Upgrade to Kubuntu 16.04 LTS had issues

[honeycuttaaron3 at gmail.com]

On Sunday, August 7, 2016 12:51:28 AM EDT Leroy Tennison wrote:
> I noted Kubuntu is a volunteer project and I appreciate the work.  I
> just upgraded from 14.04 to 16.04 and ran into issues:
> 
> Apparently kdm isn't available, 'apt-get install kdm' reports "Package
> 'kdm' has no installation candidate" but kde-workspace-data
> kde-wallpapers replaces it, 'apt-get install kde-workspace-data
> kde-wallpapers' reports "Package 'kde-workspace-data' has no
> installation candidate" but the following packages replace it: . kdm
> ..." - note we are now into a circular reference.
> 
> I selected sddm as the display manager at the second prompt during
> install (if I remember correctly, kdm was available at the first prompt)
> because LightDM is too limited for me and finally got it to work by
> doing the following: Placing '/usr/bin/sddm &' in /etc/rc.local.  My
> first attempt was to create /etc/sddm.conf by 'sddm --example-config >
> /etc/sddm.conf' - didn't work, got a black screen instead of a display
> manager on reboot.  Second attempt was 'systemctl enable sddm.service'
> which reported success but, on reboot - black screen.  Third attempt was
> placing '/usr/bin/sddm' in /etc/rc.local - that produced a display
> manager but Ctrl-Al-F1 produced the initial Kubuntu screen and Ctrl-D
> showed the progress but I couldn't get a prompt, Ctrl-Alt-F2 through F6
> simply didn't work.  Adding the & provided Ctrl-Alt-F[1..6] functionality.
> 
> I had to set Folder view to restore my icons (I haven't arranged them
> back like they were yet) and re-pick a wallpaper.  Although more icons
> worked than didn't I had to recreate the icon for the following to get
> it to work: Dolphin, kpat, kbounce, kmines, kshisen, Gwenview, kcalc,
> kwrite, okteta and Opera.  Before I did I typically got "KDEInit could
> not launch <path/app>" or the desktop file opened in Kate.  I also got a
> couple of odd messages about not being able to find the app file
> (although they all launched successfully from a terminal prompt).
> Inkscape was somehow no longer installed, reinstalling and recreating
> the icon resolved the issue.  Interestingly, Dolphin and Kcalc no longer
> have an icon available.  Dolphinsu hangs on launch.
> 
> As a personal preference, I wasn't satisfied with the new window
> decoration, it took a little looking to find that right-clicking on any
> window title, selecting More Actions then Window Manager Settings
> allowed me to install/select a theme I liked.
> 
> Hopefully some of this helps someone else, I am wondering if kdm will be
> available in the future and if there is a better way to implement sddm
> than I found.

The jump from 14.04 to 16.04 is rather a huge one, KDM has been replaced by 
SDDM, systemd replacing upstart with handling the login manager like SDDM. We 
had a similar issue on 15.04 or 10 that was fixed in the next version.