Launcher issues in ubuntu mate

Hi everyone, so I tried searching for this but there seem to be no post asking exactly what I’m trying to ask thats why I am posting this now but I am running ubuntu mate and I think it’s what the latest version is, but I’m not sure my problem though is that in the main menu of applications some applications like the disc image writer and the snap store for example will not open when I click on the launchers. It just takes me to my desktop so what I’m wondering is if there’s anyone else that has had this issue what did you do to fix it. Any help would be appreciated thanks.

You might check the permissions on the underlying .desktop files. Often, they are installed by root, but then when you try to launch them as a regular user, they fail.

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Where do I find these files?

Well, the version information can be quite important at this stage.
could you open a terminal and enter this:
lsb_release -a
and post the result here ?

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I am not with my pi at the moment so I will have to check when I get home, but I am wondering if this is something that all users experience when booting up mate and using it for the first time and because I am a newbie and just assumed that you would go through the process like normal for installing it if I’m missing something and what I mean by like normal when installing, I mean like you would installing things on a Windows PC where you run the install process and go through the series of steps to set up your system
Also, what I mean by latest version everything seems to be up-to-date is I’ve done all of the update steps that I know to do, including the graphical user interface steps, and all of the terminal steps that I know to do, and my system says that everything is up-to-date
Also, I am running ubuntu mate on a pi 400here is the requested info from my terminal
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS
Release: 24.04
Codename: noble

This is not what most users would experience; so it's not likely a "step" that you are missing. It's more likely to be something that occurred during the installation or upgrade process (depending on which way you went), quite possibly related to how the user/session was set up.

If you're logged in as a non-root user; then perhaps the dialog for elevating (e.g. get root privileges) is failing (no idea why) or pkexec is otherwise playing up. If you're logged in as root, then perhaps the menu 'shortcuts' are not executable as root.

I think the first steps would be to clarify:

  1. What you have installed (e.g. start with lsb-release -a as suggested;
  2. What (desktop) session is running: echo $DESKTOP_SESSION;
  3. Whether or not you are root or non-root: whoami;
  4. What menu applet is in use and what menus are installed apt list --installed *applet*menu* and apt list --installed *menus*
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You’re awesome Stephen. I will mess around with all of these today and report back on what I find honestly, it could be something as simple as I am not set to the root user which if that’s the case, I would like to fix that because I will be the only one using this computer

Hi, OK so I checked and I don’t think that I am the root user how would I change this to make myself the route user and is there a way moving forward that I can give just my user Account permanent route access?

By design, the root user is disabled. And trust me, making the root user a standard account is not something you want to do. In Linux systems, you can perform actions as the superuser (root) account through the sudo (superuser do) command. When performing system tasks you do so through the terminal (xterm or similar). Open a terminal session and when you want to run a system task you prefix it with sudo (e.g., sudo apt clean && sudo apt update). You will then be prompted for the password (which you assigned it when you installed the system). Some tasks are enabled for GUI implementation, and they too, will ask you for a password.

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OK, so how do I run applications as route using the graphical user interface so without the terminal and trying to see if this fixes my issue of not being able to Open certain applications

I agree with this - I wouldn't want to set myself up as root user; I find it safer to only acquire root privileges when necessary - e.g. by using sudo.

In any case; we still need a bit more information about what desktop session you are running, and what menu you are using (there are more than one available).

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There's no one answer, and perhaps others will have some suggestions, but the short answer is that many (but not all) applications that are installed that have a GUI use what's known as a ".desktop" file. You can find some of these in your "home" directory under the hidden .config directory (the "." preceding the name hides it from normal view). You may find a directory there called "autostart." You can guess what that holds. Using Caja or a file manager, navigate to this folder or any folder that has files with the .desktop extension. You can view/edit these with Pluma or any text editor. But first, while you're browsing your folders, see who owns the files and what the permissions are. You may find that you aren't the owner, or that you don't have execute permissions. This is where the sudo command comes in handy. You can change ownership (via chown) or permissions (via chmod) if they don't meet your requirements.

Just as a short background note: UNIX and Linux are true multiuser systems. As such, it's necessary to provide security to folders and files, and that what permissions and modes do. If you're not familiar with these concepts, I suggest you read up on them, because they influence everything you can and cannot do!

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Are the disk image writer and the snap store even installed at this point ?
I know that "disk image writer" is not installed by default. I can't remember if snap store is installed by default (because I immediately purge everything snap related right after install).

If @Brennen98 has non working menuitems it seems more likely to me that the apps are missing instead of a .desktop file permission problem.
I could be wrong though.

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Hi everyone, so sorry for the late response. I was looking at some other things this weekend, but it seems that the desktop permission files are definitely there for each of these applications and anytime I run the command to install one of these applications. I get told that they are the latest versions on my pie so I think that they’re installed at least that’s what I’m interpreting that means but I could be wrong and if I am please correct me otherwise also, I tried looking at some of the desktop files for the apps that won’t open and comparing them to the desktop files of the apps that do open just to see if there’s something that I could be missing and the only thing that I could see that I could think of that might be an issue is that there’s a particular line in the files and I think it’s called something along. The lines of application launcher notifier in the line is set to false which I’m guessing means that it’s disabled so I changed it to true other than that I’m not sure what else I can try

Agreed. The .desktop files are not likely an issue.

My guess is that the system was upgraded from an earlier version of UM and the applications are no longer present. App Center is used as a synonym for Snap Store. And Disk Image Writer is not installed by default.

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In that case you could try to run them from the commandline and see what kind of error it returns,

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What is the command that I use to run applications from the terminal? I understand you use the application name but what comes before or after the application name I’ve never understood how to do this.

hi so I am sorry for taking so long to respond about this i have been kind of busy and just now got some time to post this but here is the responce to the menu commands I was asked to type from earlier
libmate-panel-applet-4-1/noble,now 1.27.1-2build3 arm64 [installed]
libmate-sensors-applet-plugin0/noble,now 1.26.0-1build3 arm64 [installed]
mate-applet-appmenu/noble,now 0.7.6+dfsg1-4build4 arm64 [installed]
mate-applet-brisk-menu/noble,now 0.6.2-2build2 arm64 [installed]
mate-applets-common/noble,now 1.26.1-3build1 all [installed]
mate-applets/noble,now 1.26.1-3build1 arm64 [installed]
mate-indicator-applet-common/noble,now 1.26.0-1build3 all [installed]
mate-indicator-applet/noble,now 1.26.0-1build3 arm64 [installed]
mate-sensors-applet-common/noble,now 1.26.0-1build3 all [installed]
mate-sensors-applet/noble,now 1.26.0-1build3 arm64 [installed]
mate-window-applets-common/noble,now 21.04.0-1build3 all [installed]
mate-window-buttons-applet/noble,now 21.04.0-1build3 arm64 [installed]
mate-window-menu-applet/noble,now 21.04.0-1build3 arm64 [installed]
mate-window-title-applet/noble,now 21.04.0-1build3 arm64 [installed]
gnome-menus/noble,now 3.36.0-1.1ubuntu3 arm64 [installed]
mate-menus/noble,now 1.26.1-1build3 all [installed]

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Open a terminal and type snap-store; it'll let you know pretty quick if it can't find the application. E.g. if the App Center (a.k.a. snap-store) isn't installed; you will see:

user@home:~$ snap-store
snap-store: command not found

You can get the path of the applications that aren't working from the Exec entry in the .desktop files you were looking at before (but you don't need the full path, usually). So for example, in ~/.local/share/applications/snap-store_snap-store.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
X-SnapInstanceName=snap-store
Type=Application
Version=1.0
X-SnapAppName=snap-store
Exec=env BAMF_DESKTOP_FILE_HINT=/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/snap-store_snap-store.desktop /snap/bin/snap-store %U

Thus the executable is at /snap/bin/snap-store; but (presumably) the system path includes /snap/bin, and thus you can simply type snap-store in the terminal.

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Most often, the command is the name of the application itself :slight_smile:
So, in case of the snap-store you should type: snap-store

Often you could also look in the corresponding .desktop file
There will be a line that starts with "exec=" followed by the name of the app and its arguments.
If you type that on the commandline (without the "exec=") , it should start the app.

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