Linux Mint Forums

The latest update to Linux Mint Nadia completely whacked my desktop. Luckily I have Firefox set to auto-load. All my icons are gone--completely black screen.

Ok, after poking around the internet, I found a simple workaround to this, but it wasn't elegant.

Open a terminal via super-T or whichever key combination your system uses and enter the following commands:
Restart the computer. The default KDE desktop activates. Your shortcuts remain, but some desktop customizations may be lost. At least I have a desktop now. I'm going to leave it alone and forget about customization until the next release of LM.

This is not only a kde issue. I had the same thing happen in Mate. Anyone for solving this? Lost desktop icons, and all ability to change or do desktop functions. Also noticed that when I open a program (example: Thunderbird), the window boundaries top and bottom are missing. Can't minimize or close with icons on the right; they are not there. Have to close under the file button on the left.

It happened to me after I upgraded. I corrected it by going to System Settings/Workspace Appearance and Behavior/Workspace Appearance/Desktop Theme. Change the theme from Oxygen to Air (put your cursor over Air, click, then go to the bottom of the page a click Apply), and everything should return. It did for me. I hope this solves your problem. (I should also add that I have no idea how Oxygen became the selected theme, and, after it was changed, that it reverted to such, unprompted, a little while later. Just another ghost in the machine, I suppose.)
Slainte,
Hunter

Armstrong wrote:It happened to me after I upgraded. I corrected it by going to System Settings/Workspace Appearance and Behavior/Workspace Appearance/Desktop Theme. Change the theme from Oxygen to Air (put your cursor over Air, click, then go to the bottom of the page a click Apply), and everything should return. It did for me. I hope this solves your problem. (I should also add that I have no idea how Oxygen became the selected theme, and, after it was changed, that it reverted to such, unprompted, a little while later. Just another ghost in the machine, I suppose.)
Slainte,
Hunter

Lawsamercy. Well, I'm going to turn off the update manager for good. I think that will put some cement in the operating system. I don't need to boot up to a blank screen. And I don't really see what these updates do for me besides take up time.

I thought it was a KDE issue based on all the buzz going on in the Opensuse, Gentoo and, well, all the distro forums about blank screen in KDE.

Well, my system appears to be borked! The problem is, I don't quite know how to solve it. I have tried to change the themes and that didn't work. It is totally unusable as is. Can't resize, close windows, desktop icons are gone, just kind of borked!

firefighter wrote:Well, my system appears to be borked! The problem is, I don't quite know how to solve it. I have tried to change the themes and that didn't work. It is totally unusable as is. Can't resize, close windows, desktop icons are gone, just kind of borked!

I don't have a Mate system anymore, so can't be of much help. You might check whether there's a .mate dir in Home, and rename it, if so. That's about the same thing that I did in KDE. Wish somebody had beta-tested that bad boy before it got released to update manager.