[Solved] Unexpected desktop change

[Juan Jimenez]

As part of debugging a backup script that eventually gets triggered at system start up I had to reboot my system many times to test it. After one of such reboots, for no explainable reason, my desktop changed a bit as follows:

• The Panel (some call it the task bar) moved from the bottom to the top of the screen

• Some new, unsighly set of icons appeared on the bottom of screen centred

Set of icons at the bottom I never asked to have

DesktopChange.png (29.11 KiB) Viewed 976 times

• The menu structure changed somewhat so I can no longer start typing a string to find all apps that contain that pattern in their names

I have been poking around extensively, especially in Settings (Window Manager, Panel, Desktop, Desktop Settings) but I cannot find anything to change that would bring back the default layout I had when I first installed Mint 20.1. This is very annoying as I am quite certain I did not do this change knowingly nor I can recall getting anywhere near something that would cause such a drastic change not to remember it.

I am, first and foremost, looking for instruction on how to revert to the installation default. Secondly, I am curious if other users have experienced similar random behaviours with Mint 20.1. I have used all versions since Mint 15 and this is the first time I had anything like this.

[LanceM]

Never had it happen to me.
Xfce Panel reset:

Code: Select all

xfce4-panel --quit ; pkill xfconfd ; rm -rf ~/.config/xfce4/panel ; rm -rf ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-panel.xml ; xfce4-panel

[antikythera]

The 'ugly' icons and layout are the default XFCE desktop panel set. Whatever script you are using triggered that change eventually, anyway run the command given in the post above by Lance and all should be okay again.

[Juan Jimenez]

Never had it happen to me.
Xfce Panel reset:

Code: Select all

xfce4-panel --quit ; pkill xfconfd ; rm -rf ~/.config/xfce4/panel ; rm -rf ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-panel.xml ; xfce4-panel

Marvelous! That indeed did the trick. I have saved a copy of everything that was deleted with the rm commands so that if this happens again I can inspect the differences and, from there, try to infer how on earth those configuration changes happened.

Even though this is a trivial problem I am still immensely grateful for the correct prompt reply as I found it really annoying.