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.

  • drspod@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • riquisimo@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      2 months ago

      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?)

    • Telorand@reddthat.com
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      2 months ago

      Oh, so it’s not just me either. It’s one of the reasons I’ll never install Ubuntu.

        • IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org
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          2 months ago

          And there was me thinking that was a mint problem…but it’s never broken nearly badly enough to force a reinstall. It’s just weird not being able to do a full upgrade unless you temporarily uninstall some packages.