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.
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…
Get out with this noise. This is the same nonsense as “just install Linux” to a person with a Windows problem.
Wait you thought that meme was factual? 🫨 Even OP themselves said in that thread it was a joke he made to troll Canonical haters. !linuxmemes@lemmy.world is rarely factual.
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…
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.
Your machine is broke. Time to reinstall
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?
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.
Oh, so it’s not just me either. It’s one of the reasons I’ll never install Ubuntu.
