KDE Desktop Effects Woes? Try any of these Approaches!

Recently, a fellow Mepis 12 user had problems with a computer.  Some of the desktop effects stopped working after an unknown update.  Thus, I had to try all I knew to fix the problem:

1.  su -c 'update-alternatives --config libGL.so.1'

and chose #1 in the nvidia/diversions.

I also ran

su -c 'update-alternatives --config libglx.so'

and chose #1.  But that had no effect.

2.  su -c 'cd /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions;ln -sf $(ls -1 libglx.so.*) libglx.so'

and then restarted the x session.

...It didn't work.

3.  I tried to see if there was anything blacklisted in the file
.kde/share/config/kwinrc

...But  there was nothing blacklisted there.

4.  Dedoimedo had this easy tutorial:

Basically, it tells you to move the file kwinrc located here:  .kde/share/config/kwinrc

If you do, next time you start X, a new file will be created.

I tried it...but it didn't work, either.

5.  Then, I read that for some Arch Linux users, that solution was pretty extreme.  According to one of them, all you have to do is opening kwinrc to look for this line:

OpenGLIsUnsafe=true

And set it to:  OpenGLIsUnsafe=false

But it turned out that the line was already set to false in the file.

6.  Finally, I tried something of my own.  I noticed that kwinrc on the damaged system was missing the line:

Backend=OpenGL

Thus, I asked the owner to add it, just to see what happened.

Who'd have thought! It worked!  :P  Now the system's effects are working again!

This is what I love of Linux.  You can solve problems if you are willing to learn and try.  You are not denied access to your system.