My personal Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal trouble index

previous: Development method: Playgrounding

The number troubles that I have with Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal keeps growing and growing. So I decided to organize them. This is my personal Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal trouble index. Over the time, this index might grow or change, and many trouble items might get their own blog entries.

Please note that the troubles, until analyzed, make no statement whether it is Kubuntu or the upstream packages to blame. But please also note that most things for which the user experience is broken were things that used to work nicely and smoothly in Kubuntu 9.04. To me it is clear is that the overall quality of Kubuntu 11.04 is very poor compared to i.e. Kubuntu 9.04. In my opinion, Kubuntu currently has serious quality control issues.

Trouble Index

Multi-Monitor-Setup with KRandR doesn't work with the proprietary AMD driver (workaround: run amdcccle instead)
menu entry amdcccle (superuser) doesn't work (workaround: run sudo amdcccle from command line intead)
amdcccle screen id stays active (unsolved)
AMD driver package out-of-date (unsolved)
SUN / Oracle Java packages out-of-date (workaround: Install SUN / Oracle Java yourself, reopened)
keuphoria.kss screen lock trouble (unsolved)
keuphoria.kss cannot be started in plasma-desktop window (unsolved)
konsole window in front of keuphoria.kss window has strange transparency behavior (unsolved)
AMD A8-3850 Llano Radeon HD 6550D graphics have an annoying watermark (unsolved, probably duplicate of AMD driver package out-of-date)
KDE background services don't stop when last KDE app exits (workaround: ps for and kill the services before you terminate your ssh -X session)
Update breaks Adobe Flash player (wokaround: sudo apt-get install --reinstall flashplugin-installer)
WLAN connection unreliable after kdm restart (unsolved)
Recent AMD driver crashes on Kubuntu (unsolved)
Gimp crashes at startup (workaround: Go to the control panel, in the GTK+ appearance change widget style to Raleigh, then start gimp. Maybe related to proprietary AMD driver?)
NetPBM lacks svgtopam (unsolved)
Sound is strange and dub (unsolved, but went away, maybe with an update?)
Although I changed the language settings in the KDE control panel from German to English, some KDE applications like Quassel and kmail still use German for some of their onscreen texts even after reboot (unsolved)
mplayer doesn't play audiocds (workaround: use kscd)
amarok doesn't play audiocds (workaround: use kscd)
kscd not part of kde-base or other default packages (workaround: install kscd)
kscd not performing cddb lookup (unsolved)
Kubuntu uses upstart, and upstart is big shit (unsolved)
The Pre-X-diplay has graphics errors (unsolved)
The boot messages displayed before kdm are not accessible as soon as kdm started (unsolved)
With the latest X.org update, when KDE starts, KDE does not respond to mouse input. Cursor moves, but the start menu button is the only thing that works with mouse. Not even the menu itself. This only seems to happen the first time after a reboot, not after powerup. (unsolved)
When the screen is locked, the unlock window stays invisible. (unsolved)
After unlocking the screen, X does not work until going to console and back to X again. (unsolved, maybe AMD related)
When a new user is created using the KDE system control panel, its group has no name. (unsolved)
The name of a group that was created without name cannot be changed with the KDE system control panel. (unsolved)
The password input in the password change dialog after KDE login does not work. (unsolved)
Sometimes during boot, Kubuntu crashes, with the Scroll Lock and Caps Lock key flashing. (unsolved)
Although a new Opera version 11.51 is available, Opera version 11.50 is not updated. (fixed. Not a kubuntu bug but an Opera bug.)
With GTK+-style oxygen-gtk, running strace gimp from konsole hangs X. (unsolved; recovery: Go to console, kill -9 gimp, seems to only occur if either the style was never changed, or if compiz is used)
Remote administration of Kubuntu not possible per default. (unsolved)
Kubuntu defaults to noacl. (workaround: sudo apt-get install acl, sudo vi /etc/fstab)
Kubuntu default vi is shit. (workaround: sudo apt-get install vim-nox cscope vim-doc)
Kubuntu graphical installer does not allow to set mount options and does not set mount options for ext4 partitions SSDs correctly (required: discard,noatime). (workaround: use text-based installer)
Kubuntu graphical installer partitioning is painfully slow. (unsolved)
Kubuntu graphical installer complains about no swap leading to potential installation problems although PC has SSD and 8 GiB or 16 GiB RAM. (unsolved)
Kubuntu graphical installer keyboard settings shows the layout but lacks textfield to test the layout, which is important to see if the chosen variant has the desired behavior regarding dead keys. (workaround: Abuse user dialog)
Kubuntu graphical installer seems to not check the password strength. (unsolved)
Kubuntu graphical installer lacks option to install additional packages and selections. (unsolved)
Kubuntu desktop shows 2 instead of 1 update icons, one from kpackagekit and one from muon. (unsolved)
When both, kpackagekit and muon run, and an update is done with muon, the kpackagekit icon stays active until the next search for updates is done, although kpackagekit sees that there are no pending updates. (unsolved)
When trying to play a DVD with dragon player for the first time, some packages are installed (okay). After that, the DVD still doesn't play, even after restarting dragon player, without any error message visible to a normal user. (workaround: look at ~/.xsession-errors)
Kubuntu graphical installer doesn't tell the user to remove the installation medium. (unsolved)
Kubuntu lacks khexedit.
Mouse goes "crazy". Windows don't respond to nearly all mouse events until a popup menu is forced to show up. Then it works for a few seconds, and after a while the mouse again stops working. Because I use konsole and vim most of the time it took a while until I noticed. (unsolved, bug is from Compiz. Workaround: Disable Compiz completely, or disable everything, then enable everything you're interested in, then recheck the config and disable all things that were added automatically - works for me now)
WLAN connection unreliable once stopped. When I disconnect and want to connect again, connecting fails w/o an error message visible to the user. Happens with various types of WLAN devices. (unsolved)
Network scripts are broken. Although /sbin/ifconfig shows an eth0 interface, sudo ifdown eth0 doesn't work. (unsolved)
If X.org is crashed and uses 100% CPU, keuphoria.kss cannot be killed, not even with kill -9. (unsolved)
If nepomuk is already running, and I login with ssh -X, nepomuk is started a second time. (unconfirmed)
If X.org is crashed and uses 100% CPU, X.org cannot be killed, not even with kill -9. (unsolved)
Although I have both, OpenJDK and SUN / Oracle JDK installed, Java doesn't work in most web browsers. (unsolved)
No Noatun (unsolved)
Connecting a ↗Mad Catz Cyborg R.A.T. 5 causes mouse to go crazy. No responds to clicks and hovering. (unsolved)
Muon regularly hangs during updates. (unsolved. workaround: uninstall muon using sudo apt-get remove muon, use command line instead)
Kpackagekit regularly hangs during updates. (unsolved. workaround: uninstall kpackagekit using sudo apt-get remove kpackagekit, use command line instead)
When changing the locale with KDE, the system locale is not changed. (unsolved, workaround: sudo vi /etc/defaults/locale)
With the update from 2011-10-07, kubuntu crashes when going to suspend to ram. This only happens if you didn't reboot yet. Obviously, kubuntu quality control forgets to check influences of updates on the running apci subsystem. Workaround: After an update, never try to use anything with acpi, instead immediately reboot.
When changing a single monitor system into a dual monitor system on which the width of monitor is smaller than the size of the previous monitor, then the kde control bar is not changed in size and thus a part of the tray is not visible. (unsolved)
PulseAudio is fucking shit. It makes most features of my soundcard inaccessible and thus useless, I can't even change the volume of my mainboard's front audio and rear audio independently. (unsolved. workaround: uninstall this shit using sudo apt-get uninstall pulseaudio)
KDE System Settings, Locale, Country/Region & Language, Languages, Available Languages: List contains 4 ghost entries w/o name. (unsolved, just a minor glitch)
On a Xinerama configuration, Compiz messes up the desktop. After login, screen1 appears dead. Changing to console and back to X then leads to screen1 being shown on screen2, except for the cursor. (unsolved, workaround: Disable Compiz / desktop effects).
On a Xinerama configuration, Copmiz crashes X when logging in for a second time. (unsolved, workaround: Disable Compiz / desktop effects).
kubuntu nethack has a bug regarding layout. Terminal width is done using 8 bit. My terminal is 271x78 and thus there's an overflow error. (unsolved. Probably a bug in nethack itself, reported on 2011-10-09 with nethack contact message id #H2488)
KDE window menus lack "window to front" and "window to back" buttons. (unsolved)
kmix configure channels dialog is not intuitive - channels can only be added via drag & drop, but not via keyboard, double click or add button. (unsolved)
On a Xinerama configuration, the cursor image sometimes is corrupt on one of the screens. (unsolved)
When pulseaudio is removed, the system is left with a trashed alsa configuration with playback impossible for lots of programs (i.e. mplayer, flash). (unsolved)
DragonPlayer does not disable the screen saver. (unsolved)
When using midi and audio sequencers, there is jittering and micro-pauses in playback. Rosegarden complains that it cannot sync to RTC. (unsolved)

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