One of the wallpapers has XFCE on it, but I didn't change my desktop environment. Also of note, when I open the terminal it doesn't look the same as it used to. Instead of the dark purple window it's a black window with white text and the window's icon is a red "X" with a dark blue "T" on it.
This is a headless machine and I connect to it through remote-desktop.
If I go through the applications menu (manually clicking, the super key does nothing and my keyboard does not have a "Fn" key) and go to settings I get the window on the left. Changing the settings in this window does nothing. Right clicking the desktop and clicking "desktop settings" I get the window on the right. This window correctly changes the wallpaper.
When I open the home folder I get Thunar.
My guess is there are two desktop environments competing or something right now? How can I fix this?
Also, weirdly, if I click my name in the upper right I can "lock screen" and "log out..." but I can't "switch user," "suspend," or "shut down."
Thank you in advance for any help.
you're running xfce!
do you want to be running some other desktop environment?
if so, look at what kind of session your remote connection software is asking the remote machine to start.
The problem is that some desktop elements/settings seem to be xfce while some others are gnome. I'm going to need to do a deep dive to figure out how I set up remote desktop on that machine. Log in locally, get it working locally correctly, then see if I can get it working over RDP correctly.
You can always just delete you user config directories, uninstall Xfce then log back in snd see what happens…
Oh man, I can't figure out what I did.
Somehow I routed the main display to the RDP session, meaning if I plug in a monitor I get a black screen instead of the desktop. I have to figure out what file I edited to do that. But searching online now none of the tutorials use whatever method I used roughly 6 years ago.
Oof. This is rough. What config files are you referring to?
There’s a bunch of dot files and directories in your home directory that are used to store configurations and presets and stuff.
It used to be that if you logged in without those files and directories then x, the display manager, the other software etc would copy over stub versions and that’s how you get “defaults”.
So when I have a hairy x session I used to delete the configuration files and directories and let it repopulate with defaults.
Nowadays I don’t do that anymore, but it used to be an issue.
E: try ctrl alt f1 or two or something and see if you get a terminal or login prompt.