@Marksimus, thanks for your answers - i eventually did find cgm99 reboot, so not ideal (i'd rather go back to the Kobo home screen), but it definitely works.
The launcher did not start because it was not there
After logout to rebuild the database, everything was wiped out, so I had to reinstall (easy with your 1 step hack
), and all is well now. Also, I had both Calibre and the kobo desktop running, and I've noticed that sometimes unplugging from one does not unplug from the other, so the database may have been messed up by that and not by the hacks.
Adding fonts works, so all in all I am happy that I can now read my pdf and djvu books.
Thank you to all you guys, really, this is great stuff!