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View Full Version : [ubuntu] KDE (I believe) has messed up everything!



JakeWatkins
February 21st, 2009, 09:56 PM
I can't open PIDGIN, I can't open Synaptic Manager I always get
Failed to run /usr/sbin/synaptic as user root. Unable to copy the user's Xauthorization file. I can no longer run the bar at the top that has the "away" "busy" "shut down" "lock computer" on it, my computer will not open documents unless tricked into opening it, it is very hard to open Amarok, Freecell won't even open!

And I believe it has a lot to do with the fact that I just installed KDE (and xfce, for that matter) but I only really use GNOME (wanted to try KDE...).

Every time I try
apt-get remove kde I get
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13 Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?
I'm the only user on my computer.. could I not be root?

I can only open the KDE terminal for some reason.. but I can use that one. I'm using GNOME, also. Plus, there is a large space in between my task bar and my actual applications, like networking is the only one up, but there's about 2 inches of blank space where nothing to can happen, I've tried moving things, it doesn't help.

Any help, guys? I know this is a doozy =\

kellemes
February 21st, 2009, 10:50 PM
You haven't been reading the standard documentation. ;-)
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

Don't ever login as root.
Use "sudo" for terminal apps or "gksudo" for graphical apps ("kdesu" for KDE), this way you get root privileges for the specified application.

And so, you login as user and use a command demanding root privileges like so..

sudo apt-get remove kde

JakeWatkins
February 22nd, 2009, 04:59 PM
I restarted, and synaptic manager opened up fine.. I removed all KDE things then restarted a few times.. and now everything works again!

Even User Switcher (or whatever) works! Ubuntu is back to normal, and all is good in computer kingdom! ;- )

Thanks for the "sudo" part, though! = )