I was happy with mint-maya-mate. But today on bootup it switched to cinnamon. It didn't even preserve the changes that I had made on the desktop (for instance the top panel disappeared together with the special icons that I had put there to run ceretain programs.) . The differences are really too much for me. How can I get it back where it was?

that is one of the craziest things I've ever heard. You must have at some point installed an application that pulled cinnamon as it's dependency. Assuming you haven't un-installed mate, you can simply log-out into whatever display manager you are using (log-in screen) find where you can choose the desktop, and change it back to mate, then log back in.

apt should have some history function that will help you track it down.
if you use synaptic, you even have a graphical frontend for it.

I don't know what package they could have possibly installed that would install cinnamon as a dependency, but outside of intentionally installing it (which is not likely, even by accident) it has to be a dependency. Now, if they also removed Mate, they've orchestrated a series of unfortunate events. It's not beyond fixing though.

The biggest thing right now though is to get into the display manager and make sure they can sign into Mate. Some display managers hide the list of available desktops though, so a lot will depend on what particular dm they're using.

It's quite possible that this is the result of installing some package through Synaptic. But there was no warning or indication that it would push me into Cinnamon. I don't think I even have a complete install of Cinnamon. So far as I have found, I don't seem to have a "control center" neither mate, or cinnamon. mlocate finds dome references to 'mate-control-center' but if there is a way to call it up from command line, I haven;t found it.

wchouser3
"The biggest thing right now though is to get into the display manager and make sure they can sign into Mate. Some display managers hide the list of available desktops though, so a lot will depend on what particular dm they're using."

I thought that the loggin screen might help. I had set it to log in automaatically without waiting, soo I tried (and succeeded) setting it for a slight delay, and not logging in automatically. But so far as I can see, there is no opportunity to choose 'mate'.

Go ahead and re-install Mate. It may show it as already installed, but do it any way. That will pull any dependencies that may be missing for mate. Do you know what Display manager you are using? I'm an Arch user so I don't know what command you need to enable a different dm. If you're using GDM, you click on your name and there is a little gear that shows up under the name. You click on that, and you get a list of installed desktops. If you're using LXDM, there is a large drop down list field. Go ahead and re-install mate first.

Thank you! that seems to have done it. I guess Cinnamon is still there (although maybe not complete), and maybe some day I'll explore it more, but for now I need to get some work done with a system that I am more familiar with,

Quote:

Originally Posted by wchouser3 Go ahead and re-install Mate. It may show it as already installed, but do it any way. That will pull any dependencies that may be missing for mate. Do you know what Display manager you are using? I'm an Arch user so I don't know what command you need to enable a different dm. If you're using GDM, you click on your name and there is a little gear that shows up under the name. You click on that, and you get a list of installed desktops. If you're using LXDM, there is a large drop down list field. Go ahead and re-install mate first.

Awesome! glad we got to the bottom of it. Yea, Cinnamon is kinda nice thought not as light-weight as Mate. It works a lot like Gnome-shell, in-that you install extensions to add functionality to it. I've always liked Mate because it is a bit more traditional.

If you don't mind, could you click the link showing that my post was helpful? I'm trying to build a reputation on here...lol