Installation Results: Kubuntu 0, Ubuntu 1. What could the difference be?

I have a laptop that came with Windows 8. I disabled UEFI and installed Ubuntu. At first I had trouble installing 13.04. Well, let me rephrase that. I had trouble booting to Ubuntu 13.04 after installing it successfully. Eventually I did guided partitioning (I've done manual partitioning for many years) and it worked great. I noticed Ubuntu added an EFI boot partition, so when I redid my manual partitioning I duplicated those efforts and Ubuntu 13.04 booted without a single hiccup.

In an effort to check out Kubuntu 13.04, I took an image of my drive for safe keeping and installed Kubuntu 13.04 on this laptop. The installation failed each time, citing something about grub-efi. I had duplicated the same efforts in the Kubuntu install that I did in the Ubuntu install. Same partition layout, same mount points, boot flags, etc. I even tried installing Kubuntu with guided partitioning on 3 occasions, no dice.

One suggestion said that on the LiveUSB session, to connect to the internet and apt-get install a few packages. I can't recall them offhand, but it was something like grub-efi, grub-efi-64, and grub-efi-64-bin... then afterwards run the installer. No dice.

On top of that, I was disappointed to see that my brightness controls in Kubuntu acted incredibly strangely. For example, Brightness Down = Down, but Brightness Up = Down (90%), Down (80%), Down (70%), etc etc etc. Eventually you hit 0% and the screen is black, all while hitting Brightness UP... then if you keep hitting Brightness Up, it will go from 0% to 8%, then 4%, then 0%, then 8, 4, 0, 8, 4, 0. So if I start off on 100% brightness, down will bring it down, up will bring it down, then once I get to 0% up will bring it back to 8%, then down to 0, up to 8, down to 0, etc. In Ubuntu this worked perfectly.

For the time being I am on Ubuntu 13.04 since at the end of the day I need a working system, but I would really love to revisit Kubuntu 13.04 on this unit. Can anybody offer some insight as to how I might be able to make that a reality?

Hay,

This is strange.. But try installing the kubuntu desktop alongside gnome and see what happens?

Code:

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sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

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I think that should do it.

Cheers

That's actually what I did at first, but I noticed my brightness controls were terribly messed up. In an effort to troubleshoot it I wanted to try a full Kubuntu environment without Ubuntu, which is why I tried to do a fresh install of it, but like I said above, it failed miserably.

Some discussions in the Kubuntu IRC channel suggested that Kubuntu may not have "proper" UEFI support yet - even though I'm trying to install with UEFI disabled in the BIOS... :(

Hay,

Then I have no idea.... I was only trying to give an alternative than installing a full new Kubuntu install. Not sure how it does not have "Proper" support as it basic is ubuntu with a different DE. Might be something deeper under the hood. Cant really be sure.


Maybe some one else has a better idea. You did check the kubuntu install's integrity?

Cheers

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zero2xiii

You did check the kubuntu install's integrity?

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Yep. Even tried installing via DVD as well (burned at slowest speed of course), but LiveDVD and LiveUSB flash drive both failed, yet passed integrity checks.

Fun fact - The LiveUSB just successfully installed and booted on an ultrabook I have here, but it of course came with Windows 7 originally. Definitely seems like a UEFI issue of some sort. (Damn you, Microsoft)

Wow,

This really is strange. Unfortunately I have very little knowledge of UFEI and related so I can not even guess on what the issue might be. Sorry.

Good luck though.