MINT MENU vanished after system freeze - Whisker Menu ???

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LinWinux
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MINT MENU vanished after system freeze - Whisker Menu ???

Post by LinWinux »

Hi everyone. Now this is pretty strange. I'm running Mint 18 with the XFCE desktop. By default I had the Mint Menu which worked perfectly fine until last night. Last night I tried using a USB adapter for Sata III drives and the system literally froze up. Even the churning symbol by the mouse pointer froze. Had no choice other than performing a hard reset. Linux Mint came back up as before, everything worked just perfectly ... except for the fact that my Mint Menu button (bottom left corner) literally vanished into thin air, being replaced AUTOMATICALLY with the Whisker Menu instead.

Okay, I thought, no big deal ... just right click the taskbar, choose add new items, etc. etc. etc ... but sadly there's no Mint Menu to be found anywhere. Whisker Menu yes, but no Mint Menu.

No problem, let's just add a new launcher and see what's available in the bin. Bummer, nothing there for the Mint Menu either (least not that I can recognize).

Hmmmm, alright then, just for sh'ts and giggles let's see what the software center has to offer if I search for ... Mint. Hey, how about that? The Mint Menu is the first thing that shows up and it's already installed. BUT it's not showing the XFCE Mint Menu that I was using. Instead, it's showing me the Mint Menu for Mate. Okay, I always install Caja as my file manager which means the Mate files were installed by default, so that's probably why the Software Center is showing me the Mate Main Menu. Weird stuff ...
Mint Main Menu WAS running ... Whisker Menu IS running now ... and the Software Center only shows me the Mate Main Menu which I don't use. :?

Did some googling and forum searches, found plenty of similar situations, but nothing where the existing pre-configured Mint Menu was literally and inexplicably replaced by the Whisker Menu. Using the terminal for a menu reset didn't work either. Now granted, the Whisker Menu is pretty nice, but I was really hoping to get my customized Mint Menu back again. Any Gurus out there wanna try and give me a hand?
I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

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LinWinux
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Re: MINT MENU vanished after system freeze - Whisker Menu ???

Post by LinWinux »

Still haven't been able to figure out how to get the regular Mint Menu with green Mint button on the left side of the starter panel back. Is it a bug after the system freeze? According to the Software Manager the mint menu is installed ... but after the reboot it was "magically & inexplicably" replaced by the Whisker Menu. Very strange ...

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Re: MINT MENU vanished after system freeze - Whisker Menu ???

Post by Fred Barclay »

Just a few thoughts:
The "Mint Menu" in Xfce is, in fact, the Whisker Menu. At least it always has been on the versions of Mint Xfce that I've tried (including Mint 18). Perhaps your menu didn't actually vanish and be replaced, but was just renamed to Whisker Menu?
Does it function any differently? Or is it just the icon and the name that are different (if so, we can easily fix that)?

The Software Center should show you the MATE Mint menu, even if you hadn't installed Caja.

As to the source of the freeze, I wonder if it might have something to do with using Caja as the file manager on Xfce? I'm suspecting this because you were doing a file operation (mounting an SATA III hard drive) and perhaps you ran across some incompatibility between Caja and Xfce. Just a thought. ;)
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Re: MINT MENU vanished after system freeze - Whisker Menu ???

Post by LinWinux »

Hi there. Well, I've been running Mint XFCE with Caja as my file manager for the past 4 years. I don't mix the file managers either, just leave Thunar alone while sticking to Caja exclusively. Never a problem with Mint 16, 17, or 18, until now. The reason why I use Caja is because it's the only file manager with an instant audio preview of music files, simply by hovering over an archived song. I'd like to use Cinnamon but don't for that very same reason, because even though the audio preview is usable, it's just a bit more cumbersome than hovering over a file. I have about 400 store bought CDs that I archived for making "best of everything" personal archives. That hover preview feature is just fantastic for that. Sorry, getting off track here ... :wink:

Anyway, the mint menu and the xfce whisker-plugin are both installed, as is the Mate desktop ... not to be confused with the Complete Mate desktop ??? When I stated that the menu switched, that's exactly what happened. I'm quite familiar with the Whisker menu since I used Xubuntu for awhile as well and with a bit of fiddling you can actually get the Whisker menu to look pretty much identical to the Mint menu. The menu button was also replaced with the Whisker menu button (round, blue background with mouse). So it was truly the actual Whisker menu that appeared ... magically. :shock:

It's not a big deal and my current Whisker menu looks and feels pretty much exactly as my Mint menu did before. Took about a minute for those adjustments. I was pretty much just trying to figure out if those two menus were completely separate applications or if they were the same thing with just minor cosmetic adjustments. Based on my experience and the brief adjustments since that system freeze, I have to conclude that both menus are the same application. Like I said, it took about 60 seconds to make the Whisker menu look & feel so much like the previous Mint menu ... that I honestly can't even tell the difference anymore.
Interesting ... Strange ... Fascinating ... Resourceful ... Functional ... LINUX.

Bottom line? If anyone else out there loses their Mint menu while maintaining access to the Whisker menu, just use that one instead and tweak it a little bit.

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nozkaer

Re: MINT MENU vanished after system freeze - Whisker Menu ???

Post by nozkaer »

Have the same problem. Was running Firefox and asking to launch Gimp (using mintmenu) when computer shut down (out of battery)...

When I rebooted the computer, Mint menu was replaced by Whisker !!!

Have googled and tried many things but had no success :

1) right click + add to pannel did not work : no mintmenu proposed !
Just XFCE (including Whisker) menu proposed ;

2) sudo apt-get remove --purge mintmenu
- sudo apt-get install -f mintmenu

3) mintmenu --reset

4) mintmenu

Got a Python error :
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gi/overrides/Gtk.py:50: RuntimeWarning: You have imported the Gtk 2.0 module. Because Gtk 2.0 was not designed for use with introspection some of the interfaces and API will fail. As such this is not supported by the pygobject development team and we encourage you to port your app to Gtk 3 or greater. PyGTK is the recomended python module to use with Gtk 2.0
warnings.warn(warn_msg, RuntimeWarning)

5) sudo apt-get install python-xlib=0.14+20091101-1ubuntu2

Got a "not found error" :
E: « 0.14+20091101-1ubuntu2 » of « python-xlib » could not be found

My configuration :

RELEASE=18
CODENAME=sarah
EDITION="Xfce 64-bit"
DESCRIPTION="Linux Mint 18 Sarah"
DESKTOP=Xfce
TOOLKIT=GTK

Have managed to custom Whisker to get it work "as if" Mint Menu, but would greatly appreciate to get back my Mint Menu !
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Re: MINT MENU vanished after system freeze - Whisker Menu ???

Post by LinWinux »

Well, XFCE is XFCE, regardless if Mint or not. More than likely the Mint Mnu is based off the Whisker Menu, and not the other way around. So having said that, I guess it really shouldn't matter which of the two menus is being used, especially if you ... like me ... managed to get your whisker menu working almost identical to the mint menu. The two are so similar with a little tweaking that it really makes no difference to me anymore, which of the two menus I'm using. The Mint Menu is just a tad more attractive, just a tad though. I wouldn't know how to prove this of course, but if the Mint Menu is based off the default XFCE Whisker Menu, then judging by our experiences clearly the Whisker Menu is the one that's more stable ... :roll: :wink:
(still using Whisker today, even though my Mint XFCE has been upgraded twice since then, Mint Menu just never came back)

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Re: MINT MENU vanished after system freeze - Whisker Menu ???

Post by mint4all »

LinWinux wrote: Mon Apr 16, 2018 2:17 am Well, XFCE is XFCE, regardless if Mint or not. More than likely the Mint Mnu is based off the Whisker Menu, and not the other way around. So having said that, I guess it really shouldn't matter which of the two menus is being used, especially if you ... like me ... managed to get your whisker menu working almost identical to the mint menu. The two are so similar with a little tweaking that it really makes no difference to me anymore, which of the two menus I'm using. The Mint Menu is just a tad more attractive, just a tad though. I wouldn't know how to prove this of course, but if the Mint Menu is based off the default XFCE Whisker Menu, then judging by our experiences clearly the Whisker Menu is the one that's more stable ... :roll: :wink: (still using Whisker today, even though my Mint XFCE has been upgraded twice since then, Mint Menu just never came back)
Greetings!

Fwiw: according to the package manager (synaptic), the "Mintmenu" you seem to be referring to is Clem Lefevre's menu for the MATE-desktop, customized for the Mint distribution. Because of that, the mate-specific dependencies are not fully satisfied by the XFCE-desktop configuration, thus the errors you've run into. Afaict, XFCE's "Whisker menu" -- actually, an optional panel applet -- derives its entries from XFCE's built-in menu file. That "native" menu can always be popped up in a couple of ways: right-click on the desktop's background (if so configured on the Desktop's "settings"), or by adding the native menu's panel applet [button] to your panel(s).

Imhe, if you ever delete whisker's panel button (i did), it is easy to get it back by re-adding it to your panel(s). Only gotcha: its native icon (stylized mouse logo) appears instead of the green mint-logo, something that can easily be fixed/tweaked. In addition, the now-stable "menulibre" menu editor can be used to tweak the underlying menu file, or to create a customized one (ie for an office-type, turn-key XFCE-system).

Last thoughts: why would a system-crash/-freeze trash your panel(s)' layout? Ime, XFCE constantly refreshes its config files in real time, updates that, if cached ie on an SSD, get lost upon a crash/freeze.
bayou self

Re: MINT MENU vanished after system freeze - Whisker Menu ???

Post by bayou self »

@LinWinux

Please send me a PM. I may have an answer to a printing problem you mentioned recently on a different Linux forum. Thanks.
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