after update must hold down right mouse button [solved]

[rayandrews]

All,

Last night I did a routine upgrade and now when I right click I get the popup menu as normal, but I have to hold down the right button while I slide the pointer down to whatever item in the menu I want to perform. I find this very unpleasant, I'd much rather be able to click and release the right button to bring up the menu as before, then slide down to the item I want and then left click to peform that action. I can understand that for some folks this change would be welcome, since one click>release are all that's needed, but it doesn't work for me. How can I change that back?

[viking777]

It is not a new feature, it is a fault. It might help diagnosis if we knew what it was that was upgraded, so open synaptic package manager go to File>History and copy the list from there for the relevant date/time. Also you had better tell us what update repositories you are using, Testing, Incoming or Latest. I can't promise that information will give us the cause or the cure, but it won't hurt.

[rayandrews]

It is not a new feature, it is a fault. It might help diagnosis if we knew what it was that was upgraded, so open synaptic package manager go to File>History and copy the list from there for the relevant date/time. Also you had better tell us what update repositories you are using, Testing, Incoming or Latest. I can't promise that information will give us the cause or the cure, but it won't hurt.

viking,

That was fast! Ok, stand by, I'll post that info momentarily. I just assumed that this was some new, latest, greatest way of using the mouse.

[rayandrews]

... Nuts, I'm about to mirror my main install to another disk, and prior to that I run BleachBit -- I think I deleted the upgrade logs Anyway, yesterday there were three recommended upgrades as I recall, so it's in one of those. As to repositories, there is a plain text file that lists those is there not? I can't remember it. Give me the name and I'll copy it here, tx.

[viking777]

Without the upgrade logs (which bleachbit will destroy) the other info is not going to mean much, but anyway it is called /etc/apt/sources.list. But unless you know what you have upgraded I really don't know how anyone is going to help you of course I don't know everything by a long way so I could be wrong.

[rayandrews]

.... I figure someone else is bound to have the same issue, since I was just doing the sock upgrades, so maybe it will come out in the wash.
Hmmm, I have a backup install, let me boot that, it hasn't been bleached. The repository file will be accurate and when I upgrade it, it will grab more stuff (since it's not as up to date) but, again, whatever it is will be in the most recent upgrades produced, so ...

[rayandrews]

FWIW sources.list:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import backport
#backport romeo
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free

[rayandrews]

viking,

Well I dunno, I booted my backup install, did the upgrades and everything was fine. Then I went back to my main install and it had sorted itself out. We'll never know what caused it. Maybe some changes just require a reboot. Thanks tho!

[viking777]

FWIW sources.list:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import backport
#backport romeo
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free

Hmm, puzzling.
These are the repos for lmde latest:

Code: Select all

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/security testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/multimedia testing main non-free


And these are the repos for LMDE testing:

Code: Select all

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import backport romeo
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free

And yours appear to be a mixture of the two. This may, that is, MAY, account for the problem I don't know for sure.
I would suggest that what you probably want is the first of those two sets of repos rather than a mixture of the two. But you may know differently, it is not my machine after all.

[rayandrews]

FWIW sources.list:

Hmm, puzzling.
These are the repos for lmde latest:

Code: Select all

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/security testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/multimedia testing main non-free


And these are the repos for LMDE testing:

Code: Select all

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import backport romeo
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free

And yours appear to be a mixture of the two. This may, that is, MAY, account for the problem I don't know for sure.
I would suggest that what you probably want is the first of those two sets of repos rather than a mixture of the two. But you may know differently, it is not my machine after all.

At some point I was trying to get KDE installed and the dependencies refused to come out right. Someone advised me to modify my repos as shown. I suppose I'd better fix that, I can hardly complain about bugs if I'm not running something reasonably standard. Which of the two you posted should I use? I'm happy to test, so I presume the latter. I often find bugs that other dudes miss because I often do things a bit strangely. It's long past time I started trying to make myself useful. BTW, I wish the 'Save Preview Submit buttons were duplicated above the text box, it would save having to scroll down just to hit the button.

[rayandrews]

viking,

FWIW, I've gone with the 'testing' repos. I hit system update, and it wants to update 1200 packages!!

So I'm doing that now. God be with me.

[viking777]

Yes it would do that as you are mainly tracking 'latest' so I thought that is what you wanted. Too late now I guess, but good luck anyway. I am sorry to say it, but your chances of coming through an update like that unscathed are approaching zero. That is why you have to update debian (testing) regularly (daily preferably but at least weekly), that way you have got a chance of figuring out what updates caused what problems, but with 1200+ updates you have no chance of working that out.

[rayandrews]

Yes it would do that as you are mainly tracking 'latest' so I thought that is what you wanted. Too late now I guess, but good luck anyway. I am sorry to say it, but your chances of coming through an update like that unscathed are approaching zero. That is why you have to update debian (testing) regularly (daily preferably but at least weekly), that way you have got a chance of figuring out what updates caused what problems, but with 1200+ updates you have no chance of working that out.

Zero is right! Looks like I've feed myself to the lions. On rebooting this morning it looked like I was going to win, but then Gnome 3 started to load I had no idea this 'testing' was going to try to convert me to Gnome 3, if I had, I'd not have done anything so foolish as to try it. Gnome 3 refuses to load, and leaves me with two black screens with only the mouse pointer working. I'm here with my backup install. Is there any way to destroy the monster and get back to Gnome 2.x? I'm happy to run a testing version of LMDE but only if I can avoid Gnome 3 -- which I believe Linus himself called 'a disease'.

[squeezy]

Is there any way to destroy the monster and get back to Gnome 2.x? I'm happy to run a testing version of LMDE but only if I can avoid Gnome 3 -- which I believe Linus himself called 'a disease'.

The only ways to avoid Gnome 3 are to not upgrade to UP4 (temporary solution) or run the Xfce version.

[viking777]

You can only avoid gnome3 by avoiding gnome altogether (KDE, Xfce,Lmde, Fluxbox etc.etc) Gnome3 is the future so live with it or drop gnome. For me gnome 3 is the best thing that has happened to gnome in over a decade, but then I hated gnome2 about as much as you hate gnome3. (btw linus changed his mind later on).

Of course if gnome3 doesn't load then you won't be able to appreciate how good it is.

For the time being I don't think there is much you can do. I don't suppose you have a disk image of your previous version? No of course you don't or you wouldn't be asking. What is your 'backup install'?

If that is a disk image of LMDE, then all you have to do is change the sources to the one I first recommended

I would suggest that what you probably want is the first of those two sets of repos

And update again. If your backup install is another distro then I fear you will only be able to start from scratch with a fresh install of LMDE.

[rayandrews]

You can only avoid gnome3 by avoiding gnome altogether (KDE, Xfce,Lmde, Fluxbox etc.etc) Gnome3 is the future so live with it or drop gnome. For me gnome 3 is the best thing that has happened to gnome in over a decade, but then I hated gnome2 about as much as you hate gnome3. (btw linus changed his mind later on).

Of course if gnome3 doesn't load then you won't be able to appreciate how good it is.

For the time being I don't think there is much you can do. I don't suppose you have a disk image of your previous version? No of course you don't or you wouldn't be asking. What is your 'backup install'?

If that is a disk image of LMDE, then all you have to do is change the sources to the one I first recommended

I would suggest that what you probably want is the first of those two sets of repos

And update again. If your backup install is another distro then I fear you will only be able to start from scratch with a fresh install of LMDE.

viking,

Well well, a Gnome 3 fan! You know, my mission in my computing life is to sort out why some people love (say) G3 while other people detest it. It seems to me that we eventually need 'left brain' distros and 'right brain' distros -- it could be that the 'please everyone' distro is simply impossible. Anyway, I can't try it because it won't boot, and I hear that it's notorious for trouble with dual monitors.

My backup install is just that, another partition with a 'safe' install of LMDE, and that's fine, so I'm really not in any trouble On my main install (the one I just screwed up) I ran 'apt-get remove libgtk-3-common' and it seems to have killed the beast. For some reason my system then booted to Xfce4! and I'm going to give that a try.

Oh, if Linus did indeed change his mind about G3 I'd be very interested to read about it. Do you have a link?

Thanks for the help!

[viking777]

Well well, a Gnome 3 fan! You know, my mission in my computing life is to sort out why some people love (say) G3 while other people detest it. It seems to me that we eventually need 'left brain' distros and 'right brain' distros

You know what, that is a fascinating idea! Subconsciously that may be the case who knows. On a more conscious level though, the reasons I could never stand gnome2 was that awful monstrosity of a menu (I don't mind the fact it was at the top instead of the bottom, I only mind the fact that it was impossible to ever find anything in it and therefore it was not fit for purpose). Strange thing is though that I have read many posts mourning its passing and begging to know how to get it back again

Dual monitors? Well I suppose I could post a screenshot, but perhaps you will just believe me - I have dual monitors. They are different types and different sizes and gnome3 works perfectly well with them. Graphics drivers are more of the problem here. Certainly with my Nvidia card the default Nouveau driver is hopeless, you might as well just have the old 'vesa' instead. But once I install the Nvidia proprietary drivers (and my old xorg.conf which I have kept for years), everything works exactly as it should.

Good luck with Xfce I hope that 'floats your boat' as they say.

Linus's opinions -

http://techhamlet.com/2011/12/linus-tor ... t-gnome-3/

Pay particular attention to the last paragraph of that site.

Gnome-shell (which is the desktop environment of gnome3 - people very often confuse the two) is like a framework on which you build the type of desktop environment you want. In it's basic form I didn't like gnome-shell either, but it takes a little bit of work to make it what you want, and the extensions site linked to in that post is the tool that can make this happen, usually with very little knowledge, only the ability to first, know what it is you want, and second to point and click a mouse. Some people of course don't even know what they want and others can't be bothered to take the time to install extensions that give them what they want, they prefer someone else to do it for them (which is what Mint are doing with Cinnamon) but for me something that somebody else has fashioned for you can never be as good as something you have had a hand in yourself and that is why I like gnome3, it doesn't matter which side of your brain is dominant, as long as you are prepared to use it you can fashion something that will suit you. It is really just like putting different wallpaper on your desktop or themes on your browser - only far more important. I feel sorry for the people that have dashed away to Xfce and the like, they are missing out on something quite good and Linus was man enough to admit that, good on him. (I am not saying this applies to you particularly, it looks to me as if you have no choice but to use Xfce at the moment).

Lastly, congratulations on having a backup install - so many people don't bother. I would check the sources.list for that as well and make sure it is set to the 'latest' repos as mentioned earlier. However in a week or so even 'latest' will be getting gnome3 (it is already in 'Incoming') so prepare yourself for that. How? Disk Images are the best way, I always refer people to this thread nowadays:

viewtopic.php?f=197&t=89189

It is worth while getting to grips with if you have the time, it will save a lot of tears later on. The latest post I saw in that thread says that there is now an English language version available (previously German).

[rayandrews]

So it seems this is a Thunar issue, not a general issue. I didn't realize that until I tried Dolphin and had no trouble. Anyway the fix is to do: Menu > Settings > Appearance ... then Pick any 'Style' except the "Mint" ones.