Fix broken mate

[pittendrigh]

I have (or had) a 64bit Mint linux with window manager "mate"

For some inexplicable reason I did a "sudo apt-get install cinnamon"
After that point nothing worked. Cntrl-alt F1 got me a terminal screen where I did sudo apt-get remove --purge cinnamon
sudo apt-get upgrade accomplished nothing, as did various combinations of sudo apt-get autoremove and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

The system does boot, sort of, but to an incomplete window manager state. I have a black background with no toolbar, plus icons from the Desktop.
Fortunately I do have a terminal window icon (on the black background) to click, from which I can type in bash commands.

That terminal will not move or resize, so it's difficult to use. If I start a browser, in order to look up solutions, the browser covers the terminal and won't move.

There must be a way to fix this. But I have no idea what it is.

[Kalyk]

So you should want Mate back.
Searching gave me

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sudo apt-get install mate-meta

[pittendrigh]

Ah but sudo apt-get install mint-meta-mate yields:

mint-meta-mate is already the newest version. And I still have a broken window manager that barely works at all.

[Flemur]

mint-meta-mate is already the newest version.
$ sudo apt-get purge <whatever the MATE package is>
$ sudo apt-get install <whatever the MATE package is>

Edit: I'd use synaptic and search for 'mate' and use (some, or most of) the packages it listed as installed.

[pittendrigh]

sudo apt-get purge <whatever the MATE package is>
sudo apt-get install <whatever the MATE package is>

I tired that two days ago. I give up. I backed everything up. Will reformat the hard drive and re-install from bare metal.

Actually I think I'll buy a bigger hard drive and partition it (should anyway) so the operating system and data are separated.
Then I can reinstall in the blink of an eye.

[Tomas_IV]

I know this is old, but for other users, possibly new to linux, having similar problems after switching to other desktop environment and trying to go back:

The problems should not be with packages, if the packages needed by the DE you want to use were successfully reinstalled, for example by installing packages mate and mint-meta-mate for the MATE desktop environment.

The type of problems described in the original post lie most probably in the user space - what's got mingled are user settings, because different desktop environments (DE) share parts of the user settings, like (but not only) start-up programs for example. It is of course a good thing for programs like Skype or mail notifier, but even with these you can get some programs started twice etc. But there are other programs running in the background, like keyrings, window manager, network manager, video settings daemon, etc. and if there are running (or trying to run) two versions of a program for the same thing, one from the previous DE, the second from the new one, funny things may happen. So if you encounter such problems, although the packages for the DE you want to run are successfully reinstalled, first thing I would try before clean install is renaming the .config directory in your home to something like .config_BACKUP (may not be possible from running DE session though, see below). That would recreate this directory on next login to the DE with default settings - at least for GNOME/XFCE based DE's that would reset most desktop user settings to default, as with clean install, but with the possibility to try to copy some things back from the backup, learning a little about what various config files mean in the process, or setting them again from scratch. And of course with all your apps still in place, bookmarks, contacs, saved paswords etc. intact. Some apps may be also reset, because they store settings to the .config directory, but you still have the settings in the backup, just copy them over to the new .config. Do not worry, it is simple. For example for Chrome, you just copy directory google-chrome from .config_BACKUP to .config in your favorite file manager or on command line.

All that (except copying over individual app settings) should be better not done from the running DE though. So one option is to press CTRL-ALT-F1 and log in into console (it is like a full sccreen terminal window, get back with CTRL-ALT-F7 usually, or it could be CTRL-ALT-F8, or type 'sudo reboot' when done). For GUI windowed environment preferring user, I would recommend to install some window manager which can serve as stand alone bare-bone windowed environment. Well, almost any can, so you already have at least one, but try my favorite Fluxbox (install from command line using 'apt install fluxbox' or from your favorite graphical package manager if it works). Then when logging in, change the session you are logging into to Fluxbox. The menu of applications is through right-click on the desktop there - maybe you would get addicted to its simplicity and fast responses (should start within fraction of second after hitting ENTER on the login screen on any system, for example) and it is always good to have such simple environment as backup, if something goes wrong with your main DE (and it has almost no settings, so it won't screw your main DE).

And last but not least:

Actually I think I'll buy a bigger hard drive and partition it (should anyway) so the operating system and data are separated.
Then I can reinstall in the blink of an eye.

This is always a good idea to have at least your home directory as separate partition. Should not cost much space, if you use conservative amount of space for the system partition. Mine is 24G, full from 37% at this time - so much less would suffice, but some gigs of free space are necessary. Of course it is also good to have separate swap partition of about twice the size of RAM for low RAM machines. If you have 8G or more RAM, then 8G of swap is probably enough for normal desktop use, if space is a concern (eg. no big games, no advanced video editing etc).

[jens55]

I realize that the original post and Tomas_IV's reply is now even older, but I just wanted to say that today I encountered a similar problem and could resolve it with Tomas_IV's suggestion, so thank you for that. In my case, I accidentally cut the power to my computer and so it was shutdown in an uncontrolled manner and apparently caused some sort of corruption. After rebooting, there was no desktop, meaning the usual icons weren't showing and right-click didn't work.

So for future reference, and anyone else encountering a similar problem, here is a short tl;dr of the suggested solution that worked for me:

1. do the following in a console, not the desktop environment (press CTRL-ALT-F1 and log in)
2. rename the .config folder in your home directory via

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   $ mv ~/.config ~/.config_backup

   to remove it, but keep a backup
3. reboot your system

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   $ sudo reboot

   and login as usual
4. the system will recreate a .config folder; copy the subfolders for every application whose configuration you'd like to keep back from your backup, for example

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   $ cp -r ~/.config_backup/google-chrome ~/.config/