Kubuntu 5.10 on HP Omnibook: suspect the installation is corrupted, am I right?
 

Hi :)

I'm a total novice to the Linux world. Till now my main experience has been with DOS/Windows, OS/2, Amiga OS and I'm trying to adjust to doing things differently now. KDE 5.10 is installed on my HP Omnibook 6000 laptop and although I'm glad I made the switch, there are some niggling issues I cannot resolve due to my lack of knowledge.

When particular menus and options require "administrator rights" to access them, I type in the same password that I use to log on and I'm returned to the menu but I still can't access the options (which are all grayed out).

According to the KDE tutorial, the user should be able to see on their default desktop and in the panel, an icon with a house that indicates your home directory. I cannot see either of these and the home icon only appears in a menu when I click onto "system", is this normal?

When I insert my Netgear WG511 v2 card, It's totally dead - no acknowledgement is made from the OS and the LED's fail to light up on the card (I know that it works because I use it all the time with my Sony Vaio). My ethernet port is listed as "disabled" and this cannot be changed because of the above administrator mode problem.

How do I go about putting this right? I think my installation has become corrupted somehow, is a reformat and fresh install in order or have I chosen the wrong (or incompatible) distro for my laptop?

Jay

Probably not so much "corrupted" as misunderstood.

Administrator rights - you are probably being asked for the password for the root user - this should be different from your everyday user password. You would have specified this during install. If you truly don't know what it is, there are ways to reset it, but you'd need a linux live-cd (like your installation disc).

Desktop and panel - this is very configurable. You should be able to get your house icon wherever you want it (sorry, I'm typing this on a Windows machine - forgive me - so can't get to KDE to find out how just now).

WG511 - if this is the one with "Made in China" printed on the back, then you will need to do some tweaking. The problem is that this card reports itself falsely as using a prism driver, which does not work with it. Netgear does not make it easy for those of us who don't choose to window. No distro will get this right on its own (I believe). The solution is to use ndiswrapper, which "wraps" a windows driver which can then be used in linux. Search for:
ndiswrapper WG511 "Made in China" howto
You will not be the first.
And it can be made to use WPA encryption as well.

Don't give up! Search engines are your friends.

Oops sorry, kubuntu IS asking for your user password. Which particular menus and options are you having trouble with? If it's the wireless network settings they will be greyed because KDE can't see your wireless card until you have the right driver for it.

I'm sorry if I'm wrong on any or all of the above.:rolleyes:

Thanks for replying! :)

No worries, that makes two of us - I have to keep going back and forth between my Win boxes to check for replies and the laptop.

Any that require the Administrator Mode to access them, they're "grayed out". For example, the one for network settings lists my ethernet port as disabled but there's no way to change this - even after entering my password when prompted.

It is the "Made in China" one, just my luck lol... Ok, I will do a search for the guide to get in working.

Is a how to provided in the help/tutorial? If so, I'll have look for it and see if I can do it myself in order to improve my proficiency...

In that case I had better become best friends with them! :D

Thanks

To get your home directory icon onto the panel:
- right click on the panel
- choose: Add to Panel - Application - Personal Files (Home)

To get it on the desktop
- right click on the desktop
- choose: Add Link to Application
- fill in the details (easy if you right-click on your panel icon and choose properties - they will be the same)

There is probably an easier way for the desktop icon.

If you have a spare network cable, a socket on the laptop, and somewhere to put the other end, you can probably get the internet going quite easily. I think Ubuntu doesn't activate ethernet devices unless they're plugged in. You might need to reboot. This would help you sort out the WG511 issue. But be aware that if it's hardwired, then that interface will probably be selected over the wireless at bootup. Ubuntu seems to be very clever - but it tends to do stuff without either asking first or telling you what it did. Good if it works.

This could work for you:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...11+ndiswrapper
Where it tells you to download that driver (the wget and unzip commands), you can alternatively get it off your Netgear driver CD if you still have it.

Hey bernied, thanks for the continued help: much appreciated...

Did as you advised, no joy: the "personal files (home)" is not available, it is not present in the menu when I go through the route of Add to panel>>>Application>>>

Again, followed the guide right down to the letter: did not work. "Add Link to Application" did not appear in the available options when I right clicked onto the desktop. What I did see was under "Create New" an option to "Link to application", is that the one?

In any case, if it is - I can't fill in the details because the first part doesn't work since "personal files" is not available.

oops! The end of my post went missing...

I followed the instructions right down to the letter and I'll quite happily post some print screens of my desktop and the attempts. That way you can see I didn't misread the advice and mess things up :)

Any ideas? :confused:

Right - I need to apologise. I use Ubuntu, but it's the Gnome variant, not Kubuntu. I do use KDE, but only on my gentoo file server. So to work out what to do for you, I cranked that up. But I was foolishly assuming that your KDE setup was the same as mine, which it is clearly not.

Have you got a K menu, usually at the bottom right of your screen?
Look in there, especially under settings and system, see what you can discover.

No worries :)

Yes I have, exactly in same area as yours.

Will do, I'll report back in a couple days with an update on my success. In the meantime, perhaps you could do a small favour for me, recently I downloaded Xine, copied it onto the laptop and unpacked it into a folder on my desktop. Would you be able to guide me through the steps of installing it please? That way I can at least play some mp3's and watch a divx or two with Kaffeine whilst I learn the ropes... :)

Thanks again,

Jay

How to install xine depends on what you've downloaded.
If it's source (lots of files), you will need to .configure then make and make install
If it's a .deb package you can use dpkg

If it's a rpm then it's probably too much like hard work

You should search the internet for those bolded words for more information.

To make life easier for yourself though, try using the built in package management system in Kubuntu. Xine is in there, but you might need to select the Universe repository before you can find it.

Some more key words:
apt-get
dependencies

Ubuntu wiki