I recently switched from MATE to Gnome I experience the same problem. I have found that I can start gnome-control-center if I set the environment variable CLUTTER_BACKEND to wayland. You can start in in your shell like so:
CLUTTER_BACKEND=wayland gnome-control-center If I check my current environment for clutter environment variables I see: $set | grep -i clutter CLUTTER_BACKEND=x11 CLUTTER_IM_MODULE=xim None of those are set in any of my dot files in my home, the culprit appears to be: X11/Xsession.d/99mate-environment: export CLUTTER_BACKEND=x11 -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Desktop Bugs, which is subscribed to gnome-control-center in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1755536 Title: gnome-control-center is not open ubuntu 18.04 To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/1755536/+subscriptions -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs