== Recovering my Eee PC from a post-update problem

I recently applied a bunch of pending Eee updates
from Asus, and suddenly the [[full desktop mode
http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:introtofulldesktop]] that I prefer stopped
working. The Eee always booted into the basic interface, and when I
switched back to advanced mode everything in my Desktop directory had
disappeared (which is bad, because I have some customized launchers
there)

(Fortunately I had an off-machine backup of my Desktop directory so I could
restore my customizations.)

I enabled advanced desktop mode the [[easy way
http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:getkde]], namely by installing the
_advanced-desktop-eeepc_ package. After poking around and trying several
things, what fixed the problem problem was to _apt-get remove_ and then
_apt-get install_ the package again.

(I assume that something in one of the Asus updates overwrote a
customization that the advanced desktop stuff required, although I
couldn't spot anything obvious. It is a little disturbing to me that
something was apparently deleting all additions to my Desktop folder,
although I don't know whether this is something in the basic desktop or
in the advanced desktop setup stuff.)

=== Sidebar: the launchers I've found useful

By 'launchers' I mean icons on the desktop that start various
programs when clicked, which are created by _.desktop_ files in your
_$HOME/Desktop_ directory. The ones I use are: [[blank the screen
EeePowerConsumption]], start _konsole_, start _xterm_, and start
a black-on-white _xterm_ (instead of the default [[white on black
../links/TextColours]] colour scheme).