First post

First thing to say, Konqueror from KDE 3.5 doesn't enable me to write in this blog. Shame on Blogger for stuffing its pages with unnecessary Javascript. So, expect some typos as my fingers always stumble while trying to follow the path of my thoughts and that stupid Firefox won't highlight these typos in red like Konqueror does.

Any way, back to subject: KDE:

My last adventure with KDE is another one of the Twilight Computer Zone kind. KDE just refused to start any new application. I could start new application embedded in Konqueror or use as usual the ones that were already opened but it was impossible to start another one. As an adept of radical solutions, I just restarted the X Server with CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE... and I was out of KDE forever! KDE never restarted.

Any time I tried to log in as regular user, I got a blank screen and I was back to the login screen. I could only log in as root. I tried several times including after a complete re-boot. No way. No KDE anymore.

I tried Gnome --No comment!-- and XFCE which I use when KDE is broken. Both of them also refused to start. I was in big trouble.

I created a new user and here it was: KDE was up and running. By the way, SuSE default style and colors are ugly. Big fonts, big icons, Windblows desktop style, flashy colors. Oh boy! How I missed my desktop and its years of fine tuning!

I changed a few things in order to prevent my eyes from bleeding and I could start digging. Well, not very deep because of the paranoid access rights I set when I allowed my nephew to use my computer with his own acount. Nevermind I opened a Konqueror window with kdesu and I could work.

All I can say is that behind the shining desktop there's a real mess with files everywhere. I was wrong but I thought that there was a big problem in my KDE config so I decided to clean up everything. I tracked down all temp files related to me as user and erased them. I even renamed my private KDE folder to put it out of the way. No way. KDE still refused to start.

And the logfiles were totally useless in the situation I was. They only told me that DCOP refused to work because kded was dead or assimilated. That was what led me to believe that there was a problem in KDE config.

Happily or rather thanks to a miracle, Kinternet retrieved its config in the bottom of my harddisk and I could google. I didn't find the solution, definitively not. For some reason, any time I google for a KDE related problem, all I can find is outdated pages about very old versions of KDE. Nevermind, I found one idea across thousands of pages: To start with an empty home.

That was it. I was back on KDE... with the ugly SuSE's default settings. I just copied all the so-called "hidden" config files from my new home to the old one, I switch them and I was really back.

I still don't know what happened but some private config files from the X Server just disappeared or went corrupted and it couldn't start anymore. I still have one problem: Why does the mouse cursor revert to X default over some non-KDE apps? That's probably because I'm still in the Twilight Computer Zone.

Next time, I'll blog about the anthills and the difficulties to write a style for KDE.