What is KDE's relationship to the graphic's drivers? Can someone explain how it works?

Question

Today at school I was working with a laptop with kubuntu installed. I wanted to get a second monitor working. It was not recognized (it's an older 4:3 VGA flatscreen monitor) so I figured there was something wrong with the graphics card driver.

No drivers were found in "additional drivers" so I decided to purge and re-install new drivers. I used:

sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*

This killed KDE desktop. I then used:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

And then

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

(After realizing the first command uninstalled it)

After a reboot it was stuck in 800x600. I am going to re-install ubuntu 12.04 tomorrow (because ubuntu installations tend to play well with proprietary drivers I find) But I still want to understand what when wrong with kubuntu. Why did purge uninstall kubuntu-desktop?

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

Well - ;)

1) Your command:

sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*

Is removing all packages that have the 'nvidia' part.

About regex:

2) You could simulate things:

man apt-get

       -s, --simulate, --just-print, --dry-run, --recon, --no-act
           No action; perform a simulation of events that would occur but do not actually change the system.

Simulation, at here

A simulation, at here, (K)ubuntu 13.04, KDE 4.10.5, I have the AMD not the Nvidia:

:~$ apt-get -s remove --purge nvidia-*
NOTE: This is only a simulation!
      apt-get needs root privileges for real execution.
      Keep also in mind that locking is deactivated,
      so don't depend on the relevance to the real current situation!
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done

The following packages will be REMOVED:
  glx-alternative-mesa* glx-diversions* kde-window-manager* kde-workspace* kde-workspace-dev*
  libkwinactivenvidiahack4* libkwinnvidiahack4* nvidia-installer-cleanup*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 8 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Purg glx-alternative-mesa [0.2.90]
Purg glx-diversions [0.2.90]
Purg kde-workspace [4:4.10.5-0ubuntu0.1]
Purg kde-window-manager [4:4.10.5-0ubuntu0.1]
Purg kde-workspace-dev [4:4.10.5-0ubuntu0.1]
Purg libkwinactivenvidiahack4 [4:4.10.5-0ubuntu0.1]
Purg libkwinnvidiahack4 [4:4.10.5-0ubuntu0.1]
Purg nvidia-installer-cleanup [20120731+1]

Whole output: http://pastebin.com/t3Nwca8f

Why the kde-window-manager will be removed

The kde-window-manager is depending

:~$ apt-cache show kde-window-manager
...
Depends:..libkwinnvidiahack4,...

Why the kubuntu-desktop will be removed (if it is installed)

The kubuntu-desktop is depending

:~$ apt-cache show kubuntu-desktop
Depends:...kde-window-manager, ...

What is KDE's relationship to the graphic's drivers? Can someone explain how it works?

1 Answers1