Comment 9 for bug 1831280

I didn't say the multitude of random issues "spontaneously appear".

My point is that the desktop is tested as a set of packages delivered together. There are dependencies, and expectations. It's not uncommon for users to run commands to install or remove software from their system which they copy/pasted from a blog or other guide. Sometimes these guides suggest doing things which can end up removing core packages from the system. The command will have alerted the user, but the user may not understand the implications. I noted that your system is old, having been installed from a 13.04 ISO. There's the very real possibility that something you did in the 6 years since then as inadvertently removed a package which the desktop needs for normal operation. It's also possible that this hasn't happened. The commands I gave will simply install the 'ubuntu-desktop' "task" which will in turn make sure all the expected dependencies are installed. Nothing more. It may actually do nothing at all, if they're all there. Or it might. It's just a handy one-liner that I've used many times to 'reset' things back to a working state.