Be Wily and Enjoy the Progress of Kubuntu 15.10

[NoWorries]

I have now installed the iso for the 2-July-2015. I did this on America's 4th July Birthday in the hope that the problems I was facing would be fixed.

The install went though without any Grub catastrophe and I was able to boot the system. Unfortunately it ended up with a black screen. I interpreted this as a problem with not having the required video drivers. So I shut-down and used the recovery mode which booted successfully to give a desktop that looked like a 640x320 resolution.

This mode allowed me to connect to my wireless network and get muon installed. I then installed the video drivers for my system which required the fglrx-amdcccle package plus a few others.

Rebooting was successful and I had a desktop that was useful. I seem to find kwallet getting in the way and a nuisance when I reboot and connect to my wireless network. I have found that by putting "kwallet" in the search for muon and then go through each installed package and only remove those that do not remove any other package. This then removes all the problems I had with kwallet.

I have now installed over 200 of my favourite packages and added this system to my home NFS network. Just for the record, the current plasma version is 5.3.2!

So I wish to thank the developers in Europe and America for the improvements that have been made since the Alpha 1 release and hope that they have had a good break. I am now a very happy chappee.

[xennex81]

That saying, the plasma5 devs are really working hard. I'm on their list and it's a busy place.

[xennex81]

I personally use all kinds of flash drives to boot into my Linux machine . I hate seeing the hideous Grub menu when I boot my pc, and the added benefit is that the casual bystander won't know that another system is installed or how to boot it . So I just do grub-install on the flash drive (usb stick, sdcard). Strange that you have a system that can't get grub installed. I have no hopes for Wily seeing that they are already pushing alpha-1s. I think this system is so bad (I mean 15.x, in general) that it'll take years to get something satisfactory but people are running round and trying to push it into months. One bleak release after another. They should just have extended 14.10s period to keep the leeway for introducing something bigger and more difficult (especially for Kubuntu since it's KDE plasma 5).

[Qqmike]

In the meantime, I boot using the rEFInd flash drive.

Good idea. Sorry the other ideas didn't work. It does sound like an anomalous situation, doesn't it? And I guess you are running the PC is UEFI mode, and running the flash drive in UEFI mode, too.

[NoWorries]

Another idea:
Try Boot Repair (which will also, probably, just try to do the above):
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

Thanks for suggesting Boot Repair. I have tried it previously and found it worked very well. In this case, I could not get it to work. When I tried it from the command line, I got the following output:

/usr/bin/glade2script:1919: Warning: The property GtkImage:stock is deprecated and shouldn't be used anymore. It will be removed in a future version.
  self.widgets.add_from_file(f_glade)
/usr/bin/glade2script:1919: Warning: The property GtkButton:use-stock is deprecated and shouldn't be used anymore. It will be removed in a future version.
  self.widgets.add_from_file(f_glade)
/usr/bin/glade2script:1919: Warning: The property GtkSettings:gtk-button-images is deprecated and shouldn't be used anymore. It will be removed in a future version.
  self.widgets.add_from_file(f_glade)
/usr/bin/glade2script:1919: Warning: The property GtkContainer:resize-mode is deprecated and shouldn't be used anymore. It will be removed in a future version.
  self.widgets.add_from_file(f_glade)
/usr/bin/glade2script:1919: Warning: The property GtkMisc:ypad is deprecated and shouldn't be used anymore. It will be removed in a future version.
  self.widgets.add_from_file(f_glade)
/usr/bin/glade2script:1919: Warning: The property GtkButton:xalign is deprecated and shouldn't be used anymore. It will be removed in a future version.
  self.widgets.add_from_file(f_glade)

(glade2script:1675): Gtk-WARNING **: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gtk-3.0/3.0.0/immodules/im-fcitx.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

(glade2script:1675): Gtk-WARNING **: Loading IM context type 'fcitx' failed

(glade2script:1675): Gtk-WARNING **: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gtk-3.0/3.0.0/immodules/im-fcitx.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

(glade2script:1675): Gtk-WARNING **: Loading IM context type 'fcitx' failed

It suggested that I run it from a bootable USB flash drive. I downloaded the file boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso which was 631.2MiB and took over 3 hours to download!!! I do not have a slow connection as I can download the 1.2GiB Kubuntu iso file in about 10 minutes.

Booting with the boot-repair USB, went to completion but the system would not boot. This process said to make sure that I boot using the file sda1/EFI/ubuntu/shimx64.efi. When I use KDE Partition Manager, it gives /dev/sda1 as fat32 with file /boot/efi which is 512MiB and 3.5MiB used.

One idea:
Boot into Kubuntu, using your package manager (Muon) or the CLI, un-install the GRUB package it is using. Then re-install it. If there's a damaged file, that should fix it. These master files are usually stored at /usr/lib/grub.

Then, if you run sudo grub-install and sudo update-grub, they will be playing with good files.

After trying the above I also tried this approach and that also failed, ie goes to the grub prompt.

I am beginning to think that there is something seriously wrong with the boot procedure on this PC. If I fail to find a proper solution, I think that I might try downloading the Wily iso each week to check if this problem has been fixed by the developers.

In the meantime, I boot using the rEFInd flash drive.

[Qqmike]

One idea:
Boot into Kubuntu, using your package manager (Muon) or the CLI, un-install the GRUB package it is using. Then re-install it. If there's a damaged file, that should fix it. These master files are usually stored at /usr/lib/grub.

Then, if you run sudo grub-install and sudo update-grub, they will be playing with good files.

Another idea:
Try Boot Repair (which will also, probably, just try to do the above):
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

[InsideJob]

I have tried the update-grub command but that does not solve this problem.

grub-install then update-grub

I'm always doing install-grub and grub-update though. I want to slap whoever named them.

[NoWorries]

I must confess that I have had a rather torrid time this weekend with Wily.

I tried the iso for the 24th June and when I tried it on my Compaq Presario system it come up with a blank screen. I should point out that the iso did start correctly on my other systems, ie gave the screen with the Try Kubuntu, etc.

I then waited and tried the iso for the 27th June. That worked and allowed the installation to proceed Unfortunately, it ended with the boot error messaage

The 'grub-efi-amd64-signed' package failed to install into /target/

So I now had a system the would not boot.

I then decided to try using the rEFInd boot manager on a USB flash drive. I can now boot up the system, BUT I have to always boot using the USB flash drive. If I don't, I get the grub prompt.

This is not a satisfactory solution and I am wondering it anyone knows how to progress from using rEFInd to booting normally. I have tried the update-grub command but that does not solve this problem.

[NoWorries]

No, it's because the system is buggy. There's nothing wrong with you .

I now have all the updates for Alpha 1 and I must say that I am not so enthusiastic with its performance.

The time it takes from power-on to desktop is still about the same that I reported before. The added problem is that Firefox hangs, it also takes a long time to either display KInfoCenter or open a file with LibreOffice. I feel certain that there are other cases of slow response.

I am wondering if anyone else is experiencing these problems. If I find time this weekend, I will try installing the current build to see if that fixes the problems. In the meantime, the power button is the fastest way to close the system down.

[xennex81]

I am beginning to wonder if there is something wrong with my video driver or it is just a case of being too early and I need to do a re-install to "clean up" the system.

No, it's because the system is buggy. There's nothing wrong with you .

[NoWorries]

I am eagerly awaiting the release of Alpha 1 in a little under a week now. Lately, I have been finding the speed of Wily slow. For example on my system, it takes 3:41 minutes from power-on to the desktop screen. I takes about 1:50 minutes to get to the login prompt. I am beginning to wonder if there is something wrong with my video driver or it is just a case of being too early and I need to do a re-install to "clean up" the system. Intend to do this with the release of the Alpha.

There have been many kernel updates lately and the current status is shown below.



So I am waiting patiently for the Alpha 1 to see what advancements are made with that release. Best of luck to the developers.

[verndog]

...I have downloaded it and had several goes at installing it and I have only had one success on my last attempt. I installed it in a separate partition and it stopped at a black screen. ...

I had the same issue yesterday, but today it at least boot to the desktop using nomodeset. Early on I know. Surprisingly Vivid works well for me.

[InsideJob]

Wily Werewolf with kernel 3.19 doesn't sound very bleeding edge to me. Sounds like the same old Canonical bull... long-term unstable on new hardware. I guess someone there needs the job security of unnecessary backporting. Using a new kernel would just be too easy. Almost installed this until I saw that. 14.05 to 14.10 skipped THREE versions 3.13 to 3.16. I couldn't get my now obsolete Sandybridge laptop working until 3.15 and 3.16 doesn't work right with my new ValleyView/BayTrail one.

LONG TERM UNSTABLE

[NoWorries]

Same here. I did update to the latest version from the HP website but it did not make any difference.

Good to know I am not the only one with this problem. I have found that after the latest update, I can connect to the printer. I use a wireless connection and it does not find the wireless, but if I use the advanced option and enter the wireless IP address it finds it and I can use the printer.

[GerardV]

The only constant annoyance that I experience at the moment is with the hplip-gui not finding the system tray. Yet it puts the icon in the system tray and stays there while the error message is kept. This is the same for Vivid as well. I am sure this will one day be fixed

[ATTACH=CONFIG]6029[/ATTACH]

Same here. I did update to the latest version from the HP website but it did not make any difference.