Desktop gone after installing several packages

[andformore]

Hey guys, I would be incredibly appreciative of some help. I was trying to build ffmpeg in order to convert videos to H.264 format by following this tutorial for ubuntu:

http://ffmpeg.org/trac/ffmpeg/wiki/Ubun ... ationGuide

The first step involves installing a bunch of packages, one of which seems to have broken my desktop. I was running Cinnamon, and now I have no start bar and windows do not have frames. I can still launch this browser with the desktop icon which is still appearing. I tried running `cinnamon --replace` and it said segmentation fault. The command `ps -A | egrep '(cinnamon|gnome-shell|gnome-panel)'` shows nothing. I would be totally stoked with help in this order:

1. I need any desktop running so I can work/use my computer.
2. I would like cinnamon back to how it was.
3. I would like to understand why this happened and how I can know which packages to avoid installing in the future.

Many thanks!

[andformore]

Well, I seem to have been able to fix the problem. I basically uninstalled and reinstalled my video driver like this:

Code: Select all

sudo sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh --force
sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx fglrx_* fglrx-amdcccle* fglrx-dev* xorg-driver-fglrx

cd /tmp && wget -O amd-driver-12-6-x86_64.run http://goo.gl/XBFyI
chmod +x amd-driver-12-6-x86_64.run
sudo sh amd-driver-12-6-x86_64.run

sudo aticonfig --initial -f

That worked and I'm very happy, but if I could figure out which package screwed up my video driver and alert myself about it in the future that would be very cool. Thanks!