Kubuntu (KDE) together with Ubuntu 9.10

I really do like the new Ubuntu, but there are some things that KDE has which it doesn’t offer. For one thing, the kio_slaves and Kate, the best free text editor that I used so far. I have considered installing Kubuntu in parallel to Ubuntu, but neither a shared home directory for them nor two home directories sounds intriguing. You can have both desktop environments by apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Then you’ll be able to select KDE as window manager when logging in to your account. This will also replace the bootsplash theme in your initramfs that you see during bootup with Kubuntu’s theme, though. If you want to get the old one back: sudo update-usplash-theme usplash-theme-ubuntu

While we’re concerned with boot options, fiddling around with grub2 is beginning to grow into a rather complex task. What’s easier: Controlling your boot menu through the Startup manager.

Ubuntu 9.10 on a HP Compaq Presario CQ71 Notebook PC

This is the second time that my IBM Thinkpad R51 died on me, and since I love it dearly but the hardware is outdated by now, I bought a Hewlett-Packard Compaq Presario CQ71 Notebook PC. Since the 9.10 version of Ubuntu, dubbed “Karmic Koala”, was released recently, I decided to try it out. It’s really nice – things like the integrated webcam work out of the box on my notebook, e.g. through Cheese. What didn’t work too well, though, was audio.

Apparently that’s a problem with the snd-hda-intel module. The built-in card identifies as follows:
# cat /proc/asound/card0/codec#* | grep Codec
Codec: IDT 92HD75B2X5
Codec: Intel G45 DEVCTG

There are numerous tips out there how to fix this problem that ALSA has with the snd-hda-intel model, most of them involve editing your /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf in a desperate attempt to find the right combination of options to get it working. I suggest before you try experimenting, you try what I did: install linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic-generic via apt-get install linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic-generic For me, this made my audio start working out of the box again without any more changes.