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+---- Thread: New Install, apps start but don't show up on screen?! (/showthread.php?tid=19909)
New Install, apps start but don't show up on screen?! - RT3 - 07-18-2025
Hi All,
New PinePhone Pro, put Mobian on it right away because I'm already using Debian on several R Pis, so its familiar. I put it on an SD card and BEFORE first boot it was a little tricky to get it to boot. Someone who knows more than me should capture that for us, I just stumbled into how to get it to boot the very first time. But once it had been through the first boot it shows up reliably in the U-Boot choices, so all good there.
And it comes up just fine and you can look around and see the apps and so forth. BUT, when an app is selected, you see it starting with appropriate looking visuals, but then when you expect the app to be open and ready to do something for you, all you get is the default screen background!
I tried four or five apps, including settings and the tour/tutorial, and you can see that they're running because the higher-level window manager works fine. So you can swipe this way and that and see stuff. BUT, you can't actually get into any app!
HELP!
Thanks,
RT
RE: New Install, apps start but don't show up on screen?! - RT3 - 07-18-2025
(07-18-2025, 04:30 PM)RT3 Wrote: Because it's on an SD card, and not the eMMC, I was able to pull the card and mount it elsewhere. I've gotten so far as to discover it doesn't have ssh installed, so I can't just log in and work on it from the inside. I'm going to try and get a Pi going and do a chroot to install ssh. Maybe while logged in that way, and thus "watching live," I can figure it out.
What I don't know about the window manager / windowing system is virtually 100% of it, I'd only guess it runs some flavor of x11? Anyway, even with that ignorance, I'm guessing one of these is the cause:
1) Display Server Issues: The issue may stem from the display server not properly rendering the application windows, even though the window manager is functioning.
2) Session Management: There could be a problem with how the session is managed, preventing applications from displaying their interfaces correctly. (I doubt this, though, because the outer layer works perfectly.)
3) Configuration Files: Corrupted or misconfigured user or system configuration files could lead to this behavior.
I've also dumped the journal files to text and have them available but don't know what to look for.
Ideas?!
RE: New Install, apps start but don't show up on screen?! - Kevin Kofler - 07-18-2025
The windowing system you get by default on Mobian is actually Wayland, not any flavor of X11.