<html><head><style type='text/css'>p { margin: 0; }</style></head><body><div style='font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000'><P>Well, when I made the switch from WinDoze, I knew that it was just a matter of time before I had to write this post... A bit of background:</P>
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<P>My machine is an ordinary 2.8 GHz P-4 Vaio laptop, pretty much stock except that I've bumped up the RAM to 1.5 Gb. Video is provided via an ATI Radeon chipset. I installed Fedora 10, then not too long ago, allowed it to upgrade to v. 11. All has worked well for a while, RedHat is *MUCH* improved from the last time I tried to make the switch (back in the RH3/RH4 time-frame). I started by using Gnome, used that for maybe 5 or 6 weeks, then switched to KDE so that I could make up my mind which I liked best.</P>
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<P>Last night my system booted up with a gray & white checkerboard background, rather than the image that I'd previously set. Because of that, I was looking for the applet that allows the user to set the resolution & desktop wallpaper, & in the process of doing so, I decided to enable the "desktop cube" that shows all open windows on a cube. Shortly thereafter, I found the applet that allows you to switch between KDE & compiz. Figured I'd give that a shot (just to check it out) & promptly inflicted upon myself the dreaded "compiz white screen".</P>
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<P>For those unfamiliar, this allows you to do anything you want at a command prompt, but when you try to boot into graphical mode as the afflicted user, you are greeted with a plain white window with a mouse cursor & nothing else. I've switched to alternate desktops & logged into the cmd-line environment in an effort to undo what I've done, but so far, the bullet is still in my foot. ;~)</P>
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<P>I haven't really made any changes since then, I've found a few pages that appear to describe this issue, but either they don't present solutions, or the solutions that they offer haven't resolved the issue for me. (There have also been a couple that are just too low-level -IOW, close to the hardware- for me to interpret properly.)</P>
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<P>I'm actually a bit glad for this, as it presents an excellent learning opportunity for me. I've never been too knowledgeable about X, it's always seemed a bit baroque, with lots of interlocking pieces - an impression which has been reinforced as I've tried to diagnose this issue. I've tried checking man pages for X, X11 & Xorg, and worked my way over the xinitrc, Xclients, & startkde scripts, but if the answer was there, I just couldn't see it. I also found a page which suggested that someone affected by this should remove the ~/.kde/env/kdewm.sh file, so I renamed mine (just in case), but no luck. I also edited the KDEWM line in the file to point to kwin, but that made no difference either.</P>
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<P>Finally, I've looked through the compiz files in my home directory (since I'm thinking that it's likely to be profile-specific), but haven't found anything there. All that I really want to do is to get back to KDE, or in other words, undo (using the cmd line) what I accidentally did to myself with the GUI.</P>
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<P>Any troubleshooting suggestions (or explanatory theses on how X works) gratefully received.</P>
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<P>Thanks all,</P>
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<P>T.</P></div></body></html>