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Top left: Terminal, top right: Firefox, bottom: Files

I'm running Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 LTS and I'm having issues with displaying native Linux apps (Terminal, Files, Settings, etc.). Whenever I launch the Terminal, I get a fully transparent box, whereas any other native app just displays a full black box. Non-native apps such as Firefox display correctly. I have to mention that I have been using Linux for months and never had any trouble with these apps before, I didn't install anything or run any command before these issues started occurring.

Thank you for your help!

Patin Marul
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    Check display preferences, see if anything is weird; see which display manager is in use & if it somehow was changed (e.g. at login screen), and/or try changing it; or verify drivers in use (just randomly spitballing ideas); update to 17.04 just for fun... Otherwise, hard to guess what it might be. Doesn't ring a bell. – michael Aug 02 '17 at 21:34
  • @michael Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately I can't access preferences, they show a black screen too. And I cannot use the terminal to display any kind of info. I have tried all the different display managers from login screen but nothing has changed. I have included a screenshot at the top of my post for you to see what happens graphically. – Patin Marul Aug 03 '17 at 10:11
  • Likely a result of using an incorrect display driver eg see (but your specific driver & steps to resolve will be different) https://askubuntu.com/questions/793625/terminal-only-shows-up-as-a-black-window Since the broken display complicates fixing the issue, you can perhaps try ctrl+alt+f1 to work on the issue, eg: https://askubuntu.com/questions/157617/reverting-from-ctrl-alt-f1 But, I can't say why it was working before, unless something was installed/disabled, somehow. – michael Aug 03 '17 at 10:25
  • @michael I have tried different solutions for reinstalling my graphics card driver, but nothing has changed. I am considering reinstalling Ubuntu from scratch, even though it's quite annoying – Patin Marul Aug 03 '17 at 12:19
  • Also, if it's dual boot to Windows, login to windows & install/run the hw vendor test suite to see if there actually is a hardware issue. (Vendors don't usually have the same tools for Linux, but if they do, you can run those too, hopefully being able to run / view results outside the gui display.) – michael Aug 03 '17 at 16:45

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after an upgrade of a few packages I had the same problems under various Desktop environments in my 16.04 installation (Gnome,Gnome Classic and the Default). All the menus were blacked out no more console window etc.. All other programs like e.g. chrome were fine. So after backing up the most important data to an external HDD. I run a " apt-get dist-upgrade" as sudo after I had switched to non GUI via ctrl alt F1. This solved the problem for me after the restart. Now everything is back to normal.

christian
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