I just recently switched my system over to Ubuntu 12.10, and decided on Cinnamon as my environment-- it all worked fine, at first. But I was poorly educated and started using Compiz and Emerald along with it--Setting both as replacements in startup processes. I now know, that's a big, big mistake. Now when loading Cinnamon, I am greeted to my background image, and only that. My only options seem to be to open a terminal. I was advised to attempt muffin --replace and mutter --replace Neither to any avail, the terminal closes, and I cannot load another one unless I completely reload. I went back to Unity, purged and autoremoved Cinnamon, emerald, and compizconfig, and attempted to reinstall Cinnamon, thinking that would solve the problem--no, it came back just as broken as before. So, I reinstalled ubuntu, then cinnamon---still broken. I'm assuming I must find a way to remove the replace commands-- but as I have no menu, I'm not positive I can do that. Is there any way I can access the startup processes via terminal? I'd think though, if I completely removed Cinnamon, all configurations would be gone too, so, it's just not making much sense. Is there some kind of reset I could possibly do? I've been browsing forums and questions here, all leading to things I'd already done, so, it can't hurt to ask for myself. I apologize if you would rather I have posted this over at mint. Next time, I will definitely check compatibility instead of assuming something just has to work. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks! ****EDIT***** It seems although it didn't allow me to do it before, I was now allowed to access the settings and startup processes for Cinnamon via Unity, and, after quickly removing aforementioned processes- I'm up and running again.