue I had which I found a workaround for was the /home directory not populating.

Other than that and now with the the above fix Mint 10 KDE is working flawlessly for me and is somewhat faster than Mint 9 KDE..

When you say us, do you really mean you?

It works fine for a lot of other people in addition to me. Otherwise there would be far more people complaining...but you don't hear that..