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.
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?)
Oh, so it's not just me either. It's one of the reasons I'll never install Ubuntu.
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.
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.
You can always just delete you user config directories, uninstall Xfce then log back in snd see what happens…
Oh man, I can't figure out what I did.
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. But searching online now none of the tutorials use whatever method I used roughly 6 years ago.
Oof. This is rough. What config files are you referring to?
There’s a bunch of dot files and directories in your home directory that are used to store configurations and presets and stuff.
It used to be that if you logged in without those files and directories then x, the display manager, the other software etc would copy over stub versions and that’s how you get “defaults”.
So when I have a hairy x session I used to delete the configuration files and directories and let it repopulate with defaults.
Nowadays I don’t do that anymore, but it used to be an issue.
E: try ctrl alt f1 or two or something and see if you get a terminal or login prompt.
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.