Audacity running in background but not showing up

Audacity Help Forum GNU/Linux
1

Hello Sir/Madame, I’m using Kubuntu 21.04 and Audacity was okay from the start. Then 2 days ago, I can’t use it anymore. I don’t know why but when I opened it, it only runs in the background but it’s not showing up. I tried uninstalling, purging, reinstalling and also I tried uninstalling Kdenlive which I suspected was the culprit but no it wasn’t. I tried to search for an answer to this problem but I can’t find any solution. So now I decided to consult here. By the way, I don’t have problems with Windows 10 only Kubuntu. Thanks for answering.

2

The first thing I would suggest is to reset Audacity back to factory settings.
To do that:

  1. Reboot the computer (this ensures that there is nothing running that will interfere with the next steps)

  2. Open your “home” folder in your file browser, and enable “hidden files” in the file browser options (can usually be done with “Ctrl + H”)

  3. Find the hidden folder in your home directory:

.audacity-data
  1. In the “.audacity-data” folder, delete the three files:
  • audacity.cfg
  • pluginregistry.cfg
  • pluginsettings.cfg

If that doesn’t fix the problem, try launching Audacity from a Terminal window by entering the command:

audacity

Copy all of the output from the Terminal window and paste it into your reply.

3

Hello, I remembered I deleted system fonts on Kubuntu. I reinstalled the Pango Fonts (sudo apt-get install -y libsdl-pango-dev) because of this error and it was fixed:

(audacity:2253): Pango - CRITICAL**: 21:02:13:362 :pango_font_description_set_size: assertion ‘size >= -’ failed

by the way that error was looping

Now, what’s left is this:

(audacity:9185): Gtk-WARNING **: 21:07:24.182: A floating object was finalized. This means that someone
called g_object_unref() on an object that had only a floating
reference; the initial floating reference is not owned by anyone
and must be removed with g_object_ref_sink(

4

Hello, I’m sorry I was wrong. I executed sudo audacity and the pango error still remains.

5

Never use “sudo” unless you are intentionally modifying the system.

To launch Audacity from a terminal, the command is just:

audacity
6

Hello Sir Steve, thank you very much for trying to solve my mistake, I greatly appreciate your help. I decided to clean install Kubuntu again and it worked! Anyway I didn’t have solution for this but I’ll just give prevention.

  • Never delete your system fonts (preinstalled System Fonts from your OS)


  • Never
purge

Audacity (or any application) then be careful when using

autoremove

because there’s no way to get those dependencies back.

Those are the factors that made the Audacity run in the background and the GUI wasn’t appearing.