Linux troubleshooting issue, cinnamon desktop crash

[Zepp]

Linux lads, I need some troubleshooting help

On my work laptop I have Fedora 41 with cinnamon desktop. All has been working well for the last 2 months or so.

Yesterday I got to poking around and decided to remove some apps in Software that I do not use.

I clicked to remove "character maps" and immediately cinnamon went into a half crash state with an error message popup. the windows were still open but I couldnt close them or access menu.

I rebooted and upon signing in, the desktop session no longer started.

I opened TTY at the login screen and ran "sudo dnf reinstall cinnamon" successfully, but upon reboot it's still in the same state. Cinnamon session will not start. after logging in it goes to black screen for a few seconds like it's going to load, then just puts me back to login screen again.

As a temp workaround I installed MATE desktop, which Im typing from now, but I really want to recover the cinnamon desktop if possible as I prefer it for the work environment.

 

[crashtech]

Try

sudo apt-get install --reinstall gucharmap

and logout/in, that should reinstall the character map.

 

[Zepp]

Try

sudo apt-get install --reinstall gucharmap

and logout/in, that should reinstall the character map.

OK ran reinstall gucharmap, it was successful, then rebooted, but issue remains unfortunately.
still cant login to cinnamon session... starting to want to use an immutable distro for my work machine now, heh

 

[mikeymikec]

I think it's time to gather some crash log files and head over to the mint forums to see what they suggest.

I am curious to know how it goes though.

 

[lxskllr]

Only thing I could suggest is to look through your uninstall logs when you removed the charactermap. Perhaps it removed something it considered an orphan dependency, but it was really needed? I don't know where you'd find the logs in fedora, but I'm sure it's in there somewhere.

Also, be sure that's the only thing you uninstalled or changed. Something done a day or two previous without a reboot could be a culprit also.

 

[Zepp]

Well I managed to get it back up.

I think an AI search result might have caused me to think I reinstalled cinnamon earlier but either didn't or it installed something minimal without everything it needs to start a session.

this morning as a last ditch attepmt before just sticking with MATE, I ran sudo dnf install @Cinnamon-desktop, it showed a list of things to install. after finishing and rebooting low and behold my old desktop is back. even the themeing and icon placements.

Lesson learned. don't remove character maps from software...

Thank you all for the help and suggestions