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Mint 16 mate -- icons disappearing in gui

Hi all,
I'm new to Linux. Thanks in part to people on this forum, I’ve got Mint 16 MATE installed and working.

However, some problems.

I will start with this one: Icons in the GUI seem to disappear somewhat at random, though mousing over or clicking on them seems to sometimes make them appear or disappear.

I can usually see the captions/descriptions of the files, though that sometimes changes color or becomes harder to see.

I've got an older PC, the video card is a nVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 it's a Gateway Yorktown motherboard.

Thanks!

weird.
everything else working properly?
did you have to install some extra graphic driver?
are you sure it's only the icons AND the text under them? is it only the file manager, or desktop, or ...
you have to define the problem better.
can you reproduce it or is it really totally random?

Try another theme?
or add a New user to the system and login as that user to see if the problem is global to the system (Video Driver) or specific to a user (corrupt something or other in ~/.config)

Just an idea.

Hi guys, thanks for the thoughts

@ondoho-->

The other major problem is slow and inconsistent internet connectivity. I'm assuming it's unrelated to the graphical problems. I can't see videos with the "Videos" application although it does play sound. However VLC plays movies just fine.

I did not have to install any graphics or any other additional drivers when I installed the OS.

As for defining the problem. Actually, yes the icons on the desktop do not disappear completely. However some of them appear washed out and hard to see. Clicking on them, as well as moving the mouse over them, as well as moving the mouse away or unselecting them will sometimes make them darken. Sometimes it will make them become washed out again, though.

When I'm navigating the file manager, I have similar symptoms. Except instead of appearing light and washed out, they simply disappear completely. Once again. I can always see the text captions. However these will sometimes be light and hard to read. Again, I haven't figured out any particular pattern, but clicking on them, mousing over, selecting, deselecting, all of these can make them disappear and reappear but it seems random.

@Habitual-->

Thanks for the thought. I've tried downloading themes, but can't figure out how to do it. Only one theme came with the OS. It offers a link for more themes which takes me to this website:

https://wiki.gnome.org/Personalizationthemes

However, the page has no themes on it, it's a blank background.

I did find another website:

http://linuxmint-art.org/

I downloaded murrine-0.98.0.tar.gz. However when I tried installing I got "'murrine-0.98.0' does not appear to be a valid theme. It may be a theme engine which you need to compile."

Also, while doing research on the web I read that themes are in this directory:

usr/share/themes

When I look in that directory, I actually see folders for about 20 or 30 themes. However only one option shows up when I right click my desktop and click "change background," then switch to the "themes" tab.

I'm looking inside the folders and most of them have .xml files but not much else. The theme that my computer recognizes has more files; that's the Mint-X theme.

Finally, I tried your idea of creating a new user and logging in, but still had the problem.

i think the darkening you describe is normal - it shows that the icon is selected.
let's concentrate on icons for now.

i'm not sure what "washed out" means. a screenshot might help.
are you sure your monitor is adjusted properly? contrast, brightness and so on.
some desktop environments also have ways to adjust brightness/gamma/contrast. check that also.

(i am not using mate myself, so cannot exactly tell you where to look for that. somewhere in the settings. sometimes there's more than one settings or appearance dialog in the menu - check them all.)

we are not interested in /usr/share/themes at the moment.

go to your favorite software manager (an application that is already installed, probably "synaptic packet manager" or "mint software manager") and search for "icon theme" and install something, then try to find that theme from settings and apply and see if that helps.

Washed out in this case means more or less what it often does: Lacking color or intensity; faded. I'm attaching a screen shot.

My brightness is fine. I can set it with buttons on the monitor.

Well, my internet has problems on this machine. I didn't give much info on that. It's fairly inconsistent for browsing the web, and synaptic doesn't seem to be working well enough to download anything, although it will sometimes tell me what packages are available. I don't see any mint themes.

I also have a program labelled "software manager"

I searched it for "mint themes."

It told me I already have something installed called mint-themes.

This includes a bunch of libreoffice stuff, but also

mint-themes, mint-artwork-gnome

I get no results when searching for "mint icons."

I don't understand why usr/share/themes is irrelevant. It certainly appears to have folders related to themes. Can you explain further please?

one problem at a time:
the icons.
i asked you to install more "icon themes", not "mint themes".

/usr/share/themes has gtk and window manager themes in it, not icon themes.
those are in /usr/share/icons.

your screenshots look indeed weird.
it's only partly an icon theme issue, i'd say. once that is sorted, we move on, ok?

you can always search for explanations and solutions yourself, instead of asking others.
have you tried linux mint forums?

I mentioned the internet because it seemed relevant to whether I'd be able to download stuff or not. But yes one thing at a time, I agree.

Thanks for the clarity about icons vs themes, that helps me understand your suggestions better.

Ok, I'm looking for icon themes now, sorry about the error. I looked in software manager and did find gnome-colors as well as kde-artwork-theme-icon. I was able to download them by clicking 'install.'

I tried a few different icon themes but still seem to have the problem. See screenshots.

Well, I do appreciate your help as it's been a struggle for me to do this on my own.

Unfortunately no one on mint forums responded to my post asking about this a few weeks ago, so I came here.

so it's indeed the same problem, with a different icon theme.
very weird indeed.

have you installed any application after installing mint? made any changes to the system setup?

as for the paleness, try to disable compositing.
it's somewhere in the settings and probably called "effects". there should be a checkbox to UNcheck all effects.

if that doesn't help, either, then my best bet is that it's an issue with your graphic card. it's quite an old one, and i found issues with linux dating back to 2004.

please type "lspci" in a terminal, and "lsmod" and post the output here, enclosed in code tags (marked # in your editor)

I've installed some applications. Couple games, Battle for Wesnoth, Open Transport Tycoon. Tried installing some other games. I also installed a bunch of packages with synaptic, though I mentioned it's been having troubles connecting.

I looked at a few different settings but couldn't find any "effects" or "compositing" options. I looked in control center and looked at settings for appearance, monitors, as well as desktop. Which settings did you mean?

Hm, well if it's the graphics card at least we've got a culprit.

Here's my results:

lspci

Code:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 02)

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE Host-to-AGP Bridge (rev 02)

00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)

00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)

00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)

00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 82)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL (ICH4/ICH4-L) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 MX 440] (rev a3)

02:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT3060 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R

02:01.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy (rev 03)

02:01.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy Game Port (rev 03)

02:01.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Creative Labs SB Audigy FireWire Port

02:02.0 Ethernet controller: ADMtek NC100 Network Everywhere Fast Ethernet 10/100 (rev 11)

02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB PRO/100 VE (LOM) Ethernet Controller (rev 82)

lsmod

Code:

Module                  Size  Used by

gpio_ich              13229  0 

snd_emu10k1_synth      13007  0 

snd_emux_synth        33455  1 snd_emu10k1_synth

snd_seq_midi_emul      13432  1 snd_emux_synth

snd_seq_virmidi        13220  1 snd_emux_synth

arc4                  12536  2 

rt2800pci              18290  0 

rt2800lib              70115  1 rt2800pci

snd_emu10k1          141168  5 snd_emu10k1_synth

rt2x00pci              13111  1 rt2800pci

snd_intel8x0          33069  2 

ppdev                  17391  0 

snd_util_mem          13821  2 snd_emux_synth,snd_emu10k1

snd_hwdep              13272  2 snd_emux_synth,snd_emu10k1

bnep                  18893  2 

rfcomm                53664  0 

snd_seq_midi          13132  0 

bluetooth            323534  10 bnep,rfcomm

rt2x00mmio            13395  1 rt2800pci

snd_ac97_codec        105668  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_emu10k1

microcode              18830  0 

snd_seq_midi_event    14475  2 snd_seq_virmidi,snd_seq_midi

rt2x00lib              48854  4 rt2x00pci,rt2800lib,rt2800pci,rt2x00mmio

snd_rawmidi            25094  3 snd_seq_virmidi,snd_emu10k1,snd_seq_midi

ac97_bus              12642  1 snd_ac97_codec

snd_seq                55383  5 snd_seq_midi_event,snd_emux_synth,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_seq_midi_emul,snd_seq_midi

snd_pcm                89488  4 snd_ac97_codec,snd_intel8x0,snd_emu10k1

dm_multipath          22402  0 

mac80211              513247  3 rt2x00lib,rt2x00pci,rt2800lib

scsi_dh                14458  1 dm_multipath

serio_raw              13189  0 

snd_seq_device        14137  5 snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_emu10k1_synth,snd_emu10k1,snd_seq_midi

snd_page_alloc        14230  3 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm,snd_emu10k1

snd_timer              24447  3 snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_emu10k1

lpc_ich                16864  0 

cfg80211              401436  2 mac80211,rt2x00lib

emu10k1_gp            12541  0 

snd                    60790  25 snd_ac97_codec,snd_intel8x0,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_emu10k1_synth,snd_emux_synth,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_emu10k1,snd_seq_device,snd_seq_midi_emul,snd_seq_midi

eeprom_93cx6          13168  1 rt2800pci

soundcore              12600  1 snd

gameport              14952  2 emu10k1_gp

crc_ccitt              12627  1 rt2800lib

shpchp                32129  0 

parport_pc            31981  1 

mac_hid                13037  0 

lp                    13299  0 

parport                40795  3 lp,ppdev,parport_pc

dm_mirror              21715  0 

dm_region_hash        15984  1 dm_mirror

dm_log                18072  2 dm_region_hash,dm_mirror

hid_generic            12492  0 

usbhid                47361  0 

hid                    87192  2 hid_generic,usbhid

nouveau              834976  2 

mxm_wmi                12893  1 nouveau

wmi                    18590  2 mxm_wmi,nouveau

firewire_ohci          35257  0 

video                  18777  1 nouveau

i2c_algo_bit          13197  1 nouveau

ttm                    71886  1 nouveau

firewire_core          57656  1 firewire_ohci

drm_kms_helper        46867  1 nouveau

e100                  35945  0 

mii                    13654  1 e100

tulip                  58400  0 

crc_itu_t              12627  1 firewire_core

drm                  242354  4 ttm,drm_kms_helper,nouveau

floppy                55378  0

Quote:

Originally Posted by irjowo99 (Post 5163523)

I also installed a bunch of packages with synaptic

what packages? synaptic has a history function so you should be able to tell me exactly.

fyi, you are using a rather old nvidia card with the open source nouveau driver.
you should search the web for problems with this specific card and linux and what has been done to solve this. most posts will probably be from many years ago.

for the heck of it i can't remember whether mate uses compositing by default or not.
but you should be able to find that out, maybe from mint forums/wiki.

you should open a seperate thread for your internet connectivity problems, maybe on mint forums first.

ps: you could post the contents of /var/log/Xorg.0.log

I have the same problem with the NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440, with several ubuntu based distributions, although LXPUP works fine.

Quote:

Originally Posted by gregb49 (Post 5164092)

I have the same problem with the NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440, with several ubuntu based distributions, although LXPUP works fine.

this would confirm my suspicion that the current drivers for this card are not working so well.
irjowo99, you have 2 choices:

- learn more about linux and solve your problem
- switch distros (but keep in mind that puppy linux and most derivates are running in RAM completely)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ondoho (Post 5164219)

this would confirm my suspicion that the current drivers for this card are not working so well.

1. There doesn't appear to be a Linux driver for this card on the NVidia site. Maybe it is just too old.
2. I've settled on Ubuntu and having tried several desktops, have found that the KDE desktop works best with this graphics card.
3. LX-PUP, like all Puppy distros can be loaded onto the hard drive, takes up very little HDD space, and does work very well. Much quicker than KUBUNTU.

When I've had problems like this in the past, I've copied some of the Puppy XORG settings over to Ubuntu to solve the problem, but it is a painful trial and error process, unless you are familar with how XORG works.

Hey Guys,

Well, that's quite clear. Thanks for the help!

It sounds like trying to keep this distro and fiddle with the drivers is more than I'm willing to take on right now. I do want to learn more about linux, but that's a long term project, I have other priorities, and right now just wanna get this thing doing the basics with ease and comfort.

I'm considering a couple options at this point:

1) buy another video card. We have a good place in Seattle that has tons of used computer equipment.

2) try ubuntu with KDE or maybe puppy.

Probably changing distros is what I'll do since it sounds like it will be faster anyway and more suited to my old computer. I'm in no hurry since I foresee it being a chore and I can squeak by with my current setup for a while, janky as it is.

I'll keep you guys posted-- thanks again!