Hi!

I am having a few annoying issues with Kubuntu 8.10 lately. I am listing them in random order here... Also providing solutions for what I could fix.

1) I wish to associate Konqueror as default file browser for everything. I was able to do that partly by associating inode-directory to konqueror from KDE's Control Panel. But I guess somewhere they've associated Dolphin with "Device Notifier" widget that comes with Plasma. Also, the drives are locked exclusively by that plugin. The eject button on the DVD Drive fails to work till I hit eject icon from that widget. And mount folders are not made till I hit device icon from there.

2) When working with any app in full screen mode (Gwenview, VLC etc.), there appear flashes of desktop wallpaper (apps) and sometimes check boxes or red screen (VLC). Quite annoying... I am using NVIDIA graphics driver for my NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT GPU.

3) How to manage GPRS connection? Its quite unstable (disconnects frequently) at times. Ironically, at the same time, its quite stable in Vista. I also wanted to monitor its upload and download speeds. I've tried both nethogs and nload, but they dont seem to detect ttyUSB0 - the place where my USB data card is mounted. Hints/solutions?

4) I am not able to do copy paste using Ctrl+c Ctrl+v b/w hard disk and USB drive. However, I can do a drag-drop in Konqueror and it works. Neither works in Dolphin though. I was wondering if it was a permission issue. But in case it was, why is a drag drop successful?

5) When playing a movie inside Konqueror using Dragon Player Part (Right click > 'Preview in Dragon Player Part) the mouse pointers disappears. However on doing a folder up, i.e. navigating away from the file, the mouse pointer does not return. Mouse clicks do not raise events either when inside that Konqueror window. But the pointer works normally when some other window is opened and is visible too. Know of any way to solve this?

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1) Lately after updating Gwenview, I am not getting the whole row with File menu in it in Konqueror. Also it always starts in fullscreen mode which I dont like. I've already tried saving the file management profile in Konqueror, but that has not helped.
SOLVED - open in any text editor like Kate and check the vales under [Main Window] section. The entries are listed as
Height <maxVerticalResolutionOfYourMonitor>=<verticalResolutionAtWhichApplicationIsOpened>
Width <maxHorizontalResolutionOfYourMonitor>=<horzontalResolutionAtWhichApplicationIsOpened>
My monitor's current resolution is 1280(width)x800(height)
The settings for me, which were causing gwenview to open in full screen mode all the time, were
Fix - Do it something less than resolution listed there. I used the following settings:
2) Konqueror always opened in full screen mode while opening it as a file manager (this means there was a problen in file management profile) after installing Gwenview. Dont know if this was because of the installation, but here is the solution...
SOLVED - As my file management profile has issues, I opened 'filemangement' file lying in above path. There, similar to Gwenview's solution, I corrected Height and Width values under [Profile] section.

People can use reverse of process outlined above to open apps in fullscreen mode at all times, or until they press F11

3) Not able to give a global shortcut to Konsole.

SOLVED - Setting a global shortcut for launching konsole/terminal (Compiz). I have Kubuntu 8.10 with Compiz, so I am providing the way I got the result. Install CompizConfig Settings Manager (sudo apt-get install ccsm). Goto General > Commands (tab) > Run Terminal command (last section). Click the button against 'Open a terminal' and set your short cut key. I've set it as F12. In the field against 'Terminal command line', type gnome-terminal if you are using ubuntu/Gnome and konsole if you are using Kubuntu/KDE. Compiz is there just to attract people to Linux. Till now, it has hardly brought out any increase in productivity. I guess once i start with some serious media editing work, its management will surely come in handy. Also I am not aware of all the settings and utilities it has to provide. BUT, great work people have done there!

If someone could please reply to the questions...

Updated the NVIDIA driver using following steps. It **solved the tearing problem** (checked 'Sync to VBlank' wherever I found it) but the one outlined above still remains. -
1) Downloaded NVIDIA 180.51 (latest driver) from here (NVIDIA-Linux-x86-180.51-pkg1.run) and gave executable permissions to it using once it was downloaded.

2) Installed kernel headers. Found version of the kernel using and installed headers using Adept.

3) As I had installed 180.11 and its control panel from Ubuntu repositories , I had to remove the 180.11 NVIDIA kernel headers and the driver using Adept. Weird things may happen when the driver is uninstalled and xorg.conf is inconsistent. As a prevention, instead of "nvidia" driver, I wrote "nv" for driver under display section and then proceeded with uninstall.
Some methods found on internet suggest to purge everything related to nvidia using apt. As I was on a GPRS connection, I did not have the privilege of uninstalling and installing same packages (nvidia control panel) again. That's why, I uninstalled only the driver and its kernel headers.

4) Opened Konsole and gave the following command to kill XServer -
This brought me to a shell.

5) I navigated to the the downloaded driver using cd command and launched it. It was a matter of clicking 'OK' from there. The driver built NVIDIA kernel headers automatically.

Its been working fine till now. Will post solution to other problems listed here in case I find them.

NOTE:
Some methods on internet ask people to update and get the compiling tools. One example is here. I compile packages from source now and then and have build tools installed. But I am not sure if they are required to install the driver. To me, it looks like a binary package. I may be wrong, but I'll take a stand only when I am convinced by my investigations or someone's logical reasoning

Step 2 makes me think that I'd have to reinstall the driver in case I update my kernel. Will update in case I try the same.

IMPORTANT - Installing the driver disabled the display power management module. To check if it has been disabled for you too, goto Konsole and write-
If its disabled, you can enable it by writing