Please help

[Guest]

Hello All,
I have been having an issue for quite some time now, I used to have Kubuntu Version 8 or something along those lines, its been quite some time since i've installed it. But my problem lies in I used to accidently delete my task bars then would have to remove a piece of code after pressing Alt + F4 i believe it was, but ever sence one time of doing that, it seems my OS as resorted to Ubuntu for some strange reason, I can send a print screen of what my desktop looks like now, but I honestly have no clue what to do anymore, next to wiping my harddrive and starting over, which I really would not have to do because I have alot of information on here that I cant backup. If you could give me some suggestions on where to start I would greatly appreciate it.

Please and thank you

[Telengard]

Re: Please help

Do you have 8.04 Hardy Heron, or 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, or some other Kubuntu?

Do not worry. You do not have to lose your data. Just boot a live CD and then copy your data to an external drive, or networked computer, or burn it to optical media.

Sorry but I can not understand what the situation with your taskbars might be. I just can not guess what you might be talking about. Perhaps a screenshot would help.

[Pajoe]

Re: Please help

"wiping my harddrive and starting over,"

that hurts, especially if you have been using it for a while, but on a new setup it is sometimes easier than fixing the problem. As you have some problems knowing what to delete, I suggest once you get it working again, copy your entire home directory to a safe place as a backup, just in case you delete something you would rather not lose.

Perhaps you just have deselected kde and now logging in to the gnome desktop, ubuntu uses gnome and you could have both installed and have switched by selecting gnome and not realizing it. If that is the case all you need to do is select kde before logging in.

You could try creating a new user and as you log in as that new user, check to see what options are available for the desktop, and once again select kde if there is a selection.

If the new user you created has a fresh new kde desktop with everything working you can try logging in to the console and deleting the .kde and .kde4 subdirectory in your current home directory and then when you select the kde desktop as you log in the system will recreate your .kde/.kde4 subdirectory. This process will remove all your personal settings as well as email passwords saved by kde programs. Everything else should be OK. If you can not find an option for kde at the log in screen , you may have to reinstall the kde desktop. I just googled a way to install the kde desktop, there are other ways as well.

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/kde

I like a file manager called Midnight Commander to delete directories and manipulate files across network etc. It is one of the first programs I install with new setups. If you want to try it, you can install it from the terminal by typing in

sudo apt-get install mc

once installed, just type in mc and hit enter , be careful whenever deleting files - especially if you use it as root, "sudo mc " gives you unlimited access to do a lot of damage to your system
if you are not careful.. Anytime you need to use the root password you are getting into areas that could harm the system.

Oh, you can either use a terminal from your desktop or use the Ctrl+Alt+F2 (can be F3, F4,F5 etc) Ctrl+Alt+F7 will bring you back to the desktop - you may want to try that first to make sure you know how to switch, then try installing mc and after you feel comfortable with all that try removing the .kde & .kde4 directory - you will see it with mc


It's frustrating at times, but the longer you use it the less often you will run into areas that become so confusing. I know coworkers that spend days trying to fix something on their windows systems , depending what you do it can be tough finding a fix. You have a big advantage if the system is still working and you can get on line etc. because most of your problem may be in your home directory not the main system. You will find out really quick if everything works for a new user you create.

[The Liquidator]

Re: Please help

Most obvious things first.....

Do you get to a login screen? If so, click on session and select kde. Then type in your login details. Do you get into KDE then?

If not, I think it is more likely that something in your kde configuration has gone awry, rather than anything else, otherwise you would not be running gnome.

Try this

Do a backup of your home directory, or at least any data that is important to you.
Then from within gnome navigate to the home directory. Under the view heading select view hidden files (at least IIRC that's where it is). You will then see a whole load of extra files prefixed with a full stop. Go to the one called .kde and rename it to .kde.old. DO NOT DELETE IT as pure KDE applications (Kontact, KMail etc) all store their data in there. Then logout and at the login screen select KDE and try again. The process will create a new .kde file and you should then get a virgin KDE desktop which you can reconfigure.

HTH

Ian

[Guest]

Re: Please help

wow...you guys are amazing..to think thats all it took, yes i was logging in under Gnome, and when I logged out I selected KDE and everything is back to normal, but is there any reason why it did this in the first place? I never once selected to log in under Gnome.

But again thank you for your help, there is much I need to learn apparently

[The Liquidator]

Re: Please help

I can't say for sure but is it possible that rather than kubuntu are you actually running ubuntu with a kde desktop? As an example if you got your disk from a magazine cover it will tend to install gnome, kde and possibly xfce as well. So although you may have selected kde as your preferred desktop, you can end up with multiple desktops installed without realising it.

Often, in such setups you will find the default desktop Manager to be GDM (gnome desktop manager) rather than KDM (KDE desktop Manager). GDM is brown, KDM is blue/grey (or something similar). The thing about GDM is that unless you tell otherwise it defaults to gnome. A possibility is that a recent update might have reset your default session.

Was the login screen brown? If so, either you have the setup as described above, or you were running kubuntu but have recently installed something which has required the installation of a lot of gnome applications including GDM. The reason I say that is that gnome is not normally part of a default kubuntu install. During the install process you may have been asked whether you want GDM or KDM and it's easy to pick the wrong one if you are not sure about the relevance of each. Pick GDM by mistake and unless you tell it otherwise you will be taken to gnome.

As I say, there is some guesswork here so I may well be wrong. If you have a blue/grey login screen then I cannot say what went wrong but I'm glad it seems to have been recovered.

Ian