I know this question has been asked before but I haven't found an answer to the issue yet. I've completely purged MATE and reinstalled, including deleting the ~/.config directory, so I would have thought I could get a clean install! Unfortunately the issue has persisted through a reinstallation, so I'm a bit stumped, any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Ian
PS I also switched the windows manager to Compiz based on information I found, but that made the issue worse, I ended up with no taskbar in addition to non-functional icons and a desktop I can't manage. I managed to switch it back, and installed Thunar to manage files temporarily.
Surely, that does not look like a clean install. The first impression is that some misconfiguration has survived reinstallation. Actually, not only .config in the home directory contains settings. There are .local, .dconf, .gnome directories to name a few.
To make sure that the root cause of the problem is user-related misconfiguration you can create extra user account and login into your system using that account to see if the problem persists.
However unlikely it may seem, I'd suggest to verify possible hardware & OS incompatibilities as well. That is to boot your system from live CD/USB flash in the trial mode and see if the problem persists.
Frankly, your description of the problem is somewhat vague. To get more grounded suggestions you might want to provide more details like, say:
version of Ubuntu Mate you do use;
purging Mate DE and reinstallation procedures;
terminal output when trying to start caja from terminal;
results of selecting different panel layout using Mate Tweaks.
Thanks for your message. Yes I understand that it's not a clean installation. I'm using the latest updates to 24.04 LTS, but this box was upgraded from 22.04 LTS.
I'm ok with wiping the desktop environment and reinstalling, but there seem to be so many different pages out there on this topic that I thought I'd look here for the definitive how to remove MATE completely and reinstall.
version of Ubuntu Mate you do use; 24.04 LTS, but this box was upgraded from 22.04 LTS
purging Mate DE and reinstallation procedures; I tried a few times, but I used apt remove mate-desktop-environment, also apt-get remove --auto-remove mate-desktop.
terminal output when trying to start caja from terminal; nothing, just return to cursor
results of selecting different panel layout using Mate Tweaks. No improvement switching from and back.
Do I get it right your problem manifested itself and by itself since you upgraded from UM 22.04 to UM 24.04? If yes, then it casts some doubt whether Mate DE reinstallation may help. Well, if live CD session works as intended, some hope remains still.
Side note: I had an unpleasant experience of crippling my desktop completely. In the end of the day I had to backup my files from home directory and installed the whole OS from scratch.
IMHO, to completely remove Mate DE you need to
apt-get purge --autoremove mate-desktop
As to installation, the following links may be of interest
Thank you for the information. I ran that command but in reinstallation lightdm was borked. Reinstalled lightdm and was back to square 1 with crippled desktop. The PC boots fine from CD but now I'm getting vexed because I ran tasksel, deselected mate and selected GNOME flashback but mate is still my desktop. I can't get rid of it no matter what I do! I just want a functioning desktop and now I don't care what flavour.
Actually I upgraded to 24.04 some time ago, a few months. It's been ok generally but I do connect to it remotely most of the time as it mainly does file sharing and hosts some VMs. I suppose I don't actually need a desktop I just find it much more convenient.
Update, I've got Gnome working so I think I'll just stick with that, all this uninstalling and reinstalling is madness and at some point if I continue I'll knacker something important that will prevent me using the PC.