Fedora 15 KDE 64 Bit Freezes, Help me

[exiledhunter6]

(I am a noob to linux and I am currently taking a class on it. Please be gentle)
I have a dual boot system, but this is not my problem, I have an HP laptop x64 AMD Turion Dual with an ATI 3200 HD card. I thought specs would help.

So I really like the KDE enviroment (dont really like GNOME 3), anyways I installed the x86_64bit with no problems and it has been working for a few days just fine (some graphical glitches, but nothing ever crashed). I have had really bad luck with the ATI drivers and refuse to install them, so I left the default drivers for most everything installed (except for wireless: can you say "broadcom").

So the problem that I am having now is that when I login, everything is fine. My mouse works and life is good until I try to open a window, or a program. The desktop becomes unresponsive and everything just stops except the mouse. I can Ctrl + Alt F2 to a text base, but I do that just "reboot". I do not know what is causing this problem but I have class on saturday and need to have a working version of Linux (Fedora would be best). Help me.

Ok here is the list of everything I have installed beyond the default stuff.

Eclipse (which I thought might be the problem, so I "yum erase eclipse*) didn't do a damn thing (I tried to have eclipse run at start up and that was causing some sort of log issue. Also on a side note, is it normal for Eclipse to take forever to open up (same issue in 14))
Bluefish
gftp
Chrome

I also downloaded a few new KDE themes from their site.

So help me out here please.

I don't know how to check the logs exactly, learning very slowly.

[michaaa62]

With so many issues, you describe, i just would do a clean reinstall, because debugging could be also as simple as applying the default theme, but could also take a few days...

To have quickly the applications you need you could prepare a list of installed packages and later reinstall them in one go. Create your list

rpm -qa >  installed-software.txt

Save it in some external medium. Reinstall Fedora 15, update the clean installation

yum update

copy your list over, then install your applications again

yum -y install $(cat installed-software.txt)

Note: you might want to post in the appropriate subforum the next time

[ozjd]

If you have desktop effects turned on try with them off. If that fixes it try disabling individual effects, blur is often a problem.

[Bad2theBone]

I had also started experiencing desktop freezes with Fedora 15 on KDE. It would happen at random times the cursor would suddenly stop responding, no keyboard response at all, so I was unable to change desktops or to another virtual console. However, one time I was printing a fairly large document and had Clementine playing on desktop # 2 while I was working on desktop 1. The document that I was printing was opened on desktop 3. My trackball and keyboard became unresponsive, but Clementine continued playing until the track ended and then it too stopped. The print job kept going until it finished for about another 5 minutes. I could see some occasional disk activity by the hdd led, and my conky widgets had also stopped updating. My only way out was rebooting with the reset button.

This seemed to have started last Friday or Saturday 8/26 or 8/27 after the kde software was updated to 4.6.5-5. I had found an old thread on this forum back around 2009 that stated to disable desktop effects, so I did just that and it's been running since without a hitch. I may try to roll it back to 4.6.5-4 to see if that holds true, although I'm not totally sure how to go about that. I can just go to the yum logs to get a list of all files involved in the update, but I'm not sure how to do the rollback. Also would the older version still be available? I could also try what ojzd suggested in trying desktop effects minus different features or effects to narrow it down.

Anyone want to throw in any other feedback?

Oh also like the OP I came from Gnome 3.0 and wasn't too thrilled about it either, so I decided to give KDE another shot and was actually starting to like it. I believe it was at 4.6.5-1 when I made the switch. I was also experiencing the same with Gnome3.0 in desktop randomly freezing. That was at the beginning of F15 release. My hardware is listed in my signature, with the only difference is the PSU is now a Corsair HX850W, video was changed to a HD3650 (PCIe-x16), and swapped out the 4GB x2 RAM for 2GB x 4 both were total of 8GB and mfg is Corsair, just different models and CAS speed. That's incase anyone reads this before I get a chance to change my signature on file.