When I log into KDE 3.11 as my regular user, everything works fine. When I log in as 'root' I have the mouse, but no buttons work other than the left single click to select. After the second select click on the task bar, it disappears, unwilling to return no matter how much I curse..... And even thekeyboard commands like ctrl-alt-esc don't work.

If this is a stupid human question, then I'm the right man for the job. Thanks.

Welcome to LQ.

Your question is surely not stupid. We ALL have problems. I'm no KDE expert but in root's home directory, I would delete the .kde folder.

There is a thread about this:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=87795

there's a good chance that that kde behavior is intentional. There is NO reason to start kde as root. You can always switch to being root in a konsole using the su command and the gui tools that need root privileges to run will ask you for the root password.

Thanks to both you guys - - deleting the directory did the trick but after reading the link to a similiar post I now see the light and will make use of the su command for what I need.

Wow! I don't really use KDE or GNOME, just their apps. Learn several things here everyday

quatsch is right. Never a reason to start an X session as root. I use either

su
or
sudo

I working on a tutorial for sudo and will put it in the Linux Answers section of this site. Basically it allows you to give a user root's priveledges by typing sudo before a command.

If you want you can
man sudo
for more info

To edit the entries you do
visudo
and you can add a line under the

# Cmnd alias specification
user LOCALHOST = ALL

to give that user root privledges

Then, like I said, that user can do a sudo command and enter their own password. Works great.