Comment 27 for bug 59867

I've had seen a work around for returning synaptic functionality: I post it here as help to people that want to fix the issue as it's not an acceptable fix to me.

   1. System -> Quit
   2. Switch User
   3. Login as the same user again

original post with answer:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=2532846&postcount=7