newbie to Linux and the Ubuntu OS
 

Good afternoon,
I am a newbie. I installed the newest version of Kubuntu on my computer. I have been playing around with the OS for the last two days. I know when I turn it on it would go straight to the desktop. Through out the night it did an update. It rebooted and when it came back up it would only go into command or terminal mode. How do I get it to go back the desktop?

Also on the same computer, which is partitioned, I had originally installed Mythbuntu because the machine was going to be my entertainment machine for watching dvds, hulu and other sites that can pull tv shows. However I can not get the VLC player to play my dvds. Any suggestions?

When it boots into Terminal mode, type "startx" (without the quotes) and hit Enter. Then you can use the clickable settings menus to choose a Session for Kubuntu to boot into by default (select KDE).

With a good internet connection, open Synaptic Package Manager, scroll down to find kubuntu restricted-extras and Mark it for Installation using the mouse. Also select libdvdcss2, then click Apply. When it's done installing that (it's a "meta package" that includes abuncha multimedia codecs), close Synaptic and try a DVD. If it works, yay!!! If not, let us know so we can help you further. When (if) you do, please tell us about your computer as well (hardware). That is often necessary information when it comes to certain drivers and such.

-Robin

Please keep in mind that in some countries the use of libdvdcss2 is not legal.