I have an old HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop and at the moment Manjaro KDE is running awesome.
But i had a very hard time to install KDE Plasma. XFCE is the only flavor that can be installed without issues. This is in fact a general Linux 5.xx problem for many distros.
Hardware info:
System:
Host: Hdv9500 Kernel: 4.19.208-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64
Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.22.5 Distro: Manjaro Linux
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Hewlett-Packard
product: HP Pavilion dv9500 Notebook PC v: Rev 1
serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: Quanta model: 30CB v: 79.2E serial: <superuser required>
BIOS: Hewlett-Packard v: F.5A date: 03/22/2010
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 50.7 Wh (100.0%) condition: 50.7/65.1 Wh (77.8%)
CPU:
Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core2 Duo T5250 bits: 64 type: MCP cache:
L2: 2 MiB
Speed: 1496 MHz min/max: 1000/1500 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1496 2: 1496
Graphics:
Device-1: NVIDIA G86M [GeForce 8400M GS] driver: nouveau v: kernel
Device-2: Chicony Gateway USB 2.0 Webcam type: USB driver: uvcvideo
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: loaded: modesetting
resolution: 1440x900~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: NV86 v: 3.3 Mesa 21.2.3
Audio:
Device-1: Intel 82801H HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k4.19.208-1-MANJARO running: yes
Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: yes
Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.38 running: yes
Network:
Device-1: Intel PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network
driver: iwl4965
IF: wlp2s0 state: down mac: 46:d9:6e:0a:9d:a4
Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
driver: r8169
IF: enp8s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: 00:1b:24:a0:25:49
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 817.88 GiB used: 18.58 GiB (2.3%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 840 PRO Series size: 119.24 GiB
ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Toshiba model: MQ01ABD075 size: 698.64 GiB
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 28.67 GiB used: 15.19 GiB (53.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda4
ID-2: /home size: 291.98 GiB used: 3.39 GiB (1.2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdb2
Swap:
Alert: No swap data was found.
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 51.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nouveau temp: 59.0 C
Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
Processes: 176 Uptime: 23m Memory: 2.93 GiB used: 1.95 GiB (66.5%)
Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.08
Even with XFCE it is absolutely necessary to go back to kernel 4.19. Otherwise LibreOffice and Firefox will crash or freeze instantly the whole system.
I could boot the KDE live system only when setting some options:
video=VGA-1:1440x900e
DVI-0:1440x900
After installing Manjaro KDE successfully.
At boot i had to press E and edit the kernel line, adding ¨3¨ to the end of that line, since the KDE environment simply did not start and freezes every time in the Plasma splash screen.
After booting the into a command prompt and login i was able to update the system.
sudo pacman -Syu
Then i had to change to the older kernel 4.19.
sudo mhwd-kernel -i linux 4.19
After reboot. Advanced choice and selecting the 4.19 kernel, i removed the 5.13 kernel, using Manjaro Settings manager.
KDE Plasma is now running, but still there was an issue with Firefox.
I had to start Firefox in the safe mode, from a terminal command prompt.
firefox --safe-mode
Then remove the hardware acceleration in the general settings, Performance of Firefox.
In the end i do not use Firefox anymore, but use Opera now.
LibreOffice is running okay so far.
I have seen a question like this before, but ask this again:
Would it be possible to supply a Manjaro flavor (of Gnome and KDE) with the older kernel 4.19, or at least with a possibility to select the older kernel, before booting the live system and during installation?