latest TTB record

[thechris]

TTB = time to break.

rant

one week ago i installed gentoo.
its now broke
and also gone, thus no need to offer advice.

it was working well, hadn't tested sound yet, but the thing would get into KDE and apps would run.
then i did something stupid.
emerge -uDN world
reboot

suddenly, KDE wouldn't load, but would hang at Initializeing (then either peripreals or services, it would alternate)
so i try fluxbox.
i could only use firefox... xterm would not load. i managed to get k3b up by adding it to the fluxbox menu, as i could not simply open xterm.
couldn't detect cdrw as a user... this worked the day before.

so i find the forums. some n00b had asked the question and people flamed him in the post... but they did suggest an etc-update.

having not modified many files myself, i did a blind etc-update.

i could now get into kde in that it didn't work, but also didn't crash or hang. "KDE" is a bit generous. there was no UI. i had 1 xterm that had no window around it. i could launch 1 more xterm so i could multitask. i could not move or resize windows. the file selector would hang as well.

eventually i started using xdm and logging into twm as root so i could burn CDs. cdrecord didn't work even though k3b did.

this massive and quick system failure is a bit much. now i'm stuck at trying to find a new distro. i installed debian. there's no easy way to install my nvidia modules so i'm gonna drop it as well. not sure what i'll try.
_________________
HW problems. It's a VIA thing.

[mark_alec]

[Taladar]

I am normally not fast with judging people but this looks like a PEBKAC.