Running Ubuntu 12.04, I installed gnome-shell
(GNOME 3) and used it for some days with no problem.
Yesterday, I broke it following this sequence of events:
- I played with the accessibility menu in the top panel, launching the keyboard onscreen at one point. Suddenly, everything froze.
- I tried to use
xkill
and point the x on this onscreen keyboard, or on the top panel but it did not kill it. - I opened TTY1 (Ctrl+Alt+F1), logged in, and restarted the machine.
Since then, my GNOME Shell is broken. I can log in using Unity, but if I log in using GNOME, I only see the wallpaper and the mouse pointer.
Interesting to note:
I have reinstalled
gnome-shell
doingsudo apt-get remove --purge gnome-shell
followed bysudo apt-get install gnome-shell
several times, but it doesn't change anything.I can log in under GNOME Shell perfectly if I use another account (be it guest or a newly created one).
I tried to follow the steps in The Definitive Guide to Getting Your Linux Desktop Back until the step "Try to reinstall the window manager".
I understand that the window manager associated to Gnome is mutter. I tried to purge it (in order to reinstall it), but the terminal saysPackage mutter is not installed, so not removed
. However, if I doman mutter
, I can read the manual. Furthermore, I can rungnome-shell
on the guest session and I checked that it uses mutter by usingwmctrl -m
. So I don't understand how should I proceed to purge and reinstall it.
Any help would be great!