desktop effects wont work

[mowens01]

Hi I had some trouble with a driver update and resolved that by reinstalling the nouveau driver that fixed the gui issue, but now none of my desktop effects will work.

It all started that when I opened the desktop effects settings they would be disabled and when I checked to enable them it would say that another program is preventing the desktop effects from being activating it. I could go around it by using ctrl+alt+f12 and that would activate them, but they still would not work, so I went searching and this is what I have tried so far thanks for your help.

I tried checking the disable funcionally cheks and switched from opengl to xrender that did not work either.

I was going to try to edit the file ~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc, but it said I do not have permission.

I tried to use compiz instead of kwin and that would not work either.

I am kind of stuck now every time I try to make a change back to opengl it gives me an error message that says:

Failed to activate desktop effects using the given configuration options. Settings will be reverted to their previous values.

Check your X configuration. You may also consider changing advanced options, especially changing the compositing type

Also every time I close a window it will flicker once or twice then close.

[claydoh]

Re: desktop effects wont work

~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc
this file should definitely be writable by you, something has gummed up your permissions

To fix this (and any other files that may have been changed):

sudo chown -Rv your-username:your-username /home/your-username

This sort of situation can happen (most commonly) by running a gui application, such as Kate or System Settings with sudo instead of kdesudo.

Also sometimes the kwin effects not switching on after a config change might be fixable with a logout or a restart of the xserver.

[mowens01]

Re: desktop effects wont work

I tried the code and it still wont let me edit the file it still says I don't have permission .

How would I restart the xserver?

[claydoh]

Re: desktop effects wont work

There is the option to do so in the KDM login page, a reboot would also do it

Your /home/mowens01/.kde/shre/config/kwinrc should have read/write permissions bythe user mowens01, this is assuming mowens01 is your username, substitute your actual username as required

lark@lark-Latitude-D630:~$ sudo chown -v lark:lark /home/lark/.kde/share/config/kwinrc
[sudo] password for lark: 
ownership of `/home/lark/.kde/share/config/kwinrc' retained as lark:lark
lark@lark-Latitude-D630:~$

This is for changing the ownership for the one file. You can also use dolphin to see and edit some of these things as well - you will need to enable viewing of hideen files/folders from it's View menu.

Navigate to /home/mowens01/.kde/shre/config, and right-click on the kwinrc file (don't edit it - it will most likely revert to existing settings if you edit it while kde is running)

From the right-click, look at Properties, then Permissions, it should look like my image attached, other than the username

[mowens01]

Re: desktop effects wont work

It gave me this message at the end:

chown: cannot access `kwinrc': No such file or directory
failed to change ownership of `kwinrc' to matthew:matthew

I tried to navigate to the file in dolphin, but my user name file was not in the home directory, so I went to try the actual partition that I set up and it wont let me get there. It will move me to the root folder. I right clicked on it and one option was to unmount it im not sure what that is about. It also gave me the option to add entry or hide entry 28.6gb hard drive.

If that is a total new topic I can start a new thread.

[claydoh]

Re: desktop effects wont work

that could be due to the fact that I forgot that in dolphin, your folder marked "Home" is just a label for "/home/matthew", so look from Home, look for the .kde folder; note the dot, which is how hidden folders/files are named. Then go from there to find the kwinrc (don't forget to enable viewing of hidden files)

But at the moment, I am more worried about the fact that it can't find the kwinrc file at all. Are you logged in as the user "matthew'?

[mowens01]

Re: desktop effects wont work

Yes the only username I have is matthew. I found the file and under the permissions tab it looks the same as the image you posted. Im not sure why it would not find it.