DonsDeals Blog: Gnome or Metacity Window Manager is broken by Uninstalling Enlightenment E16!

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Sunday, April 24, 2011

Gnome or Metacity Window Manager is broken by Uninstalling Enlightenment E16!

I'm running Fedora 14 with Gnome, KDE, Openbox and a couple more other Desktops installed. The only one I really use is, Gnome. The rest are for backup in case something goes wrong with my Gnome or just to try out to see if I like them. I like the way Gnome works and looks. It's been my favorite for over 5 years now. But, like the Poster below, I decided to try out Enlightenment E16 on a whim.... well or because of a few articles I read about E17 being a great new Desktop. I decided to give Enlightenment a try. I looked in the Repositories in my Fedora 14 System and found E16. I thought, lets try this one out first to see if I like it... What a big mistake!:O Everything was fine in Gnome, until I actually logged in to E16 on Boot, to see what it was like. There was nothing usable in the plain old E16 Desktop. Just some settings if you Right Click on the Desktop and a very ugly Desktop with a few rectangular boxes. No way to even run any Apps. But I had noticed that there was also an E16 - Gnome and E16 - KDE in my Boot Menu's Desktop Choices. So I tried out the E16 Gnome. It had a few Bells and Whistles. But they were very annoying for me!:O My eyes just can't handle Windows Wiping and Sweeping by at 200 miles and hour! The worst "feature" and by far the most annoying. Was the fact that when you hold your mouse on the far right side of the screen... Getting ready to Page Down. The window just Slides to the Right, Out of Sight (and not in a cool way). If you move your mouse one sixteenth of an inch or less back to the left, then your window will come back into view. It kept on jumping bach and forth the whole time I was trying to work in E16. This behavior, just completely Pissed Me Off!!! I later figured out that what was actually happening was it was Switching between Desktops. I didn't notice, since the Stupid Default Settings were set to Show every Open Application of Every Desktop. What's the Point of Multiple Desktops (Work Spaces) if the show up in all Desktops!??? I thought, well that's enough of that and logged back in to my regular Gnome Desktop to uninstall E16. But, guess what!:O Now my Regular Plain old Gnome Desktop was looking and working just like the E16 Gnome Desktop. I spent 4 or more hours changing settings, Uninstalling and Reinstalling E16! Because it really Hosed up my Beautiful Gnome Desktop and made it Unusable. I had lost my 6 Desktops (Work Spaces) that I so heavily depend on to work quickly and efficiently. The Applications were missing the whole Top Menu and they Covered up my Top Panel too, so that my Gnome Desktop was Almost Completely Unusable!:( And No changes or new Themes that I installed in "System - Appearance", changed anything. I even tried changing the settings in the Compiz Desktop Effects App. Even though I don't use Compiz. I keep it turned off in my System, but I tried turning it on, to see if I could get away from this Awful E16. No such luck, Compiz wouldn't even work. I have tried it out, before and it did work. But I don't care if Compiz works or not, since I don't use it. I finally gave up and tried to Setup E16, so that I could at least use my System in Gnome. I installed the E16 Themes Package. They had some interesting looks and colors. But they were so Odd and the Functions Buttons were move around to the Point that None were Usable for me. That was last night... So, today I decided I needed to look this problem up. I logged into my KDE Desktop, which gladly, was looking and working just fine. And sure enough this has been a problem, at least since Fedora 12! Below is what I found on fixing this problem... But, after reading all of the Posts Below. I had No "/usr/share/applications/metacity.desktop" file either, just like the guy in the Posts. And later on in the Posts, finding this file, wouldn't help anyway. So, I got to thinking of ways to change settings in my System and then I saw the Icon for Ailurus on on my Desktop. It is a great App for changing many System Settings, which can sometimes be hard to find in Linux and it works well in Gnome and Fedora 14. I opened up Ailurus and after a quick look... Clicked on Desktop. There it was!... "change the default window manager to" (it had e16 there, just like it said in the posts, was the problem). So, I just changed it to "metacity", which is what all of the Command Line work in the Posts Below tell you how to do. And Rebooted. And Sure Enough, my Gnome Desktop was back to Normal and with all of my Settings Entacted!:) I now have a "/usr/share/applications/metacity.desktop" file and I backed it up, just in case. Maybe I can even use it to quickly setup other Gnome Desktops just the way I like them;) I then had an odd little feeling that maybe, I had Been There, Done That Before!:O... At some other time in the past. If only I cold remember all of the things I have Done. Not to mention all of the things that I have read about!:O Well, anyway, there's Another Lesson Learned, the Ward Way... For as long as I can Remember it, that is... But, that's why I Blog all of this info. So, that even if now one else finds it interesting. I can go back and find the things that I have already found, perhaps in long and involved searching and reading sessions... Read the Posts below to learn more about this Problem...

Here's my Terminal Output from checking my Gnome Settings. I just used Ailurus to change my settings and then ran the command just to see what my System would show...

don@RedBlackBioStar /$ gconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/session
required_components_list = [windowmanager,panel,filemanager]
max_idle_time = 120
default_session = [gnome-settings-daemon]
idle_delay = 60
max_idle_action =
/desktop/gnome/session/required_components:
filemanager = nautilus
windowmanager = metacity
panel = gnome-panel
don@RedBlackBioStar /$

Don

Metacity or Gnome Window Manager is broken [Archive] - FedoraForum.org

View Full Version : Metacity or Gnome Window Manager is broken

bloodsugarwilks

3rd March 2010, 03:22 PM

This is a good one and extra kudos to anyone who can help me resolve it:

On a whim I installed an alternative Window manager for my Fedora 12 install called Enlightenment (http://www.enlightenment.org/) from here:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/enlightenment/e16-1.0.2-1.fc11.i386.rpm?download

I logged out of my Gnome session and logged in using e16 which is the window manager. I thought it was awful. I logged out, and logged back in under Gnome. Then I uninstalled the package using:

# rpm -e <packagename>

I then logged back out and even attempted to reboot my machine and whenever I log into my normal desktop now, the windows surrounding applications are gone. For example the window border that contains the ability to drag the window or minimize, maximize and close are gone.

I figured out a very undesirable workaround by adding the command "metacity --replace" to my startup applications.

I am wondering if anyone can help me get the system (Metacity and/or whatever the gnome window manager is) back to working order.

Thoughts? Do you need more info?

Skipping on down to the fix that worked...

Dies

3rd March 2010, 07:15 PM

Could you please post the output from

gconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/session

bloodsugarwilks

3rd March 2010, 07:18 PM

Could you please post the output from

gconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/session

gconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/session
required_components_list = [windowmanager,panel,filemanager]
default_session = [gnome-settings-daemon]
idle_delay = 5
/desktop/gnome/session/required_components:
filemanager = nautilus
windowmanager = e16
panel = gnome-panel

Wow.... looks like it is saying e16 still for some reason. Does a fix exist for this?

Dies

3rd March 2010, 07:23 PM

Run
gconftool-2 -s -t string /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager "metacity"
then confirm that the change was made by running the last command I gave you, if it was changed successfully go ahead and log out and back in.

If for some reason it didn't change then do
gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /desktop/gnome/session

bloodsugarwilks

3rd March 2010, 07:45 PM

gconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/session required_components_list = [windowmanager,panel,filemanager]
default_session = [gnome-settings-daemon]
idle_delay = 5
/desktop/gnome/session/required_components:
filemanager = nautilus
windowmanager = metacity
panel = gnome-panel

This is what the output looks like now. It seems to have been fixed!

Thank you SO much. Kudos!

---------- Post added at 12:45 PM CST ---------- Previous post was at 12:35 PM CST ----------

Thanks again to everyone who contributed and a special thanks for Dies for letting me know how to reset the windowmanager.

I'm going to start teaching myself about GConfTool now!

va9709

4th April 2010, 08:15 PM

Thank you very much for bloodsugarwilks and of course Dies. Gnome Desktop has been fixed and the really boring condition has gone. Thanks again...

Go there and read whole post...
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/index.php/t-241590.html