LXDE Forums

I have been using Fedora/LXDE for about a year and decided to setup a new system for my mom to replace her old WINXP system. The system is bare bones and I have been slowly setting it up for a couple of months but in the last week it seems to be losing resources. Here is the software APPs installed: Thunderbird, Firefox, OpenOffice, and Teamviewer (which I will use to provide remote assistance)

I have the software installed and configured but somehow I messed something up. I login and open up Firefox and Thunderbird and xterm logged in as root. Within a few hours after rebooting the icons beside the menu items disappear and I can no longer start any program from the GUI. The first time this happened I had to crash the system, but I now I stay logged in as root so I can execute a reboot 0 and start over.

I have checked /var/log/messages and lsof to see how many files are open, but since I am not getting any error messages it is hard to debug the issue. I can run top and the system is responsive at the command prompt, but the GUI is hung. I can minimize windows and move them around and even go through the GUI menu, but if I try and run a program from the GUI nothing happens.

Any ideas of where to look?

ok there's about 100 reasons why you shouldn't log into X as root, and about a million articles telling you why exactly.

just don't be root.

i guess by doing this you borked your install pretty well, but by all means try to create a NORMAL user and log into that, maybe it'll Just Work.

another thing: fedora is a beautiful and appealing distro, but you know it's redhat's testbed? it is in continuous flux, updating packages before they are fully tested, and likely to cause all sorts of issues. i'm sure folks on the fedora forums will agree, although they will probably paint it in nicer colors.
for your mum, you should consider something that doesn't require constant supervision. maybe debian stable? once set up, you can leave it mostly alone.