MATE desktop doesn't work after installing KDE Plasma

Support & Help Requests Raspberry Pi
#1

So, I decided to install the KDE Plasma desktop and see how it would go. I installed it (all dependencies took up 1.3GB of storage) and tried it out, and didn't like it too much. It takes about ~100MB more than MATE. MATE does a badass job at displaying themes correctly. So, I removed them, but only freed up about 230MB (RIP 800 megs). However, after I switched back to MATE, some things don't work as they should. For example, I've set the theme to a certain color and some parts do not apply. This happened after I installed KDE plasma and Ubuntu desktops.

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I swear I removed the KDE-plasma-desktop and ubuntu-desktop already, and in Terminal it says they are not installed, but on the login, I have the option to select the desktops.

It seems I can boot into the desktops, but I already removed them so...?
It bugs me because I want everything to have a certain color, and it fails. I tried dconf reset -f / but that didn't work. I tried to go to Appearance and select a different theme, but failed.

The lock screen login looks strange too, the password box goes off the screen

#2

Hi,
This is the sort of things that can sadly happen when dealing with multiple desktop environments on the same install. Lately there's been several posts here about weird bugs in MATE happening when installing/removing multiple DEs.
Way back, I had installed KDE and GNOME on a MATE machine. Removing it was painful and left stuff here and there amongst other bugs, leading me to a fresh install.

So, when you have the urge to try something else (and with DEs, WMs and tiling WMs, there are so many things to try in the Linux world...) you probably will not be satisfied with and ultimately will be back to MATE (this seems to happen a lot with this great DE :slightly_smiling_face: ), the best thing to do is to use a VM (the Quickemu project from Wimpy with hardware acceleration is very nice) or boot a live session so that you don't touch your install.

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#3

So my best bet is to do a fresh install, or can I remove the mate desktop and reinstall it again?

#4

Fresh install. Make sure to backup your config files from the software you use, notably in ~/.config (except those from the MATE Desktop).
That way, you can restore them on your new install before installing your programs again in order to spare some time.
You can make a list of every manually installed packages on your computer with apt list --manual-installed > installed. This will create a file named installed in your home folder that you can save and use in your new install, should you forget the name of some packages you used before.

#5

Is there a way to avoid a fresh install? I can’t flash 20.04.1 directly, I have to set 18.04 up then upgrade, then reinstall everything and it is a huge pain.

I’ve flashed and repeated the processes four times this past 2 months

#6

I assume that would require to figure out what required packages were removed with the removal of KDE+GNOME.

You could try reinstalling ubuntu-mate-desktop with sudo apt --reinstall install ubuntu-mate-desktop. I don't know if it will do the trick though.

If you're used to breaking your system while experiencing with stuff like desktop environments, you might want to give Clonezilla a try and do backups of your system before something goes wrong. It could spare you a lot of time.

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#7

Is Deja Dup a good one too?

#8

Not for that usage. Deja-Dup is fine for backing up your important folders.
We're talking about cloning your whole system before screwing up something and restoring it quickly if something went wrong.

#9

Would it help to upgrade the distribution to 20.10 instead of reinstalling everything again?

#10

I have no idea if it will solve your problem but feel free to try if you have the time to do so and you believe it will spare you some time.

#11

Let's hope that 20.10 works (but it says I'm upgrading to 20.04, the release notes said 20.10 groovy).

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#12

I made the same mistake of installing KDE next to MATE. Tried reinstalling 20.04 and just copying over my home folder, but that didn't work. At that point, I knew it had to be a config problem, so I did a bit of file digging and figured it out. Delete the folder ~/.config/gtk-3.0 and everything will go back to normal, no other steps required. Wish I had figured that out sooner, now I get to reinstall packages and set up my little system tweaks all over again :sweat_smile:

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#13

That would have been nice to know lol

EDIT: So does that fix the random blue stuff?

#14

Yep. All the weird white spots, stuff being blue themed, all of it. Everything just goes back to default. It's like nothing ever happened... except for the part where I just tried to take a screenshot and realized I need to reinstall flameshot :stuck_out_tongue:

#15

I prefer scrot , I think it's better