KDE windows messed up after upgrade to 13.1

I recently upgraded my laptop from OpenSUSE 12.2 to 13.1 . After reboot, the window decorations in KDE were messed up: no top bar visible, fragmentary menu bar, empty pop-up menu’s. Everything works fine in the Safe mode, but in a lower resolution (1024x768). Also the background image and the desktop icons and the content in a window is correct. What file(s) is are corrupted and should be replaced or corrected?

System: Laptop HP Pavilion , Intel Core 2 T5600 processor at 1.83 GHz, 1 GB RAM. Display: 1440x900px

Probably something in ~/.kde4

You could try a different user as a test to see if a clean KDE config is working ok

renaming the ~/.kde when you are NOT logged into that account will get you back to default desktop settings

BTW what video card and drive?

How did you upgrade? online upgrade 12.2-13.1 is not really supported

He posted the same in the KDE forums as well.

But there he additionally mentioned this:

Graphic card: Nvidia Geforce Ge 7600 with the Nouveau driver (no nvidia driver present on the system)

So @HuibC, you should definitely try the proprietary nvidia driver.
The nouveau driver shipped with 13.1 seems to have problems with certain GeForce 7xxx cards at least.

I gave you a link in the KDE forums already, you need the second 1-click install, labelled “For GeForce 6 and GeForce 7”.

Or just add the nvidia repo in YaST->Software Repositories->Add->Community Repositories, and install the following packages in YaST->Software Management:
nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-desktop (or -default, depending what kernel you are using), x11-video-nvidiaG02, nvidia-computeG02

Just reboot and the driver should work, nothing special needed to do.

PS: Maybe turning off the desktop effects (press Alt+Shift+F12) might help with your graphical issues when using the nouveau driver. But I would definitely recommend the nvidia driver for best experience.

This was indeed the solution.
I posted my request first here and then I thought that it might be a problem for the KDE forum. There I realized that I should add information about the graphical card.

Thanks for the help!

This is not really a solution, rather a temporary workaround.
You should disable desktop effects completely in “Configure Desktop”->“Desktop Effects”.

If you’re fine without them, that’s ok then.

You could try to only disable specific effects (the “Blur” filter f.e. is one that probably causes problems) on the “All Effects” tab.
Or switching the “Compositing type” to “OpenGL 1.2” (on the “Advanced” tab) might help as well. (this fixed graphics problems for another poster here with the nouveau driver and a similar card)

Personally, I would just install the proprietary nvidia driver though, as I mentioned already.

I have also switched off the effects in the desktop configuration.

I tried to change some of the effects, but it only got worse. The content of a window was only a group of stripes. Unfortunately, I id not take notes of what I changed. But by switching to OpenGL 1.2 instead of 2.0, all worked fine again.

I used the nvidia driver on OpenSUSE 11.x , not on 12.2 . I will try it again. I thought that SUSE advises against the use of the nvidia driver.

Not really.
openSUSE even provides RPM packages for easier installation.

It’s just that openSUSE cannot include the driver in the distribution because of (possible) license issues.