Can Someone Help me With my Linux Mint Desktop?

IMHopeful

IMHopeful

Wicked Fire Elite Member
Mar 8, 2010
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Canada
Hey everyone,

Would appreciate if this didn't turn into a OS war.

I was fucking around with my machine trying to get Skype working, so I can talk with customers and family...

... Discovered pulseaudio is a bitch to work with Skype, so I uninstalled/reinstalled the packages through synaptic.

... Long story short, I must have installed some packages I shouldn't have, because it looks like Gnome isn't working anymore. I lost my menu, navigation bar (with clock, network, and other icons) and the desktop icons are different. When I open program windows: maximize, minimize, etc. - functions are all gone.

I'm basically stuck. Posted on the Mint and Ubuntu forums, but was hoping someone would know WTF I've done and offer some help. I'm a Gnome user, have no clue how to go about fixing this problem with the basic tools that are left -- 200GB of files to backup makes fixing this issue preferable to a reformat.

Thanks,
IMH :D
 


Probably some how jacked up your GUI files. Try this:

How to Reset Ubuntu/Gnome Settings to Defaults without Re-installing « Linux FUD

If you don’t have access to your graphical (GUI) desktop to delete these folders in Nautilus or you’re stuck at the login screen, drop to a terminal by hitting CTRL + ALT + F1, login to your account, and run this command:
rm -rf .gnome .gnome2 .gconf .gconfd .metacity
​
Get back to your GUI desktop by hitting CTRL + ALT + F7.
Login and VOILÀ! Just like the first time you ever logged into your Gnome desktop.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for that Rage. The desktop changed, but I still have no menu, navigation bar, or close, minimize, etc. buttons on my program windows.

I think I really f'd this bitch up.
 
another thing to try:

[FONT=&quot]Once the Terminal window opens, enter the following command at the prompt:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]gconftool - -recursive-unset /apps/panel [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]([/FONT][FONT=&quot]Remember:[/FONT][FONT=&quot] T[/FONT][FONT=&quot]here should be no spaces between the two dashes before shutdown.[/FONT][FONT=&quot])[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Then enter the next command:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]And enter one more command:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]pkill gnome-panel[/FONT]​
 
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Did you remove pulseaudio? It might have been a dependency for some other Gnome package that also got removed in the process. Look at your Synaptic logs and see what was removed and reinstall it.
 
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cheshire said:
Did you remove pulseaudio? It might have been a dependency for some other Gnome package that also got removed in the process. Look at your Synaptic logs and see what was removed and reinstall it.
Click to expand...

My limited knowledge led me to think the same thing. I'll go through the logs and see. I tried reinstalling a bunch of pulse related packages hoping to fix the issue, but didn't know enough to look through the logs... thanks bro!

@rage -- thanks for all the links and advice. I tried downloading the tarball and it came back with an error telling me -- tar: child returned status 1... tar: error is not recoverable.

The commands in your last post returned some errors also. I'll try the synaptic logs first and then move back to the terminal.
 
Looks like my first occurance with uninstall/reinstall involved installing some debian packages, which matches the GUI I have on my desktop. Gonna try fixing things.
 
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