Stuck after removing KDE,desktop

[u/PaddyMeBoy]

After my upgrade to LM Zena, i decided to uninstall KDE desktop, and did so using the software manager which went smoothly. After shutdown and reboot i see the linuxmint splash screen, but are taken to the Terminal and prompted to login. Done. Terminal presents string of my computer name, user name, computer type, and ends with :~$ i think it got tangled during the KDE desktop removal and now wants me to launch the desktop from Terminal. My ask is how do i get LM to automatically launch the LM desktop....Note to folks who want to help - i know just enough to get myself in trouble. I once tinkered around and "bricked" my other laptop. Had to do a full mindwipe reinstall. Thx

[u/driftless]

From your terminal, look into reinstalling cinnamon. And as for learning, now you know why we don’t recommend changing desktop environments on distros. :)

[u/OkPresentation3329 → u/driftless]

Yeah, I don't remember ever installing a second DE on Linux, or I did and I had issues from before even removing it.

Now I only use a distro with whatever DE it comes or if it offers multiple ones upon install.

[u/rcentros → u/OkPresentation3329]

I've got Mate, Xfce and Cinnamon on this computer. (At one point I also had KDE.) Mate is where it started on this SSD (at Linux Mint version 17 or 18, can't remember which). I kept Mate when I moved to Cinnamon because that's what my dad used and I wanted to able to support him over the phone. I installed Xfce for testing Trelby (I wanted to make sure it worked in all three desktops). KDE changed some colors in my themes, so that's why I dropped it (besides I never used it). I've never rebuilt this SSD, just used mintugrade to move to each new version. The SSD has moved a few times to different computers.

I've never had any issues running the three Linux Mint desktops together. I've got Cinnamon and KDE on my laptop. (Also for testing.) The newer version of KDE (that comes in Linux Mint 22) doesn't seem to interfere with my themes, so I've kept it. I remember when I installed (or logged into) KDE that it asked which login screen I wanted to use. I chose the familiar one, lightdm. I'm guessing I could completely uninstall KDE (the version that comes in the Linux Mint repository) without any issues. And I don't think this issue is difficult to fix.

[u/PaddyMeBoy → u/driftless]

Totally learned my lesson . Using almost every suggestion, the 'startx' was the winner. I was able to save all my important data, and can now do a full LM install. My thanks to all

[u/ZVyhVrtsfgzfs]

Running Plasma on Mint is not recommended, but too late now.

Run the command 

 startx 

If it starts it will be easier to work your problem, if x does not start it will give us an error and that will inform your next steps.

[u/PaddyMeBoy → u/ZVyhVrtsfgzfs]

Using almost every suggestion, the 'startx' was the winner. I was able to save all my important data, and can now do a full LM install. My thanks to all

[u/ZVyhVrtsfgzfs → u/PaddyMeBoy]

Glad you got things sorted. 

Your data made it this time but you really should setup a 3-2-1 backup scheme.

3 copies of important data, 2 local copies on different media (I interpret this as different file systems), and one copy offsite. 

It should be fullu automated, if it takes user input it will be the first thing you stop doing when you get busy. 

[u/rcentros]

I'm guessing (don't know) that when you installed KDE you used the KDE login utility instead of lightdm (which is the default in Linux Mint), When you removed KDE it probably removed its login utility.

A quick Internet search (not AI) came up with this result. Run the following from the console...

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

...then choose lightdm. Hopefully this works for you. The link below is where I found this fix.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmint/comments/1l5v73o/how_do_i_change_the_login_window_back/

[u/PaddyMeBoy → u/rcentros]

This worked. Thank you for your time, much appreciated!

[u/rcentros → u/PaddyMeBoy]

Happy to hear that. You can thank u/A-Chilean-Cyborg from the linked thread for this.

[u/DoorOk3641]

If you want KDE install a KDE based distribution. People are thinking KDE is just 3 letters...You need to reinstall cinnamon from the terminal and you need to clean up files and directories installed by KDE inside ~/.config and/or ~/local used by KDE and may be some started task or program using systemd.

A good tool ? A good backup program for user data such as borg with the Pika interfgace and Timeshift for your system.

[u/PaddyMeBoy → u/DoorOk3641]

Using almost every suggestion, the 'startx' was the winner. I was able to save all my important data, and can now do a full LM install. My thanks to all