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xfce woes on Stretch

Graphical Environments, Managers, Multimedia & Desktop questions.
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HankB
Posts: 53
Joined: 2012-03-07 15:15

xfce woes on Stretch

#1 Post by HankB »

I've recently updated my wife's laptop to Debian Stretch. It was running some variant of Mint. I had a separate / and /home partition so I just nuked and paved the / partition. During the install I selected Mate, Gnome and XFCE desktops.

Following setup I selected XFCE for her thinking it would be the easiest migration (from Cinnamon.) Unfortunately it seems to have difficulty stopping and restarting the desktop. In other words, if she closed the lid (with power cord connected) when the lid was opened, the screen would remain blank. I could find no way to resolve this except for a complete restart. I could ssh in and restart gdm3 via systemctl and the screen would flicker some text message on the first line of screen. The login screen would not return.

I created a new user to see if it had the same issue. It did. Apparently this did not relate to the configuration files left over from the previous install. (She had been using Cinnamon.)

I also found that if the new (test) user logged into using Gnome and then logged out, it was not possible to log in using XFCE. Instead of opening the user's desktop, it would just return to the display manager (gdm3.)

I've configured my wife's login to use Gnome which does not have this issue but I'm afraid that's going to be a bit much for her to bite off.

Any help resolving this is most welcome.

The only diagnostic I can find is the following message in /var/log/messages

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Feb 27 15:16:12 myrtle /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-x-session[1224]: (II) modeset(0): EDID vendor "LGD", prod id 732
Feb 27 15:16:12 myrtle /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-x-session[1224]: (II) modeset(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines:
Feb 27 15:16:12 myrtle /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-x-session[1224]: (II) modeset(0): Modeline "1366x768"x0.0   70.00  1366 1402 1450 1492  768 771 776 782 -hsync -vsync (46.9 kHz eP)
Feb 27 15:16:13 myrtle /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-x-session[1224]: process 1343: arguments to dbus_message_new_method_call() were incorrect, assertion "path != NULL" failed in file ../../../dbus/dbus-message.c line 1367.
Feb 27 15:16:13 myrtle /usr/lib/gdm3/gdm-x-session[1224]: This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.

pendrachken
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Re: xfce woes on Stretch

#2 Post by pendrachken »

Crazy question but:


If the user is used to Cinnamon, why not use the cinnamon desktop that is in the Debian repos? Both Jessie and Stretch have cinnamon available.
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stevepusser
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Re: xfce woes on Stretch

#3 Post by stevepusser »

What video hardware and driver is in the laptop? You could install inxi and run

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inxi -G
to discover what you have.
MX Linux packager and developer

HankB
Posts: 53
Joined: 2012-03-07 15:15

Re: xfce woes on Stretch

#4 Post by HankB »

Apologies for the delay in replying. Thank you for the help.

I went with gnome shell in stead of cinnamon because I thought it would be a little lighter weight. This is an old and not powerful laptop. I've kept it useful by going to 8GB RAM and an SSD. If gnome shell is not lighter weight than cinnamon then I did not choose wisely. My first choice for desktop for her was XFCE but that does not run.

Output from 'inxi -G' (run from an X session) is

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Graphics:  Card: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller
           Display Server: X.Org 1.19.1 driver: N/A Resolution: 1366x768@60.00hz
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Sandybridge Mobile GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 13.0.5
lspci reports

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hbarta@myrtle:~$ lspci|grep Graphics
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
hbarta@myrtle:~$ 
Processor is

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hbarta@myrtle:~$ grep Pentium /proc/cpuinfo 
model name	: Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU B960 @ 2.20GHz
model name	: Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU B960 @ 2.20GHz
hbarta@myrtle:~$ 

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MARKMENTAL
Posts: 22
Joined: 2016-03-31 21:01
Location: USA

Re: xfce woes on Stretch

#5 Post by MARKMENTAL »

Why don't you try LXDE or IceWM?

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OldBob
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Joined: 2017-04-11 18:39
Location: Canada

Re: xfce woes on Stretch

#6 Post by OldBob »

Did you try changing the values in Settings | Power Manager? In the "laptop lid is closed" option select "Switch off Display" for both battery and plugged in.

I think the default is "Lock Screen" with which I've had problems in the past.

Let us know if this helps.

Richard

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stevepusser
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Re: xfce woes on Stretch

#7 Post by stevepusser »

I would also try lightdm instead of gdm as the default desktop manager. You can install it alongside gdm--it will just ask you what you want to use as the default when you install it, so it's probably better to do it on the command line.
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