Total newbie broke ubuntu in less than an hour

uknowist · 22 Jun 2011 at 20:17

Ok I thought i'd give this ubuntu a try after people saying its awesome etc etc, so done a dual boot with vista. So got it started all going fine thought id look up a noobs tutorial on youtube, so was going fine i installed CSSM? i think its called, so you can tweak appearance, noticed it had a unity plugin option ticked on, so thought id turn it off as the bar on the side i didnt really like.. bad idea, as soon as i clicked it off i lost that and the toolbar at the top.. turning the plugin back on made no difference just made random colours :/ anyway managed to somehow get it back.

Soo thought I would leave that option alone right now.. so looked through some other 'tweaks' clicked on "water effect i think it was.. again i lost both side bar and toolbar... and now they have gone for good i cant do anything on the system without them! clicking the windows button does nothing.. all i can do is create a new folder change desktop background and pressing ctrl+alt+delete for shutdown and restart

so what the hells going on?

ng93 · 22 Jun 2011 at 21:04

Not sure of the exact command (ain't used linux in a while) but try alt+f2 then type ccsm. And don't worry about breaking ubuntu, ive broke it hundreds of times

uknowist · 22 Jun 2011 at 21:16

lol thanks, i have done some searching on ubuntus forums for help think iv found a way to get unity back but not the taskbar. Im curious, what OS do you use now ng93?

Huw · 22 Jun 2011 at 22:50

I have zero experience with Unity, but in Gnome or KDE you'd be able to right-click on the desktop and "add panel" or something similar. Anything like that in Unity?

ng93 · 22 Jun 2011 at 22:53

uknowist said:
lol thanks, i have done some searching on ubuntus forums for help think iv found a way to get unity back but not the taskbar. Im curious, what OS do you use now ng93?

OSX 5 and windows 7. Did have a play with 10.10 but triple booting is a pain on macs and osx/windows i need to run, ubuntu was just a luxury.

uknowist · 22 Jun 2011 at 23:22

Huw said:
I have zero experience with Unity, but in Gnome or KDE you'd be able to right-click on the desktop and "add panel" or something similar. Anything like that in Unity?

I found a fix, i had to right click create launcher > GDM Command: gdmsetup, from there i could boot into ubuntu classic which im preferring to the UNITY version

masterluke · 24 Jun 2011 at 08:32

I would leave CSSM alone until you know what you are doing if i were you.. a bit like a new windows user messing with regedit

uknowist · 24 Jun 2011 at 12:40

lol yes i think thats a good analogy, so I'm a but confused as to why the newbie video tutorial recommended compizconfig?

masterluke · 24 Jun 2011 at 14:17

You do have my sympathy there - there are quite a few issues that new users may find which need you to fiddle with stuff that could bork a system under some circumstances. Blindly following a guide can lead the problems like this. Its good to learn more about the system rather than just follow guides. Youre not missing out on much by using the classic interface anyway. I have gone back to it myself.

uknowist · 24 Jun 2011 at 14:40

yeah, im just trying to figure out stuff with the system as I've always used windows. I read a lot about 'Terminal' but have no clue how to use it or what its advantages are :/ ubuntu is going to take me awhile to get my head around i think lol

Huw · 24 Jun 2011 at 17:12

uknowist said:
I read a lot about 'Terminal' but have no clue how to use it or what its advantages are

The terminal is analogous to the cmd prompt in Windows, except that it's extremely powerful. You can do anything in the terminal if you know how. Running Ubuntu, your terminal will be using a shell called "bash" which is what at least 95% of distros use probably. So if you ever fancy having a crack at it, look up bash tutorials or bash guides etc.

And don't be afraid of it either. Unless you precede a command with "sudo" (which basically runs the command with root (superuser) priveleges) you can't do much harm to the system.

randomist · 26 Jun 2011 at 00:41

If you're really struggling to fix it, it may be quicker to re-install?
Don't be afraid to break things in linux, you can always rebuild/reinstall/try a new distro.

I'd advise trying a few distro's. I never really liked Ubuntu, though I'm currently using 11.4 converted to KXStudio for audio duties in linux while Win 7 handles some DAW stuff too. My main distro is Arch, which might be a good one to try once you're a bit more confident in Ubuntu and some of the other "easy" distro's

. Great documentation (Beginner's Guide, Handbook, wiki) and community support from the forums.

uknowist · 26 Jun 2011 at 21:11

Yeah I reinstalled it in the end, i am curious how other distros are however im worried about trying to install them with a dual boot, i have kept windows for games. Installing ubuntu with windows was very easy but think it will be awkward with many other ones?

Huw · 27 Jun 2011 at 07:45

Nah it will be easy with any major distro; they should all detect your Windows partition and automatically create a boot entry for it. You could always use virtualisation to test out other distros though.

randomist · 27 Jun 2011 at 09:34

Even more involved installs usually have a fairly straight forward partitioning tool. As long as you don't overwrite your ntfs partitions you're usually fine. A few might need you to add a boot option to grub, but that's just a case of taking a note of your Win partition and following one of the many guides available online. You could just copy all of your grub options as they are in ubuntu. Not many distro's require this at all now though.

Temi_D · 28 Jun 2011 at 01:50

I just installed Ubuntu yesterday to try it out as well (used windows all my life)...had to reinstall it 20mins later, gonna be keeping an eye on this thread

uknowist · 28 Jun 2011 at 15:05

Temi_D said:
I just installed Ubuntu yesterday to try it out as well (used windows all my life)...had to reinstall it 20mins later, gonna be keeping an eye on this thread

Well there are things i definitely prefer about ubuntu to windows, and the fact its free is great with all the extras u can also download again all for free. However there is still something i prefer about windows, i guess the fact i have tried modifying the look of ubuntu to a customized theme is a ball ache at times and the fact the pidgin messenger has no option to stop every person who wants to chat to me open as a pop up(iv even gone through turning off the plugin which supposedly does it but still no luck)and i also think firefox 4 looks smoother and better made in windows?

All in all tho i am impressed with ubuntu i will definitely be using it a lot more and the boot up time is very quick, but i can always see me having to switch to windows at times just simply because its easier to fix problems and things just work better :/

Rich43 · 28 Jun 2011 at 18:04

uknowist said:
Well there are things i definitely prefer about ubuntu to windows, and the fact its free is great with all the extras u can also download again all for free. However there is still something i prefer about windows, i guess the fact i have tried modifying the look of ubuntu to a customized theme is a ball ache at times and the fact the pidgin messenger has no option to stop every person who wants to chat to me open as a pop up(iv even gone through turning off the plugin which supposedly does it but still no luck)and i also think firefox 4 looks smoother and better made in windows?

All in all tho i am impressed with ubuntu i will definitely be using it a lot more and the boot up time is very quick, but i can always see me having to switch to windows at times just simply because its easier to fix problems and things just work better :/

Try Empathy as pidgin alternative, or Amsn for msn messenger.. Skype has a native client!

Also try looking around on Ubuntu Software Centre for others.