Ubuntu – Gwenview – phonon backend plugin could not be loaded

I was able to fix the problem shortly after posting the question, though I wanted to be sure before trying to post my answer. Note that no additional modifications to BIOS/UEFI settings were needed -aside from what I had already specified in the OP.

My Steps to Fix

The process was basically as follows:

1. Add kernel arguments: nomodeset acpi_osi= to allow boot to proceed
   • Using acpi_osi="Linux" didn't work at first; it had to be empty as shown above¹
   • You can edit the boot commands by pressing e in the GRUB menu
2. This allows a successful boot of 16.10 from the live USB.
   • In my case, I went for a re-install²
3. After re-installing, I changed the kernel arguments back to pci=nomsi acpi_osi="Linux"

I'm not sure why nomodeset³ is necessary to get the system to boot at first, but not really necessary after the fact, which is probably why I forgot that I had probably done this back in July when I troubleshooted my original 16.04 LTS install. In any case, I hope this helps anyone else that might come across similar issues.

Making Changes Permanent

Currently, you have to edit the boot command every time, and that gets old fast. To update the boot command permanently, follow these steps:

1. Open /etc/default/grub for editing, as root
   • sudo vim /etc/default/grub from the terminal
   • Change vim for your favorite editor (e.g. nano)
2. Edit this line as follows and save the changes
   • Default: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
   • Edited: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="pci=nomsi acpi_osi=\"Linux\""
3. Run the sudo update-grub2 command to generate an updated /boot/grub/grub.cfg file
   • Remember to not edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg directly

If you're wondering about the pci=nomsi argument, this prevents the kernel from filling up your drive (i.e. /var/log/syslog) with lots of bogus messages. This seems specific to the MSI laptop, as my desktop and a former HP laptop didn't need this workaround.

Footnotes

1. If you don't change acpi_osi= back to acpi_osi="Linux", and you've installed the nvidia drivers package, login attempts will fail and you will see the greeter re-displayed. You can identify this because your password is correct (i.e. no error message about password mismatch) and, if you Ctrl + Alt + F1 into a terminal, you can log in successfully from there.
2. If you have your /home directory in its own partition (as you should, IMHO), then you just make sure to mark the partition for use with the same file system (e.g. ext4) and mount point (i.e. /home), but without formatting it. I also re-entered the same account credentials during installation. Note that old accounts will still be in your /home directory, but may not show up if you use Settings >> Users, since that reads from /etc/passwd. You may need to sudo adduser ... to get them to show up correctly.
3. See What does nomodeset do?

Can you try the following. This is based on an Ubuntu Guide for getting the module ndiswrapper working on your system which will allow you to use windows drivers for your wifi card. I will summarize the steps here for your specific card.

Go to synaptic package manager, and install package ndisgtk. If you can't access internet from your computer, download the .deb package from here from another computer, copy to your computer, and install manually (amd64 for a 64 bit computer).

Download the windows driver from http://www.mediatek.com/products/broadbandWifi/rt3290 (Download link). Move the downloaded archive into your home folder. Create another folder named "RT3290 Driver" and place the archive in there. Extract inside this new folder. Once extracted, you should have a folder named "Disk1".

Turn wifi off. Remove all the wireless connections you have added before through network manager. That is, delete them.

I will assume you have gedit installed, or that you know how to open the text editor you do have installed from the terminal. In which case replace gedit with the command to open your editor. Run

sudo cp /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf ~/blacklist_backup.conf
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

This will open up that file in gedit. Go to the end of the file and add these two lines:

#Custom Blacklist
blacklist rt2800pci

Save, close, close terminal. Reboot.

Open ndisgtk, look under System > Administration > Windows Wireless Drivers. Alternatively, run gksudo ndisgtk & from a terminal.

Once open, click "Install New Driver". A dialog box will pop-up asking you to select the driver file. Navigate to the windows driver folder you extracted earlier. I'm going to assume you have a 64 bit Ubuntu installation (to check, in a terminal run uname -m. x86_64 = 64 bit, x86 = 32 bit). In your home folder > RT3290 Driver > Disk1 > drivers > Win8 > x64 > netr28x.inf

To check if everything went right, I'm going to refer you to section 3.6.2.1 of the Ubuntu Docs.

Enable your wifi if disabled, open a terminal and run

sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

Your wifi should now be active. If it's not, reboot your computer and see if helps. If that doesn't help, remove the driver you installed using ndisgtk again and install the win7 driver and reboot and see if that helps. As a final resort, there's another driver you could try.

Then, add your wifi connection just like you did the first time.

Post back with any questions, errors, or worries you may have.

If successful, make the changes permanent by running the following on a terminal

sudo gedit /etc/modules

And adding the line ndiswrapper at the end. Save, close, close terminal.

Here's a smiley face: ?