Login screen random changes

[Arrababiski]

Hi!

I'm using Mint 18.1 with Cinammon. I have Mate also installed for using when Cinammon has a bad day and wants to be in fallback mode. Can anybody tell me why my login screen changes randomly from this two screens?



90% of the times the login screen is the same as above, but the other 10% the "ugly one" shown below appears. What should I change to use only the first? I tried changing some options in "Login window preferences" and "sudo dpkg-reconfigure mdm" but didn't work, sooner or later the second screen appears once again...

[MintyO]

I think this is a symptom of the same problem that causes my automatic login to fail randomly and sometimes work normally. In Cinnamon and Xfce both. There's some threads to try to correct this, I'm just patiently waiting the releases to mature a bit and some update to fix things.. it's not that ugly

[Cosmo.]

Having 2 desktop environments installed in the same Mint system is something, what is likely to lead into troubles.

[MintyO]

Having 2 desktop environments installed in the same Mint system is something, what is likely to lead into troubles.

I don't know about OP for sure (obviously), but how I interpreted his/her wording is separate Mint with Mate. Thats my situation too.

[Arrababiski]

Thanks MintyO and Cosmo. So If there are more threads trying to solve this issue I only have to sit and wait for a solution... Cosmo, yes, I have both Mate & Cinnamon installed in the same computer, but I had no problems at all except this minor cosmetic issue. I prefer Cinnamon but each time Nvidia drivers are updated there are a lot of problems (failures, fallback mode, etc), so I need to have a backup plan, just in case.

[Moem]

yes, I have both Mate & Cinnamon installed in the same computer

That should be fine as long as they are separate installations. You could dual-boot them with no problem at all.

But installing two desktop environments on the same installation is not recommended and can lead to unpredictable problems.

[Cosmo.]

I have both Mate & Cinnamon installed in the same computer

Please clarify this. To my understanding this is one system with both desktops in the same system. MintyO interpreted it as 2 separate systems (= multiboot), one with Cinnamon, one with Mate. So what this actually the situation?

[Arrababiski]

Hi! Mate & Cinammon installed in the same computer without dual boot or multiboot. Basically I installed Mint with Cinammon and then in Software Centre installed mint-meta-mate package. Later I read that wasn't a good idea, but I had both desktops installed without any problem for more than a year (except the login screen changes of this thread, of course, and Cinnamon crashes & fallback mode inmediately following Nvidia driver updates) so I have no plans to uninstall any of them. Thanks for your help.

[Cosmo.]

This is just that, what I understood from the beginning.

2 desktop environments give problems. This doesn't mean, that the problems appear at once or that the user notices them at once. If you want to keep both, you have to live with the consequences. It is your decision.