Goodbye

[James Gray]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 09:07 am, Efwkub at aol.com wrote:
> With regret I have decided that I do not have enough time to use Linux.
> Unfortunately I have had too many problems, bugs, inconsistencies, etc.
> etc. First with SUSE (as earlier noted I gave up using their support as it
> was going nowhere, slowly). Now with Kubuntu.

Pity :(  But the revolution Linux (and free/open-source software in general) 
is "supposed" to be bringing about has little to do with unseating the 
entrenched vendors (MS et al) but more about providing users and consumers 
the ability to CHOOSE.  You are exercising your right to choose - so good for 
you! :)

> The number of problems I have had has been overwhelming, even though I have
> only started to look at Kubuntu, i.e. there are a great many things I have
> not looked at or tried yet.

I'll try to shed some light on the problems you mention below.  The rest of 
your post I've snipped - it's been covered by others.

> ******
> Kuser, try to create a new user "mpd". Am told (something like) "cannot
> create home directory for mpd it is null or invalid"
> Not sure how something that hasn't been created can be invalid, but try to
> enter
> /home/mpd myself, get message "Kuser crashed caused signal 11 SIGSERV"

Hmm - I've never used Kuser to manage users as I do it from the command line.  
But that doesn't mean you should expect errors like this from Kuser!  FWIW, I 
can't recreate your error.  I have to manually blank the dialogue box "Home 
directory" to get any error at all, which tells me the user must have a home 
directory before I can create them.  You are running Kuser as root right?  
ie, when kdesu asked for the root password you entered the correct password 
etc?

> Decide to try to create a folder myself for mpd, using Konsole
> Open Konsole then, to get power to set permissions:
>
> efw at HP3:~$ sudo konsole
> Password:
>
> I get the message:
> "Error: "/var/tmp/kdecache-efw" is owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0.
> Link points to "/var/tmp/kdecache-root" "

Ah - a trap for young players.  Try "kdesu konsole" instead of "sudo konsole".

> Open KPPP, (as usual) get
> "/etc/resolv.conf is missing or can't be read!
> Ask your system administrator to create this file (can be empty) with
> appropriate read and write permissions."

sudo touch /etc/resolv.conf
sudo chmod 0664 /etc/resolv.conf

Does that work?

> Open KSysGuard, (as usual) get
> "Error – KDE System Guard   Connection to localhost has been lost."

Haven't seen this one before but is smells like ACPI to me... sorry, can't 
help further :(

> Control Center, System Administration, Login Manager. Click on
> Administrator Mode
> Enter password, get "Welcome to the KDE Control Center" a central place..."
> (Previously I was getting a right pane showing the "System Administration"
> sub-items.)

Previously?  Previous to doing what?  Did you do an upgrade or something that 
caused this to stop working?  What change happened prior to seeing this 
behaviour?  So many questions, but you allude to a change in behaviour of a 
program but don't mention if you did anything that might have led to it.

> Leave the PC for about 30 seconds, return to find that Konqueror and OOo's
> Writer have crashed leaving SIGSERV messages.

Ouch.  Have you tested your RAM? I've seen these sorts of errors when RAM was 
flakey or being run at the wrong speed (PC2700 RAM being driven to PC3200 
speed...not good).  I know you've said this is all supported hardware, but is 
it suffering some physical problems like bus speed mis-matches, overheating, 
power fluctuations etc?  Any of those can lead to (seemingly) random lockups 
and application crashes.

The fact you're getting these problems consistenly on different distributions 
screams hardware fault to me (I've been wrong before too!)...just a thought.  
Of course this is the place where you come back with "it works fine in 
Windows" - in which case, use windows :)  Like I said at the beginning - 
exercise your right to choose; I chose Linux, this choice may not suit your 
needs so you choose differently.  That's fine by me.

Kind Regards,

James
-- 
Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.