Suggestions good, ... but - there's always a "but"
Quote:
Originally Posted by loopback48
thirdy, there come a time when starting from scratch is called for. Its a newbie's best friend. You might consider that. I have learned over the years that a fresh install (of Kubuntu in your case) is easier and quicker than shooting trouble. Especially if you have as many cases of trouble as you do.
Second, I'd think twice and three time before I do a 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. That can lead to trouble, as you've already found out. And as I've found out many years ago. Apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, apt-get clean should be all you need to keep your system up to date. Dist-upgrade is used mainly to go up to the next newer version and not necessary for your system.
I know this isn't an answer to your questions but a new install will take about 30/45 mins. How much time will you spend or have you spent on this?
P.S. Not shooting you down, just giving you the benefits of many years of hair pulling and gnashing of teeth. (I am now balded and toothless!)
I think you are absolutely right, if your objective is to save yourself grief and aggravation. You are totally right that dist-upgrade is not recommended except in cases where you really want to do a complete distribution upgrade (such as moving from 3.1 to 4.0).
That said, there are also things to be learned from really messing up your repository badly and figuring out how to unravel it.
One time I really torched a Sid distro badly. I had several hundred packages to undo. Basically I had installed an unstable version of KDE. When I went to install the next unstable version of KDE, the two unstable versions conflicted with one another. I had to virtually remove KDE then install the new one. A bit disconcerting at first, but it turned out to be straightforward once I was willing to part with several hundred packages. In terms of the eventual commands, it was simply a stringing of commands that wiped out the old version using the major package groups, then installed the new one using the updated versions of the same groups.
Sometimes it gets too bad or too tough to deal with. In that case, I completely agree. Just redoing the whole thing certainly is MUCH faster. The question each time is - do I want to learn something new for a while or do I just want to get the silly thing fixed ASAP. If the former, struggle for a while. But know when to quit.
Another suggestion: if at all possible keep two or more working distros on your systems. Be willing to really mess up one of them badly, knowing you have two others to fall back on if you make a mistake. Along those lines, backing up data you care about to DVD/RW or some other recordable media is a good idea - maybe a USB stick.
If you want to run KDE on your system...
Use PCLinuxOS. I had a Duron 1.2GHz CPU with 1.25GB PC2100 SDRAM and a 64MB nVidia 8x AGP graphics card.
Ran like a dog with OpenSuSE but flew with PCLinuxOS AND I was able to use the full 3D desktop of Beryl.
But as for the perfect desktop... perfection is in the eye of the creator.