Applications removed

[sydbat]

I have decided to try out the Mate desktop, partially because I have been having a small issue with Cinnamon and want to rule out the DE or system. Also, in every install of Linux the past decade or so, I have used the Gnome Fallback (formerly Flashback) desktop as it is nice and simple. I have not tried Mate for years, but am liking it so far. Much much better these days. Better than Fallback.

All that said, I have noticed that some of the applications I had installed in Cinnamon simply disappeared from the system completely. I have had to reinstall a couple I use all the time. I hope I do not find more missing.

My question is - when I installed the Mate desktop, did it remove or overwrite these applications? I know that I did not remove them. I was using at least one (mpv) about half an hour before I decided to install Mate desktop. Then in Mate, I could not find it, nor was there any trace of it having been installed at all. Weird. Nothing in any log, or in the history of Synaptic showing removal of these items.

Might be nothing, but it would be good to know what happened.

[Moonstone Man]

Might be nothing, but it would be good to know what happened.

You don't say what version of Linux Mint is involved here, nor do you indicate if some other distribution is installed, so not much more than the following can be said:

When you mess around with different desktop environments rather than installing a distribution designed explicitly for that DE, you can, with 100% certainty, expect undefined behaviour, in which case it's all on you to sort out.

Now, that applies to non-Linux Mint systems and non-Linux Mint DEs, which are not the same as Linux Mint MATE or Linux Mint Cinnamon. Since you don't tell us what we need to know, I must also tell you that if you are using a different distribution, this is a Linux Mint support forum. MATE and Cinnamon are desktop environments in their own right, fully apart from Linux Mint MATE and Linux Mint Cinnamon.

[motoryzen]

-- Kadaitcha man makes a valid point. I would say, however, I've had more stable luck out of Manjaro when I installed it's Cinnamon flavor OOTB and then within that installation installed xfce, logged out of that de and logged into xfce, and it was rock solid overall (Shrugs)..So the whole problem of ( don't install another de into that distro specifically designed for cinnamon) thing doesn't always apply to other distros.

I suppose it would depend on more things that I'm not yet familiar enough with though. Mint Cinnamon is a very specific distro adding back to Kadaitcha man's point.--

[sydbat]

You don't say what version of Linux Mint is involved here, nor do you indicate if some other distribution is installed

My bad. Mint 20.1 originally with Cinnamon. No other distros involved.

[Moonstone Man]

You don't say what version of Linux Mint is involved here, nor do you indicate if some other distribution is installed

My bad. Mint 20.1 originally with Cinnamon. No other distros involved.

Ok, well that makes it a problem. I've never seen applications disappear from the system completely and needing to be reinstalled because of a DE switch between Linux Mint DEs, but that doesn't imply it's not possible. What I have seen though is switching desktops making it appear that applications disappear from the system completely and not needing to be reinstalled because they are only missing from the Mint menu.

Then in Mate, I could not find it, nor was there any trace of it having been installed at all. Weird. Nothing in any log, or in the history of Synaptic showing removal of these items.

Did you install MATE desktop to an existing LM Cinnamon so that you could switch DEs at the login page, or did you do a clean install and are perhaps misunderstanding how dual boot works? I presume the former, not the latter. Unfortunately if the former is correct, since you've reinstalled the applications and haven't indicated that there are ongoing problems, only hopes that there weren't going to be any ongoing problems, the problem we need to look at has been fixed so there's no knowing what caused it now.

[sydbat]

I've never encountered this before either. 20+ years of Linux use. I have seen the missing menu entries for whatever reason along the way, but never completely missing apps when switching between DE's.

I do not use Flatpak, and obviously not Snap. Everything is installed either via terminal, Synaptic or .deb. In the Synaptic logs there is no indication that anything was removed, only installed.

Yes, Mate is installed as another DE in LM Cinnamon. I also installed and tried Gnome Flashback, but had some crashes of basic things when changing settings. I had only played with it for about half an hour before deciding it was unstable and installing Mate.

Using

Code: Select all

grep "install " /var/log/dpkg.log

and

Code: Select all

grep "remove " /var/log/dpkg.log

I find that about an hour before I installed the Mate desktop yesterday, the system for some reason, removed mpv, gimp, wine, and a few other things. I think that I was trying to upgrade wine then (via their ppa), but had some issues about broken packages, so I reversed the changes. Maybe I borked it myself...? Or there is some autoremove setting someplace, and instead of just autoremoving the old kernel, my system has turned into GLaDOS.

Thank you for your help thus far.