1

I’m not very experienced with Linux (at all), so please forgive me if I am using terms incorrectly.

I am running Mint on my laptop (an old Dell). I had no issues until I downloaded Zoom yesterday. Now there’s a problem.

I can see the login screen with the box to verify my username and type in the password. But once I do that, I’m brought to the GUI screen with nothing visible except the mouse cursor. I can move it around but there’s nothing to see or click, just a black screen.

I am able to go to the command terminal (wrong term? It’s the text screen to enter code) and I have learned how to view the desktop content as text. It’s all there as far as I can tell by reading file names.

Does anyone know how I can do a simple fix to see and interact with my desktop again?

Improve this question
2
  • 1
    Try with removing it with this command sudo apt remove zoom. Did it work?
    – Biswapriyo
    Commented Aug 6, 2019 at 15:25
  • @Biswapriyo It accepted the command and confirmed that Zoom had been removed, freeing up 150mb. But it didn't solve the problem. After restarting and entering the credentials again, I was back at the black screen with the cursor.
    – Headblender
    Commented Aug 6, 2019 at 19:36

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
0
+50

On Linux, the login screen is operated by the "display manager." By default on Mint, the display manager is their own, MDM (Mint display manager). Upon logging in successfully, it starts an X11 session for your user, which reads all of its default locations to learn what window manager and other tools to run. For example, Mint's main release runs Cinnamon (the binary is named cinnamon-session) which runs a window manager muffin but just stick to cinnamon-session which should start everything it needs to. Cinnamon starts all the components including the desktop with icons and wallpaper, and the panel (people coming from Windows will call it a "task bar" but that's only one component on a panel).

The fact that you can move the mouse, but see nothing else, means that X11 started for your user, but that any window manager or additional session programs have failed to start. So for a quick and dirty hack to get you running something on the display:

  1. Log in to the display manager, just like you said you did.
  2. Switch virtual terminals (CTRL+ALT+F2 or another low-numbered function key)
  3. Log in to a terminal session, and run DISPLAY=:0 cinnamon-session which tries to start Cinnamon in the first (zero-indexed) X display server running on the computer.
  4. If no errors are visible/obvious, try switching back to the graphical terminal (on Mint, which is Debian-based, it's probably CTRL+ALT+F7)
  5. Profit!

If you happen to know that you picked one of the other Mint releases such as Mint MATE, you would need to run a different window manager. Options could include:

  • MATE: mate-session
  • Xfce: xfce4-session

There are other ones like KDE and GNOME, but I don't actually know those binary names but I think Mint doesn't provide those by default but you hopefully recognize which term is used and be able to research further.

Now, if cinnamon-session fails to start, you could perhaps try running a specific program on the graphical terminal from the text console. The Cinnamon file manager is named nemo. So DISPLAY=:0 nemo

Improve this answer
1
  • This seems like a comprehensive answer. Thank you, and +50. (Side note, before you posted this, I tried so many other solutions cobbled together from what I could find in various forums, that I jacked up the system so much it won't do anything now. Bought a new laptop out of frustration and intend to nuke the hard drive and e-waste the Dell.)
    – Headblender
    Commented Aug 15, 2019 at 17:41
0

check your /var/log/syslog for any obvious error messages. Also, this is probably related to your graphics card driver, try updating it. If that doesn't help check your cinnamon version, it might need updating.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .