Problems after upgrade to Mint 21 (Cinnamon): panel; terminal; SublimeText

[BeyondLies_MintForum]

Dear all

I have done the upgrade to Mint 21, using the GUI tool (or rather the GUI tool that also keeps a terminal open . .). The tool reported no problems - at least not in the GUI - but I find that I have a small bunch of problems after the upgrade. Here are some of those problems.

I would appreciate any help. I must say I am a bit disappointed by the number of problems.

1) I have a top panel that is set to auto-hide. It never shows - not even when I leave the point at the top centre of the screen. Setting the panel to another setting does show it - but I want auto-hide, as I had before.

2) When I open a terminal (XFCE terminal, syslog messages - about e.g. what the firewall is blocking - appear within the terminal (!).

3) When I launch a terminal (XFCE) via keyboard shortcut, it appears behind other windows and . . I get a notification containing the name of the program. Weird.

4) The header bar of SublimeText shows no window decorations: there is the title, but not close, maximise, etc. I find that if I switch to certain Sublime themes, then thinks work. One of the working themes is the default theme. The 'adaptive' theme is among those that does not work.

Also, I had broken packages - apt tells me to run `apt --fix-broken install` - but running that command did seem to fix that problem.

EDIT: oh, and - or perhaps as the source of some of these problems - the update manager messed around with my PPAs and also removed some packages. I was expecting a list of what had been done to be made readily available after installation. But it isn't and I can't see anything about such a file within the release notes. Can anyone help on this front? But, ah, I see that disabled PPAs - those at least - show in Software Sources.

FURTHER EDIT: I'm getting a load of warnings from apt/Update Manager about

[Cosmo.]

#1 Try to move the panel (only temporarily) to the right or left side. The same behavior there?

#2 & #3: You have Cinnamon, but a xfce terminal?

#4 Did you check, if the theme is compatible with Cinnamon 5.4?

the update manager messed around with my PPAs and also removed some packages. I was expecting a list of what had been done to be made readily available after installation. But it isn't and I can't see anything about such a file within the release notes.

The update manager? Or a typo?

[BeyondLies_MintForum]

Thank you for the help.

On 1: yes, same behaviour there.

On 2 and 3: yes.

On 4: well, the theme at issue is a _Sublime_ theme; it is internal to SublimeText.

'The update manager? Or a typo?' I think I mean the mintupgrade program.

[Cosmo.]

Open Users & Groups and create a new account. Log out and into the new account. Same behavior there?

[BeyondLies_MintForum]

Same panel problem on a new user account? I do not know, because I have encountered another problem. To wit: I create a new user, using Users and Groups, and when I try to log onto the new account, Mint keeps rejecting the password. I do have a Yubikey associated with my main user account - and all user accounts? - but even when I have the key inserted, I cannot log into the new account (though I can log into the old account).

Here is another datum, this time about the syslog-in-terminal: it does not happen when I use the Gnome terminal. Yet, Gnome Terminal lacks close etc. buttons - just as SublimeText did. And that lack of buttons occurred even when I changed my Mint themes (from what they were, which were inbuilt Mint themes) to something new and then back again.

I feel some bug reports coming on.

[BeyondLies_MintForum]

I found them mintupgrade log. It was at the root of my home directory, and called 'mintupgrade-<date>.log'. It is very large.

Dealing with this stuff is like the bad old days of Linux, when one had to be near-expert, and spend considerable time, in order to do fairly simple things.

[Cosmo.]

I create a new user, using Users and Groups, and when I try to log onto the new account, Mint keeps rejecting the password.

By default a new user does not have a password, but is member of the nopasswdlogin group. For this purpose this is perfectly OK. If you did not change this, you should not need to enter a password.

[BeyondLies_MintForum]

Thanks, but I set a password. Indeed I did so for two accounts - once by using the Users and Groups GUI, and once via terminal. In neither case can I log into the account. As I said: YubiKey might be implicated.

[BeyondLies_MintForum]

I disabled the YubiKey. Then I managed to log into one of the newly created accounts.

On one of the new accounts, I created a top panel and set it to auto-hide. It worked, though on this new user I have a bottom panel too, whereas on my normal user I do not.

On my normal user account, deleting the top panel and recreating it is working so far. Perhaps I had a bad applet. I should have looked at the 'looking glass' debug output.

[Cosmo.]

A bottom panel is the default position. Of course you can move it to another place or delete it:

[BeyondLies_MintForum]

Cosmo: you seem to misunderstand. On my usual user account, I have a top panel and no other panel. Instead of a bottom panel, I use the dock called 'plank'. After upgrading to Mint 21, the top panel - which was set to 'auto-hide' - never showed. It should show when I put the pointer at the top of the screen. After deleting the top panel and re-creating it, the 'auto-hide' setting for that panel worked as expected.