Cinnamon menu looks different after update

[Termy]

Awesome. I love Linux. So much fun.

[Penn]

Regardless of aptitude and apt-get or even apt (which I tend to use) and shared libraries, different methods of installing the same packages can have different effects. One example I personally came across with Stretch came when adding DMOs repository key (deb-multimedia.org). Downloading the deb and using gdebi it wouldn't take so I to use the "dpkg" command on their site and it worked. I've come across other examples personally but cant recall details.

Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned in the manner I did anyway since this has gone from approaching your actual issue to a discussion on installation and upgrade methods. There are possible other reasons. If you didn't reinstall yet-

Check system monitor to see if any Mate processes are running. Unless you are in fallback mode there shouldn't be.
Check keybindings.
Or maybe you installed the applet that emulates Mate's menu and have both the true Cinnamon menu applet and that spices applet running? They shouldn't be overlapping but who knows. Those are just my first guesses.

[smurphos]

Differences between Update Manager, Synaptic, and `apt-get upgrade`

The article probably should probably cover mint's apt python wrapper which depending on arguments can call the debian apt, apt-get, aptitude, dpkg or other mint specific scripts under the hood...

These snippets of it's source code show the mapping...notably apt dist-upgrade will actually perform /usr/bin/apt full-upgrade

Code: Select all

if argcommand in ("autoremove", "list", "show", "install", "remove", "purge", "update", "upgrade", "full-upgrade", "edit-sources"):
    # apt
    command = "/usr/bin/apt %s %s" % (argcommand, argoptions)
elif argcommand in ("clean", "dselect-upgrade", "build-dep", "check", "autoclean", "source", "moo"):
    # apt-get
    command = "apt-get %s %s" % (argcommand, argoptions)
elif argcommand in ("changelog", "reinstall"):
    # aptitude
    command = "aptitude %s %s" % (argcommand, argoptions)
elif argcommand in ("stats", "depends", "rdepends", "policy"):
    # apt-cache
    command = "apt-cache %s %s" % (argcommand, argoptions)
elif argcommand in ("recommends", ):
    command = "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintsystem/mint-apt-recommends.py " + argoptions
elif argcommand in ("showhold", "hold", "unhold"):
    # apt-mark
    command = "apt-mark %s %s" % (argcommand, argoptions)
elif argcommand in ("markauto", "markmanual"):
    # apt-mark
    command = "apt-mark %s %s" % (argcommand[4:], argoptions)
elif argcommand == "contains":
    command = "dpkg -S %s" % argoptions
elif argcommand == "content":
    command = "dpkg -L %s" % argoptions
elif argcommand == "deb":
    command = "dpkg -i %s" % argoptions
elif argcommand == "build":
    command = "dpkg-buildpackage %s" % argoptions
elif argcommand == "version":
    command = "/usr/lib/linuxmint/common/version.py %s" % argoptions
elif argcommand == "download":
    command = "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintsystem/mint-apt-download.py " + argoptions
elif argcommand == "add-repository":
    command = "add-apt-repository %s" % argoptions
elif argcommand == "search":
    command = "aptitude -w %s %s %s" % (columns, argcommand, argoptions)
else:
    usage()
    sys.exit(1)

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aliases = {
    "dist-upgrade": "full-upgrade",
    "sources": "edit-sources",
    "held": "showhold"
}

[smurphos]

Regarding the OP's original problem the screenshot doesn't quite look like the CinnVIIStarkMenu - it does look like the Mate fallback menu...

What happens after restarting cinnamon 'Alt F2' then type r and enter

[Mia]

Check system monitor to see if any Mate processes are running. Unless you are in fallback mode there shouldn't be.
Check keybindings.
Or maybe you installed the applet that emulates Mate's menu and have both the true Cinnamon menu applet and that spices applet running? They shouldn't be overlapping but who knows. Those are just my first guesses.

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m $ pgrep -a [mM]ate
5285 mate-panel --replace
m $ pgrep -af [mM]ate
5285 mate-panel --replace
5332 /usr/lib/mate-panel/wnck-applet
5338 /usr/lib/mate-panel/clock-applet
5340 /usr/lib/mate-panel/notification-area-applet

[Mia]

What happens after restarting cinnamon 'Alt F2' then type r and enter

Nothing changes - the same behavior.

[Mia]

Code: Select all

m $ pgrep -a [mM]ate
5285 mate-panel --replace
m $ pgrep -af [mM]ate
5285 mate-panel --replace
5332 /usr/lib/mate-panel/wnck-applet
5338 /usr/lib/mate-panel/clock-applet
5340 /usr/lib/mate-panel/notification-area-applet

Actually,

Code: Select all

pkill mate-panel

solves the problem. But I can't get it why does it start. The only installed package depending on mate-panel is cinnamon.

[Penn]

So my first guess (system monitor) is the case, you have both the Cinnamon and Mate panels running.

Check system log to see if Cinnamon may be crashing without you noticing since a Cinnamon crash will automatically start mate-panel as part of fallback. If you are getting a recurring crash that is a different problem and solving that will solve this.

If it is starting at login/startup and no crash/fallback of Cinnamon is occurring it is obviously somehow in the login/startup routine. Again, just a guess, but maybe "cinnamon --replace" will overwrite any values that are executing mate-panel.

[Mia]

Nothing interesting about cinnamon in /var/log.

[Dave B]

Rather than a clean installation. Possibly first try adding another user account, log into that account to check if the same thing happens?

[BG405]

Possibly first try adding another user account, log into that account ...

Good suggestion.

Do those two methods always activate the same menu respectively? That doesn't sound like a Cinnamon crash as you seem to have found already; maybe the key assignment has been changed?

[Mia]

Hi all. I've put off this issue for a while since you helped me to "fix" it temporarily by killing the mate-panel process (I'd have a more urgent problem with some math software, and I even tried another Linux distros but came back to Mint - it's a long and interesting story, but this topic is definitely not the best place to tell it). Later I tried to run cinnamon by another user - and it worked well, no panel issues at all. It made me curious, and I started to try different software under the same new user and finally found some more differences in several GUI programs. So I decided, maybe the source of all the issues is my very old dot-files (I didn't clean it up for years). I created a totally empty $HOME dir and copied there only several dot-files I've edited by hands (like, .config/mpv/*, .zshrc, .gitconfig, and a couple more). Everything works fine now. Thanks for your help.