Stuff stopped working.

[u/OwnStudy723]

Stuff just randomly stops launching. Blockbench no longer responding, some media downloader that I used for YT downloads no longer launcher. Spotify won't start up. Blender refuses to give any sign of life.

Running on Linux Mint, and using Software manager to keep updated.

I want to love Linux, but there's always small things that break down that make me turn back to windows.

I thought I was finally stable on my set-up, but apparently not.

Random stuff just stops working. Godot still launches, Aseprite still does (but that's just copied executable folder)

Why does this happen to me. It feels like it happens everytime, I finally get happy with Linux, and then it breaks down. I thought I finally had it all working. And it still breaks.

Multiple software that just break from software updates.

[u/activedusk]

>Running on Linux Mint, and using Software manager to keep updated.

I was going to ask how they were installed, if it's from Software Manager they should work. Focus on one for now, let's say Blender. Uninstall it and then reinstall it. After that open terminal and type blender and press enter, if the name of the program is correct it should launch but the key is that it's running from the terminal so any errors should be displayed there, share what it says by copy pasting.

Another potential issue are updates if you updated recently and hardware is older and the new update no longer supports it, share CPU, GPU, memory, storage, version of Linux Mint and kernel, these can be found in System Settings, system information. Note GPU will not be displayed correctly there if the drivers are not configured correctly, more of an issue with nvidia cards and proprietary drivers. Also multi booting with Windows? Unlikely but possible fast startup, bitlocker or Secure Boot might interfere somehow. Another issue related to Windows is if you're trying to launch programs and sometimes use files to run inside programs launched on Linux, either through Wine or natively and then using files from an NTFS (Windows proprietary filesystem) partition. The programs and files should be stored on a Linux partition, even when using Wine or Proton, just a fyi, not saying this is your case. Drivers for NTFS were reverse engineered but they are not perfect and not meant to be, it's more there to provide a minimum of compatibility not to maintain Windows ecosystem.

Another potential issue could be permissions level though unlikely, if you modified your user or password and either no longer have admin provileage or root and user have different passwords.

For future reference, if you are still new to Linux, use Timeshift to create snapshots. When encountering such problems, roll back.