Desktop theme, background and icons broken

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worldsday

Desktop theme, background and icons broken

Post by worldsday »

There's probably a quick fix for this, but I can't seem to find it and I'm unsure which package is responsible.

My SO's installation of LM Cinnamon has stopped displaying a desktop background, and the icons and window theme are stuck on the ugliest default. You know that thing that happens sometimes when you log out and the desktop icons go ugly for half a second before the screen goes dark? It's like that but forever.

This makes the desktop icons illegible, and I can't even customize the taskbar. Changing the appearance and background settings has no effect.

How can I fix this? Thanks in advance.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
MattDGTL

Re: Desktop theme, background and icons broken

Post by MattDGTL »

Having the same issue on LM17.2
Cosmo.
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Re: Desktop theme, background and icons broken

Post by Cosmo. »

Do you have a Nvidia graphics card with a proprietary driver installed?

Try this:
Open Nemo, make hidden files visible.
Go into .config. If you find the file monitors.xml, rename it, log out and back in.
MattDGTL

Re: Desktop theme, background and icons broken

Post by MattDGTL »

Cosmo. wrote:Do you have a Nvidia graphics card with a proprietary driver installed?

Try this:
Open Nemo, make hidden files visible.
Go into .config. If you find the file monitors.xml, rename it, log out and back in.
totes worked for me.. you'se the man.

thank you
Cosmo.
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Re: Desktop theme, background and icons broken

Post by Cosmo. »

To prevent this problem to reappear: Don't use the Cinnamon built-in display-setting, as long as you use the NVidia-driver.
MattDGTL

Re: Desktop theme, background and icons broken

Post by MattDGTL »

Cosmo. wrote:To prevent this problem to reappear: Don't use the Cinnamon built-in display-setting, as long as you use the NVidia-driver.
makes much sense now, I've been fighting with the display settings since my nvidia config resets itself after restart so i have been trying to get cinnamon display settings corrected instead
Cosmo.
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Re: Desktop theme, background and icons broken

Post by Cosmo. »

The problem is, that in Linux generally user settings have higher priority than system settings. The NVidia settings get stored (mostly) for the system, the display-settings are stored for the user. But the NVidia-driver cannot make sense out of the settings saved with the Cinnamon tool and gets confused. You can simply delete monitors.xml, it gets (in case one needs it) recreated by pressing the apply button in the Cinnamon display settings. My advice to rename it has been given because the culprit maybe for the one or other user somewhere else.
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