When I get stuck with things like this, I often create a new user on the 
box and test with that user rather than my own account.

So many times these issues are in your "profile" ($HOME/.config) and 
reinstalling won't help.

Gerry

On Sun, 24 Nov 2013, Andrew Dahl wrote:

> 
> I don't know a lot about cinnamon or gnome, but have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling cinnamon? You may have to
> move your config files elsewhere for that to work, but it's an idea if you're not seeing any errors being printed by
> cinnamon. Alternatively you could install KDE or GNOME to get you through your mentoring session, provided this problem is
> specific to cinnamon and not the X Server.
> 
> Hope you get it figured out!
> 
> -Andrew
> 
> On Nov 24, 2013 1:07 AM, "Kat Toomajian" <zarhooie at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>       Hello, folks. :)
>
>       I had a CATAstrophe this evening where my friend's cat did the two-step on my keyboard. Somewhere in her
>       keyboard smash, she managed to do something really funky with the desktop. As far as I can tell, she managed
>       to uninstall Cinnamon, or at least break it to the point where I can't do anything with it.
>
>       I have tried restarting the computer, and also Cinnamon via the run cinnamon --restart command. Nothing has
>       any effect. I am backing up data in case the final answer is to reinstall the OS, but I am hopeful that won't
>       have to happen. I am especially hopeful because I am supposed to be mentoring newbie devs tomorrow in the
>       mysterious ways of "documenting your code" and I kind of need to be online for that.
>
>       Anyone have any ideas? I am stumped.
>
>       Kat
> 
>
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> 
> 
>