Upgrade from LMDE 5 to LMDE 6

Topic

So this weekend I took the time to update my LMDE 5 PC to LMDE 6.  It was not a smooth process. Half way through the upgrade there was an error message for a file ‘sticky.pl’. I was able to find a workaround online and was able to proceed with the upgrade.  In total it took about 4 hours from beginning to end.

While I was using LMDE 5, I installed the XFCE desktop because it was a bit lighter on memory. Since I only have 2 GB of ram I wanted to free as much ram as possible. I followed a YouTuber to make XFCE look and feel more like Cinnamon.  It worked perfectly.  Unfortunately, when I upgraded to LMDE 6 my XFCE desktop no longer worked.  It just gives me an unusable video that I can’t make out anything.

I’ve been searching online all day and found an article that suggested creating a test user to see if XFCE is installed properly. When I did this I was happily pleased that the XFCE desktop did load properly. So now I am trying to figure out what is causing my issues with my original account. I have some leads that I found late tonight. Some suggest deleting some configuration files and let XFCE create them again.

I am writing this in case anyone is upgrading to LMDE 6 and may run in to these issues.

Replies

I finally got back to my LMDE 6 machine and tried to get XFCE working on my daily user account. I found by deleting the directory $HOME/.config/xfce4 will allow me to login to XFCE. Unfortunately, after logging out and then back in I get the same issue I started with.  I am not sure what is going. I’ve been thinking about creating a script that deletes the config file for xfce4 on logout or login so that XFCE loads up properly. But then any customization I do will be lost.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Have you tried :

https://linuxiac.com/how-to-upgrade-to-lmde-6-from-lmde-5/ : A Step-by-Step Guide

https://www.debugpoint.com/upgrade-to-lmde-6/

“A step-by-step tutorial showing how to upgrade to Linux Mint Debian Editon LMDE 6 from LMDE 5 with additional instructions”

1 user thanked author for this post.

bassmanzam

Thanks for the links Alex. There were some extra instructions but nothing I haven’t seen already. The upgrade to LMDE 6 went well and runs with out issues using Cinnamon. I am only getting display issues when I try to login using XFCE. I still have things I can try but will have to wait until I have more time to play around with it!

1 user thanked author for this post.

Alex5723

I finally found what I was looking for! It was right under my nose all this time. I found the following thread:

https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=15226

Basically, I turned compositing off by disabling it: XFCE Settings > Window Manager Tweaks > Compositor > Uncheck “Enable display compositing” Finally I was able to login to my Xfce session without having to delete the ~/.config/xfce4 directory! I have now been up and running normally for over 1 week. I themed my desktop to look more like Cinnamon but with the lower overhead of Xfce. I then wanted to try the other option within that thread. Which was just to change vblank_mode to “off”. I did this on another users account and it also worked. So I was able to find 2 solutions to my problem!

I am now a happy camper and look forward to using LMDE 6 until LMDE 7 and beyond!