So you messed up the Gnome desktop and don’t know how to restore it back to it’s default settings. Here’s how with no risks.

  1. Log out and then hit “Ctrl + ALT + F1” to opening up a terminal.

  2. Delete the following directories.

.gnome .gnome2 .gconf .gconfd .metacity

Or run the this command.

rm -rf rm -rf .gnome .gnome2 .gconf .gconfd .metacity

  1. “Ctrl + ALT + F7/F8” and log in as usual.

This guide is based on Ubuntu 10.10