kde desktop icons gone missing...

[kevinatkins]

hi,

i've just had a bit of a calamity on my father's linux box, spec as below -

suse 8.2
athlon xp 3000+
msi kt6 mobo
radeon 9200se gfx (but using vesa framebuffer gfx at moment - can't get ati driver to play...)

i was just fiddling around in kde control center and tried changing theme in the theme manager. lo and behold, all the icons disappeared, and the kicker disappeared when i tried clicking on the 'k' button - i had to do a 'ctrl-alt-bksp' to reset the x-server.

i've created a 'test' user and reproduced the steps above, with exactly the same results, so it wasn't just a one-off 'glitch'...

question is - how do i proceed now? if i knew which files to copy over from another user (obviously changing permissions etc), i'm thinking i could perhaps restore things that way.

has anybody had this experience themselves? remember, i'm using framebuffer graphics.

i have to say, kde does seem a bit flaky anyway on this machine - quite often, it won't display all icons on initial startup, requiring me to log out and log in again, and it often freezes the mouse pointer momentarily. is all this framebuffer-related?

sorry for the rambling post, but i really want to get this machine singing so dad can see how good linux really is (suse 8.2 runs like a charm on my box).

thanks in anticipation.

[kevinatkins]

ok,

problem sorted - copied kde/config directory & contents from another user and reset user/grp id's..

sorry to have posted perhaps erroneously - still curious as to what the cause could be??!

[JohnT]

Originally posted by kevinatkins
ok,

problem sorted - copied kde/config directory & contents from another user and reset user/grp id's..

sorry to have posted perhaps erroneously - still curious as to what the cause could be??!

The cause?:confused: ....i was just fiddling around in kde control center and tried changing theme in the theme manager. :D

[kevinatkins]

Hi JohnT,

well ok, the obvious cause was my tinkering with changing desktop themes..:) ...

but am i missing something regarding framebuffer graphics, or whatever, here? i mean, it's a bit dodgy ain't it - adjust some easily got-at settings in the kde control center, and hey, the whole desktop disappears!.. if something like win xp did that, we'd all be jumping up and down and ranting about microsoft!;)

[JohnT]

if something like win xp did that, we'd all be jumping up and down and ranting about microsoft!

OK, pretend its MS:D ...I think we should jump up and down when you have a reasonable expectation for a product to work and when you have spent quite a bit of money on it.:D