Hi. I have a few what are probably silly questions, but I'll never know if I don't ask.
On startup, is there a way to start apps minimised?
Apps on desktop - some start when I click on them, others I have to do right click/Open. This second group, is it because they need me to give permissions?
Typing commands etc. It's not possible to select a given point with the cursor and start typing? I have to delete from the right till I get there? I know this is normal on commands in Windows, but thought I'd check just in case.
This is entirely dependent on the application itself. Some have the ability to start them in the background, but not others. A more generalized solution would probably require some scripting and playing with targeting windows... which might be a little trickier to do, especially on Wayland.
Are you sure they are not simply delayed in launching? But no, I don't think this has to do with permissions. If you can give a few examples, that might help while looking into it a bit more.
Are you talking about running commands in the terminal window? There are a few built-in shortcuts to navigate around. Things like Ctrl+A and Ctrl+E to jump to the beginning and end of the line, respectively.
On my PC, Timeshift, GParted and Synaptic Package Manager do this - double click, nothing. On my laptop, all 3 ask for permissions. Can i set them on my PC to also ask for permissions, as I forget and sit like a dummy waiting or them to do something?
I found a bug in linux mint to this problem. It sounds like yours and concerns all apps that need sudo rights to launch. They start without problems from start menu or panel. I couldn't reproduce this error on my Zorin VM. I tested it with another desktop icons gnome extension.
This looks related to Polkit, but I'm not sure where it's coming from exactly, I wonder if this is something new with Gnome 46. Interestingly enough I can launch an application normally exactly once, but after that I also have the same behavior.
I'll try to look into this later, see if I can find out what's going on
Gnome use / need extensions to get a traditional desktop's metaphor to work as it does in Windows / MacOS. At the beginning (Fedora 15 ?), these kind of uses where not part of there plan ; they wanted something "new", without icons on the desktop. So then, extensions appeared, and this was interesting and fine because Free Software allow us to do this. Change and adapt things. In my point of view, from what i have experienced, it works well most of the time and i will try out the one is provided by Zorin. But i tend to think that if i want icons on my desktop, i will use XFCE, MATE or even KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, because these desktops have been developed in a more "classic" way, with icons on desktop (even if you can disable desktop icons too).
Could you try to log in using Wayland, test it, and then do the same on Xorg? You can switch this by logging out of your account on the lower right switch:
In Wayland, what happens with these 3 apps is I have to double click TWICE, then they open to the authorisation screen.
If I go back to Xorg, I can't get them to do anything by clicking - I have to use Open on right click
To me sometimes it opens up right away, but other times it gets "stuck" for a few tries. On Xorg it seems to work slightly better, but also erratic... Something here is definitely wrong.
Could you open a terminal and run:
sudo tail -f /var/log/syslog
This will look at the log file and show any output in real time. Then, double click on the launchers and see if there's an error message there.
PS: You can press Ctrl + C at the terminal to stop the listening of the log file when you're done.
Hi @zenzen
This is what I get double clicking on the 3 naughty apps
Nov 14 12:17:52 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: Can't update stage views actor <unnamed>[<MetaWindowActorX11>:0x5db6e4bd4670] is on because it needs an allocation.
Nov 14 12:17:52 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: Can't update stage views actor <unnamed>[<MetaSurfaceActorX11>:0x5db6e3becd20] is on because it needs an allocation.
Nov 14 12:18:15 OldMesh kernel: [ 824.660570] [UFW BLOCK] IN=enp2s0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:01:34:e1:a9:5e:01:20:08:00 SRC=192.168.178.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=27911 DF PROTO=2
Nov 14 12:18:55 OldMesh systemd[2142]: Started Application launched by gnome-shell.
Nov 14 12:18:55 OldMesh dbus-daemon[2175]: [session uid=1000 pid=2175] Activating via systemd: service name='org.gnome.Terminal' unit='gnome-terminal-server.service' requested by ':1.239' (uid=1000 pid=7173 comm="/usr/bin/gnome-terminal.real " label="unconfined")
Nov 14 12:18:55 OldMesh systemd[2142]: Created slice Slice /app/org.gnome.Terminal.
Nov 14 12:18:55 OldMesh systemd[2142]: Starting GNOME Terminal Server...
Nov 14 12:18:56 OldMesh dbus-daemon[2175]: [session uid=1000 pid=2175] Successfully activated service 'org.gnome.Terminal'
Nov 14 12:18:56 OldMesh systemd[2142]: Started GNOME Terminal Server.
Nov 14 12:18:56 OldMesh systemd[2142]: Started VTE child process 7199 launched by gnome-terminal-server process 7176.
Nov 14 12:19:26 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: polkitAuthenticationAgent: Failed to show modal dialog. Dismissing authentication request for action-id org.gnome.gparted cookie 1-02d7087c511c4254ca726b1ad3e849a3-8-9eb327a69f46397e564dae529a08234c
Nov 14 12:19:26 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: DING: Error executing command as another user: Request dismissed
Nov 14 12:19:30 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: Can't update stage views actor <unnamed>[<MetaWindowActorX11>:0x5db6e73d8290] is on because it needs an allocation.
Nov 14 12:19:30 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: Can't update stage views actor <unnamed>[<MetaSurfaceActorX11>:0x5db6e3bed440] is on because it needs an allocation.
Nov 14 12:19:40 OldMesh systemd[1]: Starting Cleanup of Temporary Directories...
Nov 14 12:19:40 OldMesh systemd[1]: systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service: Deactivated successfully.
Nov 14 12:19:40 OldMesh systemd[1]: Finished Cleanup of Temporary Directories.
Nov 14 12:19:58 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: polkitAuthenticationAgent: Failed to show modal dialog. Dismissing authentication request for action-id com.ubuntu.pkexec.synaptic cookie 1-02d7087c511c4254ca726b1ad3e849a3-9-afa22dd0daaf67fdc229b4d1b85fd8d6
Nov 14 12:19:58 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: DING: Error executing command as another user: Request dismissed
Nov 14 12:20:05 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: polkitAuthenticationAgent: Failed to show modal dialog. Dismissing authentication request for action-id org.gnome.gparted cookie 1-02d7087c511c4254ca726b1ad3e849a3-10-69b356f7a98400034d0cb249f7cc9bb4
Nov 14 12:20:05 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: DING: Error executing command as another user: Request dismissed
Nov 14 12:20:09 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: polkitAuthenticationAgent: Failed to show modal dialog. Dismissing authentication request for action-id in.teejeetech.pkexec.timeshift-gtk cookie 1-02d7087c511c4254ca726b1ad3e849a3-11-57a9bb408eb991e5c69e973f610703f6
Nov 14 12:20:09 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: DING: Error executing command as another user: Request dismissed
Nov 14 12:20:11 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: Can't update stage views actor <unnamed>[<MetaWindowActorX11>:0x5db6e73d8290] is on because it needs an allocation.
Nov 14 12:20:11 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: Can't update stage views actor <unnamed>[<MetaSurfaceActorX11>:0x5db6e3bed440] is on because it needs an allocation.
Nov 14 12:20:20 OldMesh kernel: [ 949.661151] [UFW BLOCK] IN=enp2s0 OUT= MAC=01:00:5e:00:00:01:34:e1:a9:5e:01:20:08:00 SRC=192.168.178.1 DST=224.0.0.1 LEN=36 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=1 ID=36630 DF PROTO=2
Nov 14 12:20:26 OldMesh com.microsoft.Edge.desktop[6790]: [2:2:1114/122026.122732:ERROR:ui/compositor/compositor_animation_observer.cc:65] CompositorAnimationObserver is active for too long (64.8391s) location=Button@ui/views/controls/button/button.cc:715
Nov 14 12:20:46 OldMesh gnome-shell[2364]: Could not load a pixbuf from icon theme.#012This may indicate that pixbuf loaders or the mime database could not be found.
Yep, that's the same error I'm seeing as well. I've tried looking this up but no dice, still need to look into this further. I don't think that polkit is very polished, to be honest.
In case you're interested, I did find a work around this but it will completely bypass the authentication prompt. If you're comfortable with that, I can walk you through it.
I forgot to ask but from this other thread you mentioned that you're on Zorin OS 17, while I've been testing on Z18... Well, now I'm not so sure I want to share this workaround as I'd like to test it out first. If you can give me a couple of days to be sure, maybe I can find another solution otherwise I'll post my hacky around it.
After trying out for a while I've failed to get this to work as intended, and now even on Zorin OS 18 there are issues with my approach so I won't paste it here to avoid any confusion. It seems to me that polkit is just really buggy.
It's the system process that runs in the background and that handles authorization requests for anything that requires elevated privileges. In theory, you can configure it for things like this where you can provide exceptions to certain programs, or unrestricted access to certain users, etc.
But I don't know if it's Polkit itself that is behaving badly, or something else entirely, but it's really annoying how sometimes it seems to work and suddenly it does nothing
