Sounds like gpu died, or drivers did.  If you have another laptop or
anything to ssh from, see if you can get into the box via ssh and
troubleshoot that way.  I've popped video cards to die before, and they
work, but only headless.

Try to 'cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log' to see if your card died, or updated
perhaps unexpectedly.  Sadly updating some minor 3rd party crap would
occasionally break my whole update and os, ubuntu or arch really.  Last
time I upgraded my arch it broke nvidia binary support with too new a
kernel, luckily I never use the nvidia gpu as prime is a basketcase
anyways, so it uses intel normally anyways.  Above old laptop example
worked if I disable nvidia drivers and used only intel, as the gpu fried.
Yours might have if video is just dead, but otherwise seems alive.

If only intel, your software may have just gotten hozed - try a different
user profile if you can get any video out of it.

-mb


On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 1:13 PM Stephen Partington via PLUG-discuss <
plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

> You may have something off in your settings for cinnamon, This is for
> arch, but it can give you a great place to start from.
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/cinnamon
>
> But my first thought would be to rename the config files for your window
> manager and reboot to see if it is part of those settings.
>
> On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 11:09 AM joe--- via PLUG-discuss <
> plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>
>> I have been running Linux Mint 17 on several computers
>> 24/7 for a very long time with very reliable performance.
>>
>> This morning, when I turned on the monitor, the panel
>> had vanished and I no way to do anything.
>>
>> I finally found a way to get to the command line and
>> all of my data appears to be there, but none of my
>> utilities in my home/bin file work.
>>
>> Recently, I read that Linux Mint was threatening to
>> coerce users to upgrade to a newer version. This would
>> be unconscionable and reprehensible! Is this what they
>> have done.
>>
>> I hope someone can help me figure out how to get my
>> system working again.
>>
>> Please help.
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------
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>
>
>
> --
> A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
> rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
>
> Stephen
>
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