<SOLVED> I can sign into MATE but not into Cinnamon anymore

[non-portable]

I'd say the better way of dealing with it is to delete

/home/me/.config/autostart/compiz.desktop

I think zerozero is right to be cautious though, it's very easy to go from one method of logging in that works to none.

What will happen, probably is that Mate will default to metacity after that but you'll be able to log in to Cinnamon. So what you need is someone to tell you where Mate looks for it's window manager, like in the gconf-setting above for gnome2. The default for gnome2 on debian is not metacity but x-window-manager, meaning you could also use the update alternatives mechanism to replace it there.

update-alternatives --query x-window-manager

If it's there set it, otherwise install it:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-window-manager compiz /usr/bin/compiz 5

Check it's installed and active. The Mate packages don't descend from Debian, I don't think, so they might not have the same defaults. Which could mean setting that up is useless.

On another tack you could try adding this line to the desktop file.

OnlyShowIn=Mate;MATE

but even if that works, your Mate session is starting up metacity and then Replacing it with compiz, when it should just be starting compiz. Please note that I'm guessing about what Mate calls itself in the line above. It should be the same as the session name on the login screen, so just use that in place of Mate;MATE.

[trebzgum]

i'm not sure, the positive way of doing it is deleting the compiz.desktop.

I'd say the better way of dealing with it is to delete

/home/me/.config/autostart/compiz.desktop

Yes, you both were right, this seemed to work after deleting it in terminal.
I'm able to sign into both Mate & Cinnamon now. Mate stayed with compiz and did not default to metacity.

what i know is that regarding compiz, you have to decide: either you use mate (and can use compiz at will > for the high cpu usage there's a few tricks, äxl knows it better than me ) or you use cinnamon/gnome-shell (and stay as far as you can from anything compiz-related)

For now I think I will be going back & forth seeing which suits me, since I like special effects, and so far the effects I see in Cinnamon are a bit limited. But time will tell. Regarding the high cpu usage under Mate, I searched the forum and found a few posts about it but did not want to mess with anything until I got the log in issue in Cinnamon under control. So far so good.

Thank you all: non-portalable, zerozero & äxl for taking time to help.

[zerozero]

Thank you all: non-portalable, zerozero & äxl for taking time to help.

you're welcome glad you got it sorted

[zeflasher]

Just want to also thank you, as I had the same problem.
Removing the compiz.desktop file did the trick.
Thanks much!!!

[cmost]

Compiz is hardly being maintained anymore; hardly any distribution uses it by default these days. It's a shame because I fondly remember the good ol' days of Beryl. I do hope that Cinnamon incorporates additional Compiz effects; personally I'd like the cube and wobbly windows back.

Also, it's a really simple matter (and a lot less hassle in some cases than the rigamarole you went through to install outdated drivers from the repositories) to simply compile the official nvidia driver from nvidia's web site. This has the advantage of allowing you to use the latest nvidia driver and also try out their betas. You'll need build-essential and your kernel headers. You can even register it with DKMS and then it will compile automatically each time you update your kernel. Get the latest nvidia drivers here: [url]ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/[/url]