<SOLVED> minimize button closes programs rather than reduce to bar

[bearzlos]

My apologies for the length of this post and information that might be missing to reach a solution. I searched the archives but found only one thread tangential to my problem.

I just did a clean install of Mint 20.3 Cinnamon on my desktop computer. The problems I will describe do NOT happen on my laptop with the same installation. (Yes, I understand that 20.3 is an older version.)

When I open a program on my laptop (let’s say to review a word processing document) an icon representing that program appears underlined on one of the two bars I have set up. If I click the minimize button (-) in the upper right corner of the window the program minimizes to one of the bars. I can then click on the minimized icon to reopen the program. No problems there.

But on my just installed desktop when I click the minimize button the program closes – it does not minimize to the bar. It vanishes. No icon. The item I was working on is just gone and I cannot reopen it.

To get back the program I must open Ksysguard (system monitor), highlight the process, and kill it. Only then can I relaunch the program and continue my work.

But it gets worse. I can get multiple instances Ksysguard. And of a program displayed in Ksysguard (e.g. Gwenview to view a picture) and I have to kill each of the processes to again see my picture.

If I am listening to a music track (e.g. mp3) when I minimize the song it not only disappears but continues playing. Yes, I understand that I should stop the track playing prior to minimizing. But now without an icon/launcher to reopen the music track the only way to stop the music is the kill the process in Ksysguard.

If it's a Word document that I’m reading using Codeweavers/Crossover that document will disappear from the screen and I cannot re-access it without killing the Winword.exe process in Ksysguard. But when I then reopen the Word document inevitably I get a screen telling me that the document had errors and needs to be recovered.

If it's claws-mail that program and/or the message I’m viewing disappears and I have to reopen claws-mail. But then multiple copies of the e-mail I'm working on appear on screen and I have to kill each in Ksysguard.

It's so bizarre. At first I thought it was a problem with Codeweavers/Crossover
because I first encountered the issue while working on an MSWord document. But the
problem goes far beyond Crossover, to other programs not related to it such as
.jpgs, .mp3s. mp4s

So I am baffled by this strange behavior.

Has anyone encountered this before? Anyone with suggestions short of doing another clean install to flush our whatever “gremlins” are in my system?

Thanks.
Bearzlos

[mikeflan]

We don't see this problem much. Next time you minimize, hold down Alt and then pressure tab. Highlight the program you minimized and then let go of Alt. That is one way to restore the program and not have to kill it.

If you pressure the X does it close the program?

I see this is a new install. Why LM 20.3? Can you try LM 21.3 instead?

If you want to fix this LM 20.3 instead of install LM 21.3, then type this in a terminal:

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxxxrzc0 --usb

Post the output to this forum in "Code" tags. The button that inserts these Code tags is marked </>, which is in the mini toolbar above the edit box where you type your reply.
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=364929
viewtopic.php?t=364941

[bearzlos]

OK, thanks. Here is the output you requested.

The commands you asked me to try after pressing the (-) button do restore the program. Thanks. But the concern persists that upon minimization I'm not getting the restoring icon launchers on either my upper or lower bars. And recovered MSWord documents still show up telling me that the document is problematic and needs to be recovered.

So the responses on my desktop now are unlike on my laptop and unlike what was happening on this pooter with 20.3 prior to a disastrous upgrade to 21.3. That upgrade I described in another thread here centered on Firefox appearing very dark plus some other problems. I tried suggestions offered by others here (thank you) but was never able to get 21.3 running successfully as the prior install of 20.3 had been.

So I'm not inclined to retry 21.3. I'd really like to get this install of 20.3 working perfectly as it was a few months ago.

Thank you! )
Bearzlos

Code: Select all

gil@phred:~$ inxi -Fxxxrzc0 --usb
System:
  Kernel: 5.4.0-200-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 9.4.0 
  Desktop: Cinnamon 5.2.7 wm: muffin 5.2.1 dm: LightDM 1.30.0 
  Distro: Linux Mint 20.3 Una base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal 
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: Gigabyte product: AB350M-D3H v: N/A serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: Gigabyte model: AB350M-D3H-CF serial: <filter> 
  UEFI: American Megatrends v: F51c date: 07/02/2020 
Battery:
  Device-1: hidpp_battery_0 model: Logitech Wireless Keyboard 
  serial: <filter> charge: 55% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes 
  status: Discharging 
CPU:
  Topology: Quad Core model: AMD Ryzen 3 2200G with Radeon Vega Graphics 
  bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Zen L2 cache: 2048 KiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm 
  bogomips: 27947 
  Speed: 1490 MHz min/max: 1600/3500 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 
  1: 1429 2: 1518 3: 1420 4: 1440 
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Raven Ridge [Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Vega Mobile Series] 
  vendor: Gigabyte driver: amdgpu v: kernel bus ID: 07:00.0 
  chip ID: 1002:15dd 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: amdgpu,ati 
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 2560x1440~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics (RAVEN DRM 3.35.0 
  5.4.0-200-generic LLVM 12.0.0) 
  v: 4.6 Mesa 21.2.6 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Raven/Raven2/Fenghuang HDMI/DP Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
  v: kernel bus ID: 07:00.1 chip ID: 1002:15de 
  Device-2: AMD Family 17h HD Audio vendor: Gigabyte driver: snd_hda_intel 
  v: kernel bus ID: 07:00.6 chip ID: 1022:15e3 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.0-200-generic 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: Gigabyte driver: r8169 v: kernel port: f000 bus ID: 03:00.0 
  chip ID: 10ec:8168 
  IF: eno1 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 232.89 GiB used: 93.95 GiB (40.3%) 
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 860 EVO 250GB size: 232.89 GiB 
  speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> rev: 1B6Q scheme: GPT 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 74.54 GiB used: 11.04 GiB (14.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 
  ID-2: /home size: 123.49 GiB used: 82.91 GiB (67.1%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/sda4 
  ID-3: swap-1 size: 30.52 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3 
USB:
  Hub: 1-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 10 rev: 2.0 
  speed: 480 Mb/s chip ID: 1d6b:0002 
  Device-1: 1-2:2 info: HP EWS UPD type: Printer,Mass Storage 
  driver: usb-storage interfaces: 3 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s 
  chip ID: 03f0:5017 serial: <filter> 
  Device-2: 1-3:3 info: Logitech Unifying Receiver type: Keyboard,Mouse 
  driver: logitech-djreceiver,usbhid interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s 
  chip ID: 046d:c534 
  Hub: 2-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 4 rev: 3.1 speed: 10 Gb/s 
  chip ID: 1d6b:0003 
  Hub: 3-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 4 rev: 2.0 
  speed: 480 Mb/s chip ID: 1d6b:0002 
  Hub: 4-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 4 rev: 3.1 speed: 10 Gb/s 
  chip ID: 1d6b:0003 
  Hub: 5-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 1 rev: 2.0 
  speed: 480 Mb/s chip ID: 1d6b:0002 
  Hub: 6-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 1 rev: 3.1 speed: 10 Gb/s 
  chip ID: 1d6b:0003 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 30.4 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 30 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/chrome-remote-desktop.list 
  1: deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome-remote-desktop/deb/ stable main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 
  1: deb http://packages.linuxmint.com una main upstream import backport
  2: deb http://mirror.nodesdirect.com/ubuntu focal main restricted universe multiverse
  3: deb http://mirror.nodesdirect.com/ubuntu focal-updates main restricted universe multiverse
  4: deb http://mirror.nodesdirect.com/ubuntu focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
  5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-security main restricted universe multiverse
  6: deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ focal partner
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/skype-stable.list 
  1: deb [arch=amd64] https://repo.skype.com/deb stable main
Info:
  Processes: 254 Uptime: 1d 15h 37m Memory: 13.66 GiB used: 2.96 GiB (21.7%) 
  Init: systemd v: 245 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 9.4.0 alt: 9 Shell: bash 
  v: 5.0.17 running in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.0.38 
gil@phred:~$ 
 

[mikeflan]

I can imagine how frustrating this must be.

I'd really like to get this install of 20.3 working perfectly as it was a few months ago.

Any chance you have a Timeshift from back then to restore? I have a few from back then:
.

.
I don't see anything wrong in your inxi output. We are waiting for others to chime in on this.

[bearzlos]

Hi. No Timeshifts. This was a clean install. Everything from the previous 20.3 install (roughly 6 months ago) was lost when I did the (step-by-step) upgrade to 21.3.

[bearzlos]

Hello. It was such a simple solution I'm kind of embarrassed.

An applet named "Windows List" was not turned on. Don't know how or why that was the case, but when I enabled the applet the problem went away.

Now the minimize button (-) minimizes to the bottom bar (is that the task bar?) and I can click on that to restore.

So all is well. Thanks to everyone for the suggestions.

[mikeflan]

Good job.

is that the task bar?

Yes, I think so. But I call it the Panel.

[bearzlos]

Panel. Thank you, Mike.
Appreciate your replies to this thread.
bearzlos