kde 4.2 (almost there)

[rbistolfi]

in my experience KDE4 just has a lot of problems using the vesa driver,  I get similar results here if I switch to vesa.

[MO9013]

im using a ATI radeon 9800 pro vid card. i read never-stop-learning posts.  i have bin going through the forum looking for other people with the same problems and it seems that no got it right yet. 

if it is the vesa driver that is the problem then i might have to give up.  no other driver works.  with 5.8 soho i used the radeon driver with no problems.  i know there is a difference between soho and standard but would shouldn't things like drives be the same with both. 

[MO9013]

ok tried messing with the vid drivers and the only other driver that will work is FBDEV default.  the good news is that kde is working now but the system runs like crap.  its slow and freezes momentarily.  thats the reason i switched to VESA default.  i might be missing things with kde because when it opened i didn't get a control panel and there were no icons on the screen.  i got a panel going and when i go into the menu i don't get the choice for vasm control panel i think its called.  in 5.8 there was a control panel program that gave you control over allot of settings and i used it allot to set boot splashes and things like that.  i found it in 6.0 XFCE but once i messed with things it disappeared.  well at least we know it is the vid driver causing all the problems.  now we just have to find a way to fix it or im just going to have to wait till soho comes out since i never had a problem with that.  i talked to my uncle and the first time he put vector on this box was 5 or 6 years ago and he had allot of problems getting it running and his teacher helped him do it.  when it was time to upgrade he went with the soho version and it worked perfect from the start.  since then he only put the soho versions on. 

[rbistolfi]

Well, the only difference is that the drivers are newer... and they will be newer also in SOHO. We have to find a way to make your card to work with the opensource or proprietary ati drivers. I will do some research and report back to you once I find something.

[rbistolfi]

Did you try with the Ati proprietary drivers?

For R6xx and above there is also an ATIProprietaryDriver available, which is worse in many aspects but has better 3D performance and features. The proprietary driver included support for R3xx-R5xx GPUs until the March 2009 release.

Thats from the radeon page at Xorg, I understand your card has the R350 chipset and should be still supported.

[MO9013]

i tried the ati, radeon, and the vesa open source drivers with different resolutions and different bit rates.  i also tried the FGLRX proprietary driver with no luck. i tried the generate distribution specific driver package but once i click on i agree the next screen only lets me click on the cancel button and kicks me to the dit rate screen and then on to the rest of the config.  finish that up with no errors and when i try to log in i get a blank screen. 

now if i go the other way with FGLRX proprietary driver and go with the 8.561 on Xorg 7.1 7.2 7.3 setup it doesn't matter what res or bit i pick i get the same error.    there was an error in your X config.  autoconfig must have stumbled somewhere. please choose one of the following actions.  retry, edit, vesa, or exit.

is there a way to use the 5.8 soho disc i have to install the drivers.  it is the deluxe gold edition. i have 1 of 2 and 2 of 2.

[MO9013]

i replaced the vid card to a gforce 6200 and reinstalled and it works fine.  i still got the Akonadi error but oh well.  so if any one knows how to fix that it would be great.  and i did everything that was listed in this post and still got the error.   

thanks for all the help. 

Mike

[MO9013]

ok  i got everything running ok with all the things i needed to get done on my home drive so i installed 6.0 again just to clean out all the things i might have done to root trying to figure everything out.  installed kde from the test repository and when it booted it didn't give me the popper sign in screen.  it gave me the one from kde3.  let it open and it was the kde4 start up and screen.  then it flickered and went to the kde3 screen but i now have both the kde3 and the kde4 panels at the bottom of the screen.  oh i still get the Akonadi error but it doesn't stop anything from running

if i knew how to put a screen shot in i would show you what i'm talking about. 

[stretchedthin]

I've never experimented to see how well those two play together.
Check if you have both kdebase and kdebase4 installed. The kdebase package contains the kdm for kde 3.5 and of course the kdebase4 contains it for kde4.2.
It sounds like you are still now signing in to 4.2 alright.  Nice work. 

[MO9013]

your right it did pick up both kdebase and kdebase4.  just so i do this right.  do i just removet that file and nothing else or is there something special i need to do.  when i select that file it also picks about 6 more to go with it.  do i just unselected them or what.  or should i try and download the one off the cd.  with the cd in i clicked on the kdebase 4.2 and it wants to upgrade the 3.5 with it and update the kdelibs to the 4.2.  last time i did something like this i tried to erase all the files so i can try another install it took other things with it from my menu selection like my vector control center.   

[stretchedthin]

I can only guess, I would assume you can just uninstall kdebase.

[MO9013]

that didn't work.  it just made things worst.  it wouldn't even start up. all i got was a error stating that something didn't start in 10 seconds.  fresh install again and redid kde.  this time i didn't install amork because when i clicked it i saw that i also brought in kdebase3.5 with it.  so now it works ok.  the thing is i like that program and when i try to pull it from the cd it also tries to install kdebase 4.2.  i don't want to take the chance again so if any one has any ideas that would be great.  there are some things that don't work and ill look through the forum to find a fix but thought i would bring it up just in case.  i can only get gslapt to load in terminal not through the menu option and vlhot doesn't find the cd (any plug and play dev) on its own when inserted.  i have to mount it manually.  not a big deal but it shouldest be that way.

[stretchedthin]

Sorry, for the bad advice (re: removing kdebase).  It makes sense to me how you got both installed now that you tell me about amorak.  I hesitate to make any more suggestions you are in experimental territory for me.  Luckily I'm just created my own KDE4.2 Livedvd, so I can experiment a bit before I suggest any thing.

i can only get gslapt to load in terminal not through the menu option

If you go to /usr/share/applications/ in konqueror you will see that there are now two gslapt .desktop files.  The exec in the  kde one is wrong and that is why it will not start.  You need to copy the exec line from non-kde gslapt.desktop file and put it in the kde one.

I'm adding this little tidbit to 'bistro so here is the screencast.
www.opensourcebistro.com/temp/kde42gslaptfix.htm

vlhot doesn't find the cd

You may wish to use HAL. VL-Hot is not designed to bring up cd's you will need a mounter for that. Some time ago I made a screencast for eash. It's based on XFCE desktop environment but the principles are all the same.
http://www.opensourcebistro.com/Tutorial/VL60/Removeable-Media/VL-HOT/vl-hot.htm
http://www.opensourcebistro.com/Tutorial/VL60/Removeable-Media/HAL/hal.htm

Also when I tested VL-Hot on my kde4.2 system with usb thumb-drives, it would mount the drive and show the mount icon, but it would not show the unmount icon.

I'm going to experiment with the Amorak problem. Let you know if I get anywhere.

[stretchedthin]

OK, here is a way to install all the components of Amarok individually.  That way you can avoid the whole kdebase for 3.5 thing.

Yup, it's another screencast.  Hey, that just the way I communicate I guess.
www.opensourcebistro.com/temp/kde42amarok2.htm

[MO9013]

i like the screencasts.  its so much nicer to see what i have to do and just follow along.  and don't worry about the bad advice.  i thought the same thing and if i didn't get a reply that was what i was going to do.

You may wish to use HAL. VL-Hot is not designed to bring up cd's you will need a mounter for that. Some time ago I made a screencast for eash. It's based on XFCE desktop environment but the principles are all the same.

on my XFCE desktop when ever i put a cd in it pops up on my screen so i just thought it would do it on kde.  i do have a devise monitor on my kde desktop.  it did work the first couple of times i installed kde but for some reason this time when i put a cd in it wasn't picked up. 

the gslapt works great now and the only thing i thought of couldn't i just unselected it kdebase from the list in gslapt before i install or will that cause a problem?  im going to do it the way you showed me because we know it works but just a thought.  in guessing it will work the same way with the newer version of amarok on the cd.  ill take the chance and try it with that one. 

one more thing.  i have bin looking at the download for kde and it also brings in kdelibs 3.5.10 with the install.  dose yours do that too?  i wonder if that is causing problems too?