Live Mate 1.1.6: No desktop icons
 

http://bear.alienbase.nl/mirrors/sla...te-current.iso

I do not see the desktop icons, nor does rightclicking on the desktop have any discernable effect.

Am I the only one?
:D

I can't answer this question. But it works here (in a VirtualBoxVM).

Didier: Thank you for testing.

Once more I verified the md5sum to be correct.
I see the problem with VirtualBox as well as booted from a dd'ed-to USB stick, so no persistence and the like.
As I use english/USA as language and keyboard I tested with français as language and keyboard: problem persists.
I then found that the problem only occurs when logged-in as root, when logged-in as live things are ok.
I could not find something obvious in the log files.
I am pretty sure that with previous mate live CD's the problem did not occur. Alas I do not have a previous live CD any more, so I cannot verify ...
:D

probably because the xdg-user-dirs-update command was executed in user's environment and not in root

Booting the live CD to runlevel 3, logging in as root, executing xdg-user-dirs-update and then issuing startx did not have any discernable effect.

On my Slack64 Current XFCE + some Mate (caja etc) I downloaded the whole of slackware.uk/msb/current/1.17/x86_64/{deps,base,extra} and ran "upgradepkg --reinstall install-new" for the .txz files. Running "xinit /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.mate-session" for root and burdi01 shows the same symptoms.
I attached the resultant /var/log/messages file (which contains all logging done; just remove the .txt extension) -- I see some warnings but no relevant (to me) failures ...
:D

You realize that it is not recommended to run an X session as root? There is no guarantee that things work like they are supposed to work when you login as a normal user.
This does not only count for Gnome but also for KDE desktop environments

Dear Eric,
I was expecting someone to come up with that argument ...
I think that whether or not running an X session as root should be frowned upon should warrant a separate discussion -- something along the lines of running a single user workstation versus a multiuser server ...
Kind regards, Dick (burdi01, aka DLCBurggraaff)

You got the meaning of my comment wrong. Just because it is not advised to run X as root, this scenario will not be among the test cases when developing software like Gnome or KDE, and if things break for root user, there will not be any incentive to fix the issue.
Your issue with missing icons is most likely a functional bug, but will it ever be solved? Probably not.

Dear Eric:
I understand your argument.
Regards, Dick
:D

Well, caja has 152 open bugs -- https://github.com/mate-desktop/caja/issues/ ...
I opened the 153d one.
:D

and it goes down to 152 again now :)

Yeah, it was shot down within the hour.
:(

AlienBOB told you it was a bad idea to run as root and the developer said the same thing, so it's obvious. It must be avoided

Dear Willy:
For a single-user workstation system type (as opposed to a multi-user server one) I respectfully disagree.
Anyway, I rest my case.
Regards, Dick
:D

my system is also single-user and i still use normal account instead of root