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GDW
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Contributor

Empty Application menu for Linux Mint MATE in Unity

I'm using WS v8 in Windows 7 64 bit.  I've created VMs for both the Cinnamon and MATE desktops for Linux Mint 13.  In Unity mode, the application menu (next to the Windows Start menu) for the Cinnamon VM works as expected but for the MATE VM it just shows "(Empty)".  The actual Start/Application menus (in "non-Unity" mode) are different for the respective desktops: the Cinnamon menu looks more like a classic XP Start menu (strictly hierarchical tree) whereas the MATE desktop has a menu more akin to the newer Win 7 Start menu with multiple panels each containing menu items and I'm guessing that this is responsible for this behavior.

Does anyone know of a way to get the MATE menu items to show up in Unity mode?

Thanks

Gary

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3 Replies
GDW
Contributor
Contributor

FYI - I just installed Linux Mint 13 with KDE desktop and the Unity menu works as expected.

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samjam
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A partial answer is to edit /usr/bin/vmware-xdg-detect-de so that it emits the word GNOME

There are various ways to persuade it to do this, the easiest is it insert line 2 to say:

echo GNOME && exit

another way is to insert line 2 saying:

XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME

or even to make that an exported part of the environment by editing your .profile to add:

XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME

export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP

Once I do this and login again then I get a partial menu of "Bookmarks, Recent Documents, Home Folder, Desktop"

But I don't get my applications menu to appear.

I'll post more when I have that working

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samjam
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The full answer seems to be to make sure that /usr/bin/vmware-xdg-detect-de emits GNOME, but also install some extra packages

apt-get install mint-meta-mate mint-meta-cinnamon

and login to the gnome and cinnamon desktops at least once (maybe this isn't necessary).

After that you can login to mate again and the menu will work. As the same applications available on mate are available on gnome it seems to do the trick