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.
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.
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…
https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=138166
That link seems to be filled with ways to clone drives, but if I’m migrating I wouldn’t want to clone ubuntu and take it with me.
I know that your /home folder can be on a different drive/partition, but can you install files to a different location as well? Like install docker etc. in your /home folder or something and then if you switch distros just bring your /home folder with you and remake the links to the apps or something.
As user-focused as linux is (at least linux users), I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some tool that made this easy. But idk.
Wanna hear a scary command I’ve used before?
sudo aptitude reinstall '~i'Not for the faint of heart, nor meant for a fresh install, but that literally reinstalls every single registered package in Debian based distro.
Edit: If you ever dare use that command, you better make 2 pots of coffee and roll 3 joints, cuz it’ll take a good while…
I sorta had a feeling that wasn’t necessarily the best link after I posted it. Check this for more info (I’m on my phone right now…)
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/41273/how-to-create-a-list-of-installed-packages-for-easy-automatic-reinstall-after-di
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.