Xamine and Xperience - Xenial Kubuntu 16.04

[NoWorries]

I have being trying numerous options and I found it interesting that when I added the edgers ppa, I still got the latest from the Canonical repository. My muon location for the edgers ppa is http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu.

The nvidia driver that I had installed is nvidia-352_352.63-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb. I now have the nvidia-352-updates installed. I still have the problems with the external monitor being on the left. The other problem is that LibreOffice Presentation doesn't display any Slide Show controls on the primary monitor.

So I will just have to wait for more progress on the Nvidia front.My Intel card works well and if I have to change to another external monitor, and my only option is hdmi, I know how to get by.

[Teunis]

This is another one carrying the latest nVidia drivers:
http://ppa.launchpad.net/graphics-drivers/ppa/ubuntu

As said I'm now using 352.79 and it kind of works.
Plugging in the HDMI cable to the external monitor will end up with a duplicated/cloned screen.
The screen settings in System Settings allow me to change this to extended, which was near-impossible two weeks ago.

I need to do it in single steps, first drag the two screens side by side, click Apply.
Then increase the size of the first screen, Apply.
Change the size of the external screen, Apply.

I've only had the external screen on the right hand side and the panel is on the left side on the laptop, again near-impossible only two weeks ago.

Libreoffice has no problem showing presentations on the (right hand side) external monitor with the original + controls on the laptop.

[NoWorries]

Glad you have the 352.79 driver working for you. Unfortunately, it behaves the same as the previous one I used. I remove Nvidia drivers with a purge, ie

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo apt update; sudo apt full-upgrade
sudo apt-get autoremove

I then reboot and make doubly sure that everything is removed. I then use muon to install the new driver. As a general precaution I also remove the file ~/.local/share/kscreen.

With the new driver, I then go to system settings to locate the screens side by side and then apply.

I have found that the NVIDIA X Server Settings only shows one display - the external monitor. Perhaps, if it showed both, it might work properly.

The NVIDIA card that I have is the Geforce GT 630M.

[Teunis]

Sounds like you too have an Optimus setup.

Which on my W520 will only allow Intel on the internal screen and nVidia on the external.
Strange enough Steve Riley reported that on his very similar T520 he can run both screens on Intel.

Once I change the BIOS/UEFI settings to nVidia only I can address both screens through the nVidia settings.
But the (battery) power consumption is higher.

[NoWorries]

Thanks for the possible insight into my problem.

What I have found is that if I have the NVIDIA selected with no external monitor, glxgears gives about 5,000 fps. If I connect the external monitor to the hdmi output of my Laptop, I get about 60fps with glxgears. This is the same rate that I get with the Intel card selected.

When I use the VGA connection to the external monitor and the NVIDIA driver, I get about 3,000 fps with glxgears which indicates that the NVIDIA card is being used.

From this I tend to think that the crux of the problem is the way the driver deals with an external monitor with two different video cards which is correctly handled by M$.

I will have to see if the bumblebee package solves the problem

[NoWorries]

I have not been successful with bumblebee as it was not able to find my GPU which lead to a black screen.

I have found that all the NVIDIA drivers that I have tried work with the VGA line. However, there is no sound or webcam usage available, ie all silent. System settings shows in the Multimedia option, all the sound and webcam grey out. I must say that after I installed nvidia-352-updates, the sound and webcam worked. BUT, on reboot they no longer worked. BTW, everything works fine if I do not have an external monitor connected. When it is connected, I am presented with the login screen about 3 times before it proceeds to start the desktop.

So I am back to using my Intel Video card which works but is not as fast as the NVIDIA card. I will wait patiently for fixes to these problems as I am sure the developers are aware of this.

[TWPonKubuntu]

I've taken the plunge and installed 16.04 on my 80Gb laptop drive (an alternate drive). I used mkusb to burn the iso and it installed with minimal problems, mostly because I switched my root and home drive partitions and had to redo the install once.
Total install time was less than 30 minutes with USB 2.0.

So far, the only real glitches are some screen tearing and slow application loading. I have seen some problems with various tools, like Firefox, not seeing the contents of the folder "/media". I had to move a file off the USB stick to my downloads folder to get it to see the file.

I hate the default splash screen... Ugly is being kind.

[NoWorries]

When I did a fresh install on a system with an AMD Radeon Graphics card, I got a lot of screen tearing. This was solved by installing the fglrx video drivers. So, if you know the video card for your laptop, it would be worth checking that you have the drivers for it installed.

Sorry you don't like that splash screen. At least you can easily change the desktop background. This is what I always do for a new installation.

[TWPonKubuntu]

NoWorries, since this is still very Alpha, I'm not concerned. and yes, the first thing I did was change the splash/background image. I love Kubuntu....

The video driver will sort itself out as 16.04 evolves.
More later

[TWPonKubuntu]

One other change I note with 16.04, it no longer contains the proper shutdown or reboot sequence for my laptop. This works fiine on 14.04, same machine, just change hard drives. For the record:

Dell Latitude D820, 4Gb RAM, A10 Bios version. dual processor etc. It is not "old" in .net years, but the kernel may not have been updated to include anything but what the developers are using at the moment. Something else to report as part the development process.

[Snowhog]

Verify that you have the package kshutdown installed.

[claydoh]

kshutdown does not not exist in 16.04, it is an older, extra kde4 program. I don't have it here.

Recently, I see after kernel or other system updates in 16.04 that shutting down/logging out/rebooting does not work the first time, both machines are dell laptops, one an older d630, and a newer e6420. Either it takes a long time, or it seems unable to kill the last two programs still open after plasma and everything has gone black - chrome and Yakuake for me. I have to do a ctrl-alt-delete to bring up the sddm logout/reboot/shutdown splash and select the option I want. After the reboot all is well again.

Can't tell if it is a bug in the logout process, or sddm or a quirk of the system update

[TWPonKubuntu]

@snowhog, kshutdown does not exist on either my 14.04 or 16.04 installations.
14.04 works for shutdown/reboot, 16.04 does not.
I note Claydoh's advisory that kshutdown is not a part of the distribution.

[NoWorries]

One other change I note with 16.04, it no longer contains the proper shutdown or reboot sequence for my laptop. This works fiine on 14.04, same machine, just change hard drives.

I assume that you have the menu options but the system fails to perform the proper Shutdown or Reboot. I find that this happens every now and then and I just use the power button to finish the process. Other times it fails to power up and just hangs. Once again I use the power button to recover.

For the record:

Dell Latitude D820, 4Gb RAM, A10 Bios version. dual processor etc. It is not "old" in .net years, but the kernel may not have been updated to include anything but what the developers are using at the moment. Something else to report as part the development process.

I notice that in the specifications for this Laptop, you could either have an Intel or Nvidia card. I have found that the system currently does not reliably select the correct driver, so, depending on your video card, you could try to install the correct drivers.

[TWPonKubuntu]

@NoWorries, Yes, that is what I do, and the video driver does work in 14.04, without needing to install a new or different version. Hence my suspicion that not all drivers from 14.04 are part of the 16.04 Alpha release.

I'm functional, to the extent allowed by these problems and I'll report them as needed to the dev team.