Recently, I received a message on the topic title several times after logging in to Cinnamon. Am I the only one lucky enough, or has this happened to anyone else? Not so annoying, but I still wonder what the reason may be and how to remedy it?
I’ve been using EOS with Cinnamon DE for about 3 months with no issues at all. Also, a quick search didn’t find any useful results to know what’s happening.
Maybe you can try to reset Cinnamon to its defaults: https://www.addictivetips.com/ubuntu-linux-tips/backup-the-cinnamon-desktop-settings-on-linux/
What is a Backup DE for Cinnamon?
Did you make any backups? Did you save previous desktop sessions?
I feel puzzled here…
I don’t know the term, but it looks like cinnamon is demoted in some way, while not totally crashed. Like if using the cinnamon2d session, instead of the normal one.
If this is true, it should have to do with video drivers configuration or other related modification, or HW change.
The only way to find out the real problem, is to review journal and Xorg logs for relevant messages.
Also check $HOME/.xsession-errors.
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This is also happening on the Rasberry Pi 4b (ARM) with Cinnamon.
Pudge
This is very interesting. As a fairly recent convert from Mint - I used XFCE, but was active on their forums - I never saw that error message mentioned. I did see this a fair amount (one I’ve gotten a time or two on EOS):
Cinnamon has crashed. You are currently running in fallback mode
The error message was something very similar to mine. It doesn’t happen often yet, but it hasn’t happened before.
This then appears to be a driver-issue:
So!
If you are running EOS on VirtualBox, the only solution would be to use fallback-drivers as your default Cinnamon “experience” (I had that once or twice, before switching the DE to Xfce).
Also, look here:
Fallback mode
On the event when Cinnamon crashes, its Fallback mode activates. To control opened windows in this mode you need to install metacity package and gnome-shell to have a taskbar.
Update: Everything works normally since the last Cinnamon update. Lesson: Things rarely go wrong on their own.