Ubuntu – KDE freeze with Ubuntu13.10

13.10kde

I have a new installation of Ubuntu 13.10 on a lenovo laptop, for which I decided to install KDE. After I logged out and in and choosing KDE plasma workspace, all worked fine.

But later, when I log into KDE plasma workspace, its loads normally, and I see the choosen background and the standard KDE panel at the bottom of the screen. I can move the mouse around, but that's it. I cannot do anything else. Klicking on anything or typing does not do anything, all is frozen. I have to power the laptop off the hard way! I tried several times, without any luck of able to use KDE.

Logging in to the Ubuntu standard desktop, on the other hand, works just fine.

How can I fix this behaviour?

Please let me know any log entry, software installation, hardware device etc. you need to know in order to solve this problem (and how I e.g. can figure out the type of graphics card or whatever…).

Additional information:

  • Extract from kdm.log: 

    Loading extension GLX
klauncher(1266) kdemain: No DBUS session-bus found. Check if you have started the DBUS server. 
kdeinit4: Communication error with launcher. Exiting!
kdmgreet(1212)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): KSystemTimeZones: ktimezoned initialize() D-Bus call failed:  "Not connected to D-Bus server"

  • The suggestion made here to press ALT+SHIFT+F12 did not help

  • I also renamed each file containing the phrase plasma under .kde/share/config as suggested here, which also did not resolve my problem. The background image has changed and I saw two terminals open, but locked to the panel at the bottom. I could not open them.

  • lspci -v shows the following for the graphics card: 

    00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
    Subsystem: Lenovo Device 3977
    Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 16
    Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
    Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
    I/O ports at 3000 [size=64]
    Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
    Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
    Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 2
    Capabilities: [a4] PCI Advanced Features

  • New user: If I add a new user, I am able to log-in to the KDE desktop (at least twice).

Best Answer

If you need to remove your KDE settings, you be able to via removing the config files in your home directory. If you remove the files ~/.kde (could also be ~/.kde4), it should remove the configuration - hence resetting it and hopefully removing any problems with it.

You will also need to remove the KDE files from ~/.config and ~/.local - Don't just remove these files, they are shared directories, and are used by other programs as well.

You don't have to remove the files if you want to, you can just rename them or place them elsewhere.

Hope this helps.

When you have a KDE config that works, you can back it up by running this to make a compressed file:

tar -cf KDEbackup`date +%y%m%d`.tar '.kde'

Or this to simply copy it:

cp -r '.kde' KDEbackup`date +%y%m%d`

N.B. If you are not copying and pasting, note that the things surrounding the date +%y%m%d are not apostrophes they are Grave accents. The ` key is to the left of the 1 on most keyboards. I know this is overly complicated, but it is useful when backing up as it adds in the date automatically. smiley

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