No command line or menu access
 

I purchased an Acer Aspire one netbook with Ubuntu, it uses an Acer default desktop. I uninstalled the Acer desktop application which runs under Xfce (package xfdesktop-acer) trying to set up a more Gnome like desktop enviroment.

Now, my problem is that I can no longer access my main menu and add/remove software, the shortcut Alt+F2 to get me into the terminal no longer functions neither does the Ctrl+Alt+Del keycombo to get to the task manager. I tried to plug my USB stick in to get to the file manager, but it quits immediately.

Is there any way I can get control back of my netbook without a reinstall? I'm out of ideas.

Thanks,
rotornik, NL

I just found a way to search my computer with one of the desktop utils that was still running. Trying to open a folder gives me the messege "The Nautilus file manager is not running.", however, I can also try to run applications. Can someone tell me where on my computer the terminal lives?

i found it! :D

I found i could still use the text edit, so I found which the keyboard shortcut was linked to then I found /usr/bin/xfrun4 with which i could get into the terminal! :)

Looks like you have a nice little thread going on all by your self :-)
Did you try the CTRL ALT F1 thru F6 combos to get to control lines and CTRL ALT F7 to get back out?
Are you going to use apt-get install "Filename" to install the Desktop components you need?

yes, i had tried those key combos as well. I found it kind of strange there was no way to get into the terminal by some sort of base kernel command or something. I found out I was actually running Linpus rather than Ubuntu :) the yum install didn't really work for me, and it just got too complicated so I created a boot USB stick with the Ubuntu Live CD on it on my windows computer using unebootin-windows-248.exe and that's what I'm running now. It's a bit slow so I'm installing XFCE again to see if that makes any difference. it's a bit of an hassle, but fun to learn about these things.

thanks for your input!

Since you have found a way to get to the cli can you do something like apropos gnome* and apropos gtk* to find gnowme based components available for installation.

what happens if you execute gdm from the cli?

oh sorry, i meant to say i did a reinstall from the USB stick rather than run it live from boot. :) it's running again ;)

thanks!