iceweasel dependencies + transparency issues

[dbaker]

Preliminary info: I'm running Kubuntu 13.04 in VirtualBox on my iMac, which is running Mac OS 10.7.3.
1 gb ram and 20 gb storage are allocated to the VM; I have 4 gb ram and 500 gb storage in total.
Kubuntu is using KDE 4.10.5. Apparently my Grub version is "0.97-29ubuntu66" whatever that means.

1. For some reason, my desktop 'doesn't support transparency'. I discovered this when I went to set my Konsole window to semi-transparent and it told me this. I recently installed Conky and it looks really ugly because the transparency isn't working. In the configuration file it says transparency is on, but there's just a black block behind the text. Conky is installed by default in crunchbang, which I tried out recently, and I liked the configuration of that one so I copied the .conkyrc file but the transparency, which works beautifully in crunchbang, doesn't work in Kubuntu.
EDIT: A little research suggests that desktop effects need to be enabled for transparency to work. I've repeatedly tried to enable them without any success; it says effects can't be loaded, and when I ask for more info it says the cause can't be determined. I think I might be lacking a graphics driver or something?

2. Another result of my experiment with crunchbang is the discovery of Iceweasel. I've always used Firefox but I really want to try out Iceweasel now, assuming it runs as well in Kubuntu as in crunchbang. However, I can't install it without the dependencies and I can't find any up-to-date info on the interwebs about what exactly these dependencies are. Terminal commands please?

[Buddlespit]

1. It sounds like your VB install isn't using 3d drivers. I don't know if VirtualBox uses "proprietary" drivers. You might want to look into that. Press Alt+F2, type in kinfo (and run Kinfo), click on Graphical Information-->OpenGL and check the Driver.

As for your dependency issues, do you type "sudo apt-get update" before you type "sudo apt-get install iceweasel"?

[dbaker]

I don't think it is using 3d drivers, judging from the errors I got when I tried to use Linux Mint. Here is the info:

vendor: VMware, inc.
renderer: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.2, 128 bits)
OpenGl/ES version: 2.1 Mesa 9.1.3
Kernel module: vboxvideo

As for the Iceweasel issue, I actually didn't do apt-get. I downloaded the deb package and was going to unarchive it manually. When I ran the commands you suggested, the 'update' one worked, but as you can see, iceweasel didn't:

dorothea@kubuntu-VirtualBox:~$ sudo apt-get install iceweasel
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'firefox' instead of 'iceweasel'
firefox is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.

I don't know what happened, but I don't have iceweasel.

[Buddlespit]

No, your kernel is using your virtual box graphics driver. I have no idea (from this point on) how to help you change to a different driver.
I took a look around the interwebz and from what I've seen, neither iceweasel or icecat are in active developement for Ubuntu. Maybe for Debian. Not that it matters, line for line, it's code is exactly that of firefox.

[dbaker]

How exactly does iceweasel differ from firefox? It's hard to compare because the only version of it I've tried was on a different distro anyway, but the interface is slightly different (better IMO). I thought it was faster too, but as I said this could be to do with the distro I was running it on rather than the software itself.

[HalationEffect]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla...Debian_project

The only real difference between Firefox and IceWeasel is the branding.

There is also IceCat ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat ) that has some additional security features.

[dbaker]

A really weird thing just happened. I've been fiddling around trying to install Iceweasel/Icecat and installing lots of lib thingies which are supposedly dependencies in the process (still not having any luck.) However, I just restarted and now a heap of desktop effects, including transparency, are working that weren't before. Conky still isn't though.

I still haven't figured out how to do the desktop cube thingy, either (desktop effects are enabled and the desktop cube things checked in the preferences)

[kubicle]

Conky still isn't though.

It's been ages since I've used conky, but you can try this: http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthr...t-Conky-in-KDE

[dbaker]

yep, it was that own_argb_visual line. Conky looks pretty great now, but for some reason the font size got stuck when I was fiddling with it. One minute, I could change the font size and font, the next it was stuck at 11 point or something, although I could still change the font. I've restarted and killed conky and run it again and tried everything I can think of but the font size still isn't changing (it's currently set to 9 in my config file, but looks more like 11).