I updated my NitroPad to Qubes 4.3 using the in-place method 2 days ago, but this morning I suddenly started experiencing quite a bad GUI bug that I can’t recover from rendering my machine almost unusable.
It happened during my normal workflow while I was AFK with the screen locked. When I came back and unlocked the screen, the GUI was all messed up. The Qubes panel was gone, or hidden, or something. I couldn’t navigate to my windows. My window manager shortcuts weren’t working so I couldn’t cycle through windows. The window borders were not showing and I couldn’t move or expand windows. Luckily I had a shortcut for the application launcher, but on launching an app it opened in the upper left corner of the screen with no way to move it from there, expand it or close it.
The system was so unusable I decided to reboot, but it was no use.
After the reboot I had the exact same issue.
I thought it might be caused from my external displays and USB keyboard and mouse so I disconnected them all and rebooted once more.
Same story logging in after the reboot.
I launched the Display configuration and changed the NitroPad’s screen resolution back to it’s default. It didn’t help much at first so I decided to reboot again. Luckily this time after the reboot I got the Qubes panel back, however all the other issues still persist.
I have no idea what’s going on or what’s causing this. It seems like an X/X11/Xorg bug but I’ve no idea how to fix it.
I’m currently backing up my qubes as I’m thinking I need to re-install the whole OS to fix this, so if anyone here as any idea on what’s going on or how to help, please chime in!
I’m considering going back to R4.2.4 as I can’t afford to encounter more critical bugs like this.
fwiw I had just updated my Dasharo firmware from 0.9.0 to 1.0.0 yesterday, but I wouldn’t have thought a new firmware version would cause a GUI bug like this.
Aside from that my system is the same as stated in my HCL here: HCL - Nitrokey NitroPad V54
Any help is greatly appreciated!
UPDATE:
I installed KDE which seems to work fine, so I am convinced my xfce environment encountered some bug that I don’t know how to deal with. KDE is so much nicer though so I might just continue with it. If not, I could try figure out how to re-install xfce if it doesn’t make me lose all of my config settings.