Nov 2, 2026 6:34:22 AM Charles Curley <[email protected]>: > > On Sun, 1 Nov 2026 23:25:25 -0800 > Donald MacDougall <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I have an Acer Aspire laptop. I hadn't upgraded it in a long time. >> It was still on bullseye which recently stopped receiving security >> updates, so I decided it was time to do it. I upgraded to bookworm >> which went swimmingly. Then I upgraded to Trixie which went even >> better. I have been using xfce for many many years and it seemed to >> work splendidly till I went to shut it down and found that the >> "Reboot" option which had always been the last option on the Apps >> list was no longer there, > > What "apps list"?
Since I can't see it, from memory (not too good anymore) I really meant what you described below but the"Log Out" selection was missing from the bottom of the "Applications" list, thus I was unable to get the popup with six selections including (from memory) Reboot and Shut Down as well as sleep and several others. > > If you right click on the desktop, you should get a popup menu. The > bottom entry of that is "Applications". Hover the pointer over that, > and you should get another popup menu, the bottom entry of which is > "Log Out". Select that, and you should get a popup menu in the center > of the screen with several drastic options. One of those is "Shut > Down". Is that what you see? > >> so I opened a command line window and used >> the command "systemctl power off"and this worked fine. > > I think you ran "systemctl poweroff". > ^^ > Correct. > I take it that you got a normal power up and were able to log in to > XFCE. > As I described in my reply to Greg, I have always logged in at the cli login prompt and then run XFCE by typing "startx". I've done this for many years. After the upgrade to Trixie and after opening the terminal and typing "systemctl poweroff" I was able to use the power key to to restart, then login, then type startx and see my normal XFCE desktop. But after I the "systemctl halt" command in the terminal window I used the power key then logged in at the login prompt, typed "startx" and saw no desktop, just the black screen. > >> I had also >> noticed the "halt" option in the systemctl man page and remembered >> decades ago using the halt command to power down computers and >> wondered what the difference is between that and poweroff, so I tried >> it. After that when I started it up again, logged in and typed >> 'startx', > > Wait, logged in again to what? In a normal Debian XFCE installation you > log in to lightdm, which means you are already running X. As noted above, I have always logged in at the cli login prompt then run XFCE by typing startx. So why did > you type "startx"? And into what? Did you change from lightdm (on > console 7) to a non-graphical console (1-6)? If so why? > > >> instead of seeing the normal desktop, all I see is a black >> screen with a mouse cursor in the middle which I can move around at >> will but it does nothing. Apparently halt has changed meaning since >> way back when. > > Or, more likely, you did something you haven't told us about because > you didn't think it was significant. Which is why giving what you think > are unnecessary details is sometimes very important. I have omitted nothing. I have described in detail the exact order of everything I did. >> >> I'm on Wayland obviously with lightdm > > It is not obvious to me that you are on Wayland. How do you know you > are on Wayland? Don't tell us that you are on Wayland (obvious or not). > Show us you are on Wayland. Perhaps not. I've described my reasoning in detail in my reply to Greg and will not repeat it. I likely was wrong. > > >> >> I had a similar thing happen several years ago on a desktop computer >> and I never figured it out, but I created a new user which worked >> fine so I never bothered to spend the time to trouble shoot, but this >> time that isn't working. The new user gets the same black screen. >> >> I'd really appreciate suggestions. >> >> I don't have my email set up to be used from the command line so I'm >> sending this from my phone, which makes it difficult to cut and >> paste Don MacDougall
