SOLVED - Desktop Effects - HORRIBLE MISTAKE! HELP..

[GeistDev]

Ok so I am using and older Dell (with on-board graphics card) and have been running Kubuntu 9.04 fine and loving it. I was bored earlier and was tampering with the desktop settings and I clicked "enable desktop effects"... horrible mistake. Kubuntu froze. I restarted Kubuntu and to my dismay, the settings had been saved. I logged in with my username and password, but then the screen forever stays at the gray login-splash screen. I can move the cursor around but nothing more happens - my guess because the KDE4 desktop can't load the "desktop effects" on my system.

So what I need to know now is how do I reverse this with no use of GUI and not even being able to log in? The ALT-SHIFT-F12 trick won't work here as I have seen others say since I can't get into the desktop... Is there a command I can run in bash to DISABLE the desktop effects?

Please help me out here, I would HATE to have to reinstall and start over (I just got everything the way I wanted it )

[abalone]

Re: Desktop Effects - HORRIBLE MISTAKE! HELP..

Edit ~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc. In the [Compositing] section, set Enabled=false.

[GeistDev]

Re: Desktop Effects - HORRIBLE MISTAKE! HELP..

Ok when I type this command in bash:

edit ~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc

I get this:

Warning: unknown mime-type for /root/.kde/share/config/kwinrc using "application/octet-stream" 
No edit mailcap rules found for type "application/octet-stream"

Any ideas?

[abalone]

Re: Desktop Effects - HORRIBLE MISTAKE! HELP..

Ok when I type this command in bash:

edit ~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc

I get this:

Warning: unknown mime-type for /root/.kde/share/config/kwinrc using "application/octet-stream" 
No edit mailcap rules found for type "application/octet-stream"

Any ideas?

Oh... sorry. I didn't mean the "edit" command; I meant to say: "edit the file with any text editor." Also, you seem to be running as root (recovery mode?), so "~" translates to the directory "/root", not to your regular home directory (which is what I wanted). So you have to provide the full path to your home directory instead of just "~". A proper command to use would be, for example:

nano /home/(insert your user name here)/.kde/share/config/kwinrc

...if you want to use the "simple" editor nano. The most useful nano commands are displayed at the bottom. ^ means Ctrl, so press Ctrl + O to write the file after you've edited it, then Ctrl + X to exit.

[GeistDev]

Re: Desktop Effects - HORRIBLE MISTAKE! HELP..

Yes, recovery mode is correct - I cannot get to my KDE desktop due to it staying at the loginscreen-splash, so I have fix this problem via bash as root.

Thanks for the insight, I will try this now and (hopefully) post a reply via Kubuntu!

[GeistDev]

Re: Desktop Effects - HORRIBLE MISTAKE! HELP..

You sire, are a scholar and a saint! Thanks so much, I searched the internet and couldn't find anything, but you got be back in business and off of that Windows partition lol, and for that thank you!

[abalone]

Re: Desktop Effects - HORRIBLE MISTAKE! HELP..



Thank you! I didn't know the solution until you asked. I just thought there had to be a config file for kwin. . .