[Qgis-user] Many greyed tools in qgis 1.8.01 menu

[Agustin Lobo]

I'm having an unexpected behaviour of qgis 1.8.01 on ubuntu 10.04:
when I open a project (no matter recent or old) many tools
are disabled, including layer/properties. Also, the right button of
the mouse does not work.
See picture here:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3180464/greyed.jpg

If I load any layer, then the right button keeps on failing but the
tools are no longer
greyed. I can remove the layer, the buttons keep working. But even if
I save the project
(no matter with or without the new layer), the next time I start qgis
(or just open the project) the tools are greyed again until I load
another layer.
I have tried with qgis --noplugins : same problem

I observe that Control rendering order is off by default (not sure how
it was before).

May be there is some option that I'm not aware of?

The same projects work fine on a Mac.

Thanks for any help.

Agus