Hi, I accepted all the recommended updates a few days ago. Big mistake. KDE from January 12 came with it and it is completely broken.
My multi-desktop setup disappeared. Focus follows mouse became focus won’t change no matter what. So to get into this browser,
I rebooted my system. For console apps I can Ctl-Alt-F1 into a text screen, but on the whole I’m finding this inconvenient.
I tried a different user id, too, and the situation is the same, so it isn’t my personal .kde4 config stuff. It is the install.
So I must have a working environment before Monday when I resume my day job. I’m glad this didn’t hit me during the week.
Help, please?
Could you get for us
zypper lr -d
If you are working from CLI use this
zypper lr -d > repos.txt
Then fetch the file repos.txt off your /home/user with a live cd
Have you tried Failsafe?
Hmmm. This browser is covering the menu wherein I can start a terminal session. I ran it and have the text in a file, but transcribing the text is a nuisance. I’m going to kill this browser and see if I can get the text into the paste buffer…
beethoven:~ # cat /tmp/repos.txt
| Alias | Name | Enabled | Refresh | Priority | Type | URI | Service
–±-----------------------------------±-----------------------------------±--------±--------±---------±-------±--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------±-------
1 | Updates-for-openSUSE-12.1-12.1-1.4 | Updates for openSUSE 12.1 12.1-1.4 | Yes | Yes | 98 | rpm-md | Index of /update/12.1 |
2 | google-talkplugin | google-talkplugin | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/rpm/stable/x86_64 |
3 | openSUSE-12.1-12.1-1.4 | openSUSE-12.1-12.1-1.4 | No | No | 99 | yast2 | cd:///?devices=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TSSTcorpCD_DVDW_TS-H652L,/dev/sr0 |
4 | openSUSE:Maintenance:83 | openSUSE:Maintenance:83 | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | Index of /repositories/openSUSE:/Maintenance:/83/openSUSE_12.1_standard |
5 | repo-debug | openSUSE-12.1-Debug | Yes | Yes | 100 | yast2 | Index of /debug/distribution/12.1/repo/oss |
6 | repo-debug-update | openSUSE-12.1-Update-Debug | Yes | Yes | 101 | rpm-md | Index of /debug/update/12.1 |
7 | repo-non-oss | openSUSE-12.1-Non-Oss | Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | Index of /distribution/12.1/repo/non-oss |
8 | repo-oss | openSUSE-12.1-Oss | Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | Index of /distribution/12.1/repo/oss |
9 | repo-source | openSUSE-12.1-Source | No | Yes | 99 | NONE | Index of /source/distribution/12.1/repo/oss |
beethoven:~ #
I might be able to do a little better with failsafe, but my day job includes international con calls via Skype. Would that function in fail safe mode?
Well, the window behavior is the same now in fail safe mode, except that I only have one of my two monitors. 
I still must kill a window to get focus into another window.
As much as I prefer the KDE behavior to Gnome, maybe it is time to switch to Gnome? I’ll see if I can figure out how to do that…
I’m not sure I understand exactly what you mean by Broken.
Your description didn’t really mean much to me.
You repos seem OK
Adding Gnome may only complicate things
Why not just try IceWM, that’s already in place.
By “broken” I mean that KDE was not working. I had only one desktop. I could change applications only by killing the current one, sometimes requiring killing KDE, tho simetimes I rebooted, too. It was the same behavior for different user id’s, so it wasn’t just my user id. That’s “broken” to me. 
Anyway, I got called away yesterday and this morning I booted into single user mode and emptied out /tmp and /var/tmp before “init 5”. Problems are gone now. I’m guessing I’ll never know why. Thank you for your suggestions and thinking about causes tho!! Regards, Bruce