Just installed OSuse 11.3, and X11 and KDE crash all the time!! Crazy

English Hardware
1

Hi

I just installed OpenSuse 11.3 (I had tried an update from 11.2, but it was clearly not working so I did a fresh installation from scratch even removing my .kde/.kde4 directories) on my Dell latitude E4300.

The X11 server (or KDE?) is clearly not working properly:
1- the display settings are never saved whatever I do (I have two screens and it goes to a stupid 1024x768 automatically although the 1900x1200 for the big screen is the “Auto” option)
2- after some time, the X11 server goes mad: changing from desktop 1 to 2 etc it flashes, blinks, sometimes does not go through or goes from 1 to 2 and back. The windows are not refreshed, sometimes it goes all black or grey.

to be frank this is the worst upgrade I have done in ages. Is there any reason for such crazy behaviour from x11/KDE?

thanks a lot for any help here.
I have:

  • OpenSuse 11.3 last update (stable) running x86_64 version
  • Mobile Intel Gm45 Express Chipset, mobile 4 series chipset integrated graphics controller
  • LCD monitor (MT291 133Ev3) + attached DELL 2408 WFP
  • kernel-desktop 2.6.34.7-0.3.1-x86_64, kernel-firmware 20100617-2.2-noarch
2

Try this:

Create a new user. Log out, and login to the KDE desktop as that new user. See if things are instable there.
If not, there’s something disturbing in your ~./kde4 folder, i.e. config files, probably plasma related. That can be solved by rebuilding the desktop appearance from default. To do so, logout, switch to console by hitting Ctrl-Alt-F1, login with username and password and do:


rm ~/.kde4/share/config/plasm*

After that hit Ctrl-D to logout, hit Ctrl-Alt-F7 to return to login screen. Login and you’ll see the default openSUSE KDE4 desktop. Reapply your personal preferences. Mind, all applications settins will remain.

3

Thanks a lot for this.

I have tried that: the new user account seems more stable although I can notice some weird feature also there after I turn on the desktop effects.

Two things are still nagging:

  • I cannot save the setting of the display: I have two monitors (one high res screen attached to the laptop, one LCD from the laptop itself). I saw a post with a long thread on this but didn’t really catch the solution there. As soon as I logout it goes back to 1024x768 for both screens…

  • when I close the lid of my laptop the screen go off and then opening it again makes things very unstable: it looks like the driver has some difficulty to switch off and on without screwing things up. I have already turn on the power management and in principle turned off any action when the lid is closed but it still does it…

Any suggestion on either of these two things?

One more thing: things are still getting nuts when I try to connect from a different machine with x2x (which is in fact now in the OpenSuse distrib!). I guess some xserver interactions there are not well managed but I am expecting that you will tell me this is independent then… (it was working before). Any suggestion to use a different software then?

thanks again for the very prompt help!