This might run on a little long, but I'm going to try to explain
everything I've tried up to this point.
I've been running Debian on my laptop for about 8 years now (although
the actual laptop has changed several times since then, I've copied the
hard drive image each time to the next machine). Over that time, the
"preferred way" to do things has evolved. For example, network
management used to be handled by home-made scripts, then ifplugd, then
waproamd, then wpasupplicant, and now it seems to be handled by
network-manager. Because of this evolution (and because Debian doesn't
seem to automatically upgrade me to the "new" way each time), I also
occasionally install the latest Ubuntu to see how *it* does things and
then I try to massage my Debian config so that it works just as well.
So, lately, my Gnome stopped working. I'd try to log in with gdm and I
would just get my desktop background but without any folders or any
start menu or anything. However, I could use Kde4, but it was a little
buggy. So, I decided to uninstall both of them, then remove the
/etc/kde* and /etc/gnome* folders and re-install them and start over.
This didn't work quite as well as I had hoped. I think it's partly
because I don't know what *one* package I'm supposed to add to install
the whole thing. In the past, to install kde, you had to install
something like "kde-base" or something. Apparently, it has changed.
Anyway, as long as it wasn't working, I figured I'd clean up my X
system, too. So, I purged just about everything X-related from the
system. However, I still had a lot of crazy junk in /etc/X11. So, I
grep'd /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list to find everything that was supposed to
be in /etc/X11. Anything not listed in some file in
/var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list got moved to an "old" folder, so the only
files remaining in /etc/X11 were ones which were part of some installed
package.
So, then, I re-installed all of the xorg stuff. But then running startx
just dumps me back to the console... and running gdm just gives me a
blank screen. I'm thinking it might be because xorg can't find anything
to run for the xsession. Strangely, even though /etc/X11/Xsession is
listed in one of the *.list files, it didn't get installed when I
re-installed everything.... even when I use "apt-get install
--reinstall". I copied the *old* Xsession script from the "old"
folder... but I'm still not getting much further.
So, I'm kinda stuck. Suppose I wanted to completely purge my
kde/gnome/xorg configs and start over. What's the simplest way of doing
that?
- Joe
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