Kali Linux Failed to launch preferred application for category “TerminalEmulator” and all files missing

Question

I installed 64bit Kali 2020.4 in vmware workstation pro.
After that, all I did was grant superuser permission to my current (default) user, and ran some updates via sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade.
Everything went fine and I closed off the machine.

When I logged back in again, I was not able to access the terminal. Not from the panel, neither by right clicking and opening a termal from the desktop.
It shows an error

Failed to launch preferred application for category "TerminalEmulator"

I also entered my file manager, and everything is empty there. How do I fix these?

Answer 1

I had a similar problem today. Installed Kali 2020.4 64-bit and ran sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade as you described. Rebooted the system and was unable to open terminal or browse files (I only tried via the "Home" folder on the desktop).

I was still able to open QTerminal directly from the application menu to run commands. I was able to fix this by running the following. Hopefully this works for you.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

This returned a list of packages that "were automatically installed and are no longer required:" Remove these packages with the below command.

sudo apt autoremove

Reboot. Then run sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade again. The following packages were required. Reboot again and terminal/file browsing should be working as expected.

I suspect one specific package "xfce4-helpers" is causing the issue. I'm new to Linux so not sure of the cause (hopefully someone can elaborate).

After completing the above steps, run sudo apt-get install xfce4-helpers.

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After doing the above

• right click the terminal and remove it from panel
• then right click somewhere on the panel bar and go to "panel"
• next go to "Add New" then scroll down to verve terminal and click on it.
• Add it to the bar panel (it will show up next to notifications).
• Right click again and go to move and move it to where it was.
  (alternatively you can just go to app drop down menu and add Qterm to your desktop).

Answer 2

By default, Thunar uses the exo-open command, which is configured in the XFCE settings. If you do not have the XFCE settings app installed, you can instead configure it in ~/.config/xfce4/helpers.rc:

TerminalEmulator=konsole
TerminalEmulatorDismissed=true

or, another example,

TerminalEmulator=kitty
TerminalEmulatorDismissed=true

Answer 3

If you have functional terminal emulators on your machine but your launcher on the taskbar is pointing to an incorrect one after you've jiggered things around, try the following:

1. Right click the terminal launcher icon on your task bar. In the launcher window that opens, press the + icon to add new items to the launcher.
2. In the resulting dialog, there should be a text box to allow searching for items to add. Type in "term".
3. If there are any terminal emulators in the results, add one (or more).
4. Next time you click the launcher icon, the emulators you added will now execute.