Thanks Thom (tkn)
Tried the right click in the panel first: Options were the
Brisk menu... just a duplicate of default in panel, still no apps.
Main Menu option: gave a Mate sigil w/ a little tail added: Dropdown had places and system options. no apps.
Mate Menu (advanced) gave a Mint? sigil, opens a menu box w/ Places, System, Favorites with sub options available and an arrow to All Applications which brings up an empty window.
Menu Bar gave the Mate sigil and 3 categories in the panel: Applications, Places, System App just opened a narrow blank dropdown.
Opened terminal, ran: caja /usr/share/applications $HOME/.local/share/``applications : >`` ``F``irst window had more applications ``than I was aware of`` (well over 100), ‘right click & open’ worked fine for those I tried. ``S``econd window (.local) was empty except for a text file: time.desktop ``(opened in Atom, definitions mostly)``.
Ran: sudo apt purge mate-applet-brisk-menu && sudo apt install -y mate-applet-brisk-menu It just reloaded a new copy of brisk , no repopulation of .local
So: I can use /usr/share/applications to load apps,,, not optimal
or just bite the bullet and take the bottom ``disk ``Tb of Windoze 7 or 8 and load the latest and greatest Ubuntu flavor.