Where'd my cinnamon go?

[rwebb616]

Hi,

I have an ASUS X53S laptop and the mint install went fine and I was very impressed with how well everything worked right out of the box. I then realized that I was getting very bad battery life and read somewhere to install the nvidia drivers. I went to do that first trying nvidia-current and it totally borked my graphics so I undid that and when I did I don't appear to have the cinnamon menu. I went ahead and tried installing the nvidia driver that I downloaded direct from Nvidia's site and that also didn't work so I uninstalled that as well.

My graphics are back at the normal resolution but instead of seeing "Menu" on the menu button it's the linux mint logo and it's the single column menu. I don't really know if this is cinnamon or if it's actually running gnome or something because Cinnamon is somehow messed up.

How do I fix this and get my cool new start menu back?

-Rich

[zerozero]

2 advises:

1- reinstall mint (it's faster and easier)
2- to get nvidia to work in that hardware you need https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee
why? because your laptop has 2 gpus (optimus system - intel+nvidia) and only bumblebee can manage that conf.

good luck

[rwebb616]

Thanks for the advice. That's exactly what I did. I had found a reference to Bumblebee elsewhere and did a little research. I ended up just installing bbswitch on mine since I don't really need the acceleration. Now getting much better battery life. - Thanks again.

-Rich

[rwebb616]

Now I had the same thing happen with my desktop computer. Whenever I install the Nvidia proprietary drivers it kills my mint menu. Anyone know how I get it back?

-Rich

[zerozero]

open a terminal window and share the output of

Code: Select all

inxi -SGx

[rwebb616]

Well now this is interesting. I had a breaker trip in this room and the system went down hard. I booted it back up and now the mint menu is back and the graphics seem to be working. I also checked to see if it is still selected on the proprietary drivers and it looks like it is. Is there a way to tell for sure?

-Rich

[zerozero]

yes posting the output of the command i asked above

[rwebb616]

Here is the output.

System: Host: mint-dt2 Kernel: 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.7.2) Desktop: N/A Distro: Linux Mint 14 Nadia
Graphics: Card-1: NVIDIA GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti] bus-ID: 02:00.0
Card-2: NVIDIA GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti] bus-ID: 04:00.0
X.org: 1.13.0 driver: nvidia tty size: 417x54 Advanced Data: N/A for root

I went into the Nvidia settings and got the third screen powered but it's all white and now I'm back to not having my mint menu.

In addition every time I log out/in I get an additional menu button and an additional "Show Desktop" icon.

-Rich

[zerozero]

the output should be as user and not as root

[rwebb616]

As user:
Edited:

System: Host: mint-dt2 Kernel: 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.7.2) Desktop: Gnome Distro: Linux Mint 14 Nadia
Graphics: Card-1: NVIDIA GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti] bus-ID: 02:00.0
Card-2: NVIDIA GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti] bus-ID: 04:00.0
X.Org: 1.13.0 driver: nvidia Resolution: 3360x1050, 1680x1050
GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 550 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.3.0 NVIDIA 310.14 Direct Rendering: Yes


-Rich

[rwebb616]

Sorry, for some reason when I pasted it apparently didn't take my copy or something as it was the same as before.. I corrected it.

-Rich

[rwebb616]

Okay - I disabled the third monitor and I now have the mint menu back and have full graphics. Here is the output of the command now:

System: Host: mint-dt2 Kernel: 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.7.2) Desktop: Gnome Distro: Linux Mint 14 Nadia
Graphics: Card-1: NVIDIA GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti] bus-ID: 02:00.0
Card-2: NVIDIA GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti] bus-ID: 04:00.0
X.Org: 1.13.0 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1680x1050@60.0hz, 1680x1050@60.0hz
GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 550 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.3.0 NVIDIA 310.14 Direct Rendering: Yes

-Rich

[zerozero]

the problem is clearly a misconfiguration because of the 3rd monitor, see this:
- with 3 monitors

Resolution: 3360x1050, 1680x1050

- with 2 monitors

Resolution: 1680x1050@60.0hz, 1680x1050@60.0hz

somehow nvidia-settings is mixing up 2 of the monitors as just one output

how to solve it? i don't know i don't use multiple monitors

[rwebb616]

Thats okay - it's working just fine with 2. I really don't need all three anyway.

Thanks for the help!

-Rich