Using 11.0. This computer had been put away since last spring, but I needed it again, so I booted it up, and everything looked great. Of course, there were lots of patches and upgrades and so I applied them. Still, everything looked normal until I rebooted after upgrading to the latest kernel. To my surprise, my desktop dramatically changed its appearance. Perhaps it suddenly enabled KDE4 (that’s what’s now listed on the login options), but I really don’t know.
The new desktop was distinctive because it talked about activities, and had an icon on the lower left that mentioned plasma.
I was looking forward to learning this new environment and so I tried running FireFox 3.6. Unfortunately it, and every other application opened at the top left edge of my screen without a title bar, so I could not move the apps. Also, when I resized them (by dragging the lower-right corner) the desktop background was not redrawn properly.
One more thing: the keyboard stopped working in that environment: luckily the mouse worked and so I rebooted.
After the reboot, things were even worse: logging into the default (KDE4?) never brought up a desktop: the green login background was all I could see, but the computer continued to perform periodic disk accesses so I knew something was working.
Now for the good news: TWM works and so I’m typing this on FireFox 3.6 under TWM, so I can, at least, execute command lines and, I hope, get back to normal.
Update: explicitly choosing KDE4 from the login options gets me back to the new desktop, but the title bars are still missing, and the application launcher button doesn’t seem to do anything.
I thought I had been using KDE3, and this new desktop matches the KDE4 docs, so it appears that I was switched to KDE4.
I tried moving .kde4 as you suggested (thanks): that restore the OpenSUSE welcome window and the desktop icons window, but FireFox still doesn’t have a title bar.
Still, after switching to the classic menu style, the app launcher is now doing something.
So, the only obvious problem is the lack of title bars.
Out of curiousity, if you create a new user, does the new user have the same problem? Ensure when selecting the new user in the user selection menu, that you also select KDE-3 as the desktop.
I saw something similar to this once (similar, but NOT the same) on a Sandbox PC in openSUSE-11.0, where the KDE3 login stopped working, and I kept getting thrown to KDE4. I spent six hours with help from some guru’s on the IRC freenod KDE support channel, but we could not sort it. In the end, to their disappointment, I had to stop the investigation, as I had other committments for my sandbox PC, and we never did get to the root as to what caused that hiccup.
But openSUSE-11.0 is relatively old, and I think support for it has either stopped, or is about to stop.
This could be a good time to boot to an openSUSE-11.2 liveCD (confirming 11.2 works with your hardware), and while running the liveCD, copy all your important data from /home/yourusername to an external USB drive, and then install openSUSE-11.2 with a clean install of / and reformat /home.
Hence you need to backup all email and all bookmarks prior to installing.
openSUSE-11.2 uses ext4 which I find slightly faster than ext3. Plus the openSUSE-11.2 KDE-4.3.5 that one can “officially” update to is reasonably stable, and it gives KDE3 a run for its money in functionality. openSUSE-11.2 has superior package management, superior sound drivers, and many other enhancements over 11.0.
But openSUSE-11.0 is relatively old, and I think support for it has either stopped, or is about to stop.
openSUSE 11.0 will be supported until the end of june, so that shouldn’t be the problem. I would rather suspect some repositories causing the conficts here - remember freefiber did not use this system for over a year now, maybe some KDE- and / or Qt-repositories are not matching anymore. I’d like to see the output of
F11 hides/shows the top-of-window menu bar, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect on my missing title bars. Still, it looks like a useful feature once things are working. Thanks.
The title bar is the strip at the very top of the window that typically includes the title of the application and the minimize, full-screen and close buttons. It sits just above the menu bar which has “File”, “Edit”, “History”, etc menus.
Typically, you can drag the window by the title bar, but not by the menu bar.
Do you see the difference?
The title bar is, as I now understand it, provided by the window manager, but the menu bar is provided by the application itself. So, I’m guessing that my KDE4 window manager is mis-configured or not even running.
I haven’t deliberately installed Compiz, but it does appear that it was updated automatically, but at least one component keeps showing up in the “available installations” but always fails to install.
I tried to find it’s distribution, but the links on the 11.0 page are broken.
First, the good news: I started the Compiz Config Settings Manager and looked around it. Frankly, I don’t yet understand it, so I check and unchecked a few boxes, but left everything in the original state. To my surprise, when I logged out and logged back in, the windows decorations are now working, and the keyboard characters are being delivered to the correct window. Hooray!
Minor point “Look in the system settings”: It turns out that the “Configure Desktop” app opens the “Personal Settings” window which changes to “System Settings” when I select “Default Applications” It’s kind of confusing, but I’m defintely using the defautl KWin. Thanks
