All posts by kymoie

Kymoie

Kubuntu KDE4, 3d Acceleration with Nvidia, and 100% CPU usage

The last couple of months I haven’t been able to use 3D acceleration because xorg would use 98% of my cpu and plasma would use the other 2% making up 100% of 1 core (I have 2, so why plasma couldn’t run on the other I’m not sure…) Anyway if I turn 3D acceleration off then every second time I turn my computer on the top bar across each of my windows would dissapear so I was unable to move any window and unable to swap between windows.

So last night I turned 3D acceleration back on then slowly went into System Settings -> appearance and turned each of the effect things I could find to none (colour-> effects, style->effects, icons->advanced), Then Gab suggested I backup and then delete .kde4 in my home folder due to the multiple kdebase updates that have been d’loaded since kubuntu beta release. I also edited my xorg.conf, adding to the bottom of it:

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

After restarting my computer seems to work, even when I turn it on for a second time it still seems to work (Including 3D acceleration) however it has produced some more errors, such as firefox 3 has gone back to the gnome look, and I can’t get to webpages using the address bar something about “ASSERT: *** Search: _installLocation: engine has no file!”

Edit: firefox seems to have had an update, now the address bar works

Kymoie, Linux

Installing Kubuntu 8.04, KDE4, and Firefox 3

Kubuntu 7.10 was coming up with errors such as ‘unknown URL system:/’ and my KDE4 broke, I found links that told me it was a dolphin problem and was fixed in a version of dolphin that didn’t exist in my repos so I decided it was time for a fresh install (gnome worked fine to access files though).

I decided on Kubuntu 8.04 Beta 1 with KDE4, my first problem was because I have an nvidia graphics card (8600) splash screens usually fail to appear and so did the disk check and ‘press enter to reboot screen’ before and after I installed 8.04, but after installing and updating I found the “Hardware Drivers Manager” which had the latest version of nvidia drivers; they were just one click away. Sadly my Dvico TV tuner card doesn’t work out of the box, but when 8.04 becomes stable I’ll reinstall that.

After installing nvidia drivers and restarting my splash screen came back! Sadly only in 640×480 so I changed the splash screen res to 1440×900 by:
sudo vim /etc/usplash.conf
sudo update-initramfs -u
I also changed the splash so it showed details of loading by changing
sudo vim /boot/grub/menu.lst
delete ‘quiet’ from the kernel line of the kernel you are running right down the bottom of the file then you will get all the messages under the loading bar of “filesystem OK”, etc.

I also installed Firefox 3. It looks horrible out of the box, BUT there is a package called gtk-qt-engine-kde4 which will put KDE4 themes on GTK. After the package is installed you go into system settings-> appearance -> GTK Styles and Fonts. I still don’t like the look of it, so I ended up installing Firefox 2.0 to get back to something that looked decent.

And my last problem that I have found so far is they took IRC out of Kopete!!! (bug 201732) So annoying… I may have to start using pidgin.
Oh and Adobe Reader doesn’t seem to appear for 64bit Linux, kpdf it will have to be.

Another random note Openoffice.org 2.4 opens nearly instantaneously

Kymoie, Linux

Steps to getting my (Kym’s) Dual Digital 4 card working

Trial x+1 on getting my TV tuner card to work after kernel updates.

following the “How to install DVB devices”

then at step 2 switching to Chris Pascoe’s notes after “At step 2”

or if reinstalling:

sudo rm -r xc-test
to remove old source files if you have them

hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/~pascoe/xc-test/
cd xc-test
make
sudo make install
sudo init 6

NOTE: do not do ‘sudo make’, or ‘sudo make && make install’ it doesn’t work.

for some reason (either updating envy, 2.6.22-14-generic kernel, or chris has updated something) my nvidia drivers worked this time (169.09)