After upgrading from Ubuntu Jellyfish to Numbat, my desktop seems broken? Super key doesn't open menu, dark theme/settings doesn't work. How can I fix this?
After upgrading from Ubuntu Jellyfish to Numbat, my desktop seems broken? Super key doesn't open menu, dark theme/settings doesn't work. How can I fix this?
One of the wallpapers has XFCE on it, but I didn't change my desktop environment. Also of note, when I open the terminal it doesn't look the same as it used to. Instead of the dark purple window it's a black window with white text and the window's icon is a red "X" with a dark blue "T" on it.
This is a headless machine and I connect to it through remote-desktop.
If I go through the applications menu (manually clicking, the super key does nothing and my keyboard does not have a "Fn" key) and go to settings I get the window on the left. Changing the settings in this window does nothing. Right clicking the desktop and clicking "desktop settings" I get the window on the right. This window correctly changes the wallpaper.
When I open the home folder I get Thunar.
My guess is there are two desktop environments competing or something right now? How can I fix this?
Also, weirdly, if I click my name in the upper right I can "lock screen" and "log out..." but I can't "switch user," "suspend," or "shut down."
Thank you in advance for any help.
I used Ubuntu from version 8.04 to 18.04 and not once did I have a successful upgrade between major versions. There is always something that gets broken to the point that a reinstall is necessary.
well, I managed to upgrade from 16.04 to 22.04 without any major issues
14.04 to 22.04 so far
I didn't have an issue like this going from bionic beaver to focal fossa, but I don't think my setup was as complicated before. Do other distros have this problem? Mint? Debian? (Does Debian ever update?)
It looks like you are running XFCE instead of GNOME (the normal Ubuntu desktop). I'm not sure how that happened... but you an always just install another desktop.
For instance, you can try to make sure you have the
ubuntu-desktoporubuntu-desktop-minimalmetapackage installed:sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop-minimalAfter that, the login manager should allow you to select the Ubuntu session rather than the XFCE one.
Hey thanks. I had started following this guide right before I saw your post:
Essentially the same thing, except the guide uses "apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop" I used "sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop" and it found stuff to install. The terminal is running now. I'll update the post once it's done. Hope this works!
Ok, so after installing ubuntu-desktop and reinstalling ubuntu-desktop the desktop hasn't changed.
Ctrl+alt+T brings up the familiar terminal now though, and I can open a nautilus window by typing "nautilus."
"echo $DESKTOP_SESSION" returns "xfce." I'm logging into this machine remotely. Since I'm remote, I don't think I can log out and still be "connected" to change the DE. Is there another way to change it?
If I connect a screen to the machine the desktop doesn't load, I had to change a setting (of which I can't remember, for a reason I can't remember - something to do with optimizing the machine for remote desktop) and now the desktop only renders on the remote session.
How are you using it remotely? VNC?
Perhaps the server config started defaulting to XFCE. Maybe what happened is entire XFCE DE got marked as a dependency, installed during update, and then when some config defaulting to XFCE thanks to this became valid, you ended up here.
If it's VNC, what do you have in
~/.vnc/xstartup? Maybe a line likexfce4-session &?
There are different flavours of Ubuntu with the other desktop environments (called Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and so on). The posted screenshot is indeed a mishmash of Gnome and Xfce though.
I guess it switched desktop environments on you? If you're logged out there's supposed to be a way you can switch between desktop environments. It makes sense that the GNOME Settings app would only change wallpaper settings for GNOME, which I think is the main Ubuntu desktop environment. Are you sure you didn't upgrade to a version of Ubuntu that uses XFCE instead of GNOME?
This machine has always been GNOME. I ran "sudo do-release-upgrade." I didn't specify any flags for XFCE. I'm going to try to log in locally and see how it looks there.
My guess is that something related to the headless setup you had changed during upgrade - likely some package got obsoleted and removed. Then you got some default behaviour from the replacement package along with the rest of the setup.
If you don't get the help needed to resolve this here, you should also post in askubuntu.com.
That makes a lot of sense. I'll work on logging into the machine locally and see what I can figure out from there. Thanks!
EDIT: I can’t figure out how I set this up. Somehow I routed the main display to the RDP session, meaning if I plug in a monitor I get a black screen instead of the desktop. I have to figure out what file I edited to do that. None of the tutorials that I can find now use whatever method I used roughly 6 years ago.
You could try finding changed config files by running:
sudo debsums -acNote that this won't catch all. There are files that packages install and don't touch afterwards. I my case for example it does catch that
/etc/gdm3/custom.confwas modified to enable autologin among other things.
you're running xfce!
do you want to be running some other desktop environment?
if so, look at what kind of session your remote connection software is asking the remote machine to start.
The problem is that some desktop elements/settings seem to be xfce while some others are gnome. I'm going to need to do a deep dive to figure out how I set up remote desktop on that machine. Log in locally, get it working locally correctly, then see if I can get it working over RDP correctly.
Tbh I don’t recommend Ubuntu to people anymore
Totally fair. This machine has just been long running and switching distros has been more work than it's worth. Though because things are breaking I'm looking to alternatives now. But for the time being, and to help me figure out this problem if I have it in the future, I'm trying to figure this out.
ubuntu numbnuts
Yeah I've been running this machine on ubuntu since Bionic Beaver in 2018. Cannonical wasn't such a bad guy back then, and migrating everything over to a new distro has always taken more effort than it's worth. This machine runs headless and for the most part I interact with it though portainer so it hasn't been an issue.
It's just with the occasional remote desktop login that things are broken now. Do you have a recommended distro for servers/remote desktop usage?
Oh I don’t care what distro you use. It’s just funny to say numbnuts instead of numbat.
You say this machine is headless. Is it at a remote location? If not, is it feasible to connect it to a monitor an keyboard for a few minutes? If so then you could logout, switch DE, and then log back in. That would hopefully set the DE you prefer as user default.
If that's not possible, then some of the solutions discussed here might be applicable.
I'll give that a try.
Back when I set this up, for some reason, to get RDP working I needed to disable the local video output and have the main desktop be funneled into the remote session. I don't remember the details of how or why. I'll figure out how to reverse it and log in locally and see what I can gather.
that terminal is xterm.
however, i suggest you log out and look for the session menu on the ligin screen. maybe it defaulted to the wrong session type.
Your machine is broke. Time to reinstall
Your problem is that you're still using Ubuntu, after Canonical started injecting advertising and wants you to pay for it now.
Try a different distro, like anything besides Ubuntu..
My primary machine runs Pop!_OS, but I've had this machine running for years. Back when I installed Ubuntu on it, Canonical wasn't widely known as a bad guy. I've got various services running that I would need to resetup if I started from scratch.
I get where you're coming from, but to migrate everything over would take so much time. For now I would really like it if my desktop just worked correctly. When I get the time I can look into putting mint or debian on it.
Popos is based on Ubuntu, but maintained by a separate company and has major differences. I’ve also been running it on a couple of machines for years and have been quite happy with it.
I feel your pain from a distance, I really do. ☹️
The best advice I have in the meantime is to prepare for a full backup of all packages and consider switching to a different Debian based distro..
Get out with this noise. This is the same nonsense as "just install Linux" to a person with a Windows problem.
Have you not caught the recent news that Ubuntu is now plastering adverts on the desktop if you haven't paid for it?
Please kindly fuck off.