One of the wallpapers has XFCE on it, but I didn't change my desktop environment. Also of note, when I open the terminal it doesn't look the same as it used to. Instead of the dark purple window it's a black window with white text and the window's icon is a red "X" with a dark blue "T" on it.
This is a headless machine and I connect to it through remote-desktop.
If I go through the applications menu (manually clicking, the super key does nothing and my keyboard does not have a "Fn" key) and go to settings I get the window on the left. Changing the settings in this window does nothing. Right clicking the desktop and clicking "desktop settings" I get the window on the right. This window correctly changes the wallpaper.
When I open the home folder I get Thunar.
My guess is there are two desktop environments competing or something right now? How can I fix this?
Also, weirdly, if I click my name in the upper right I can "lock screen" and "log out..." but I can't "switch user," "suspend," or "shut down."
Thank you in advance for any help.
Your problem is that you're still using Ubuntu, after Canonical started injecting advertising and wants you to pay for it now.
Try a different distro, like anything besides Ubuntu..
My primary machine runs Pop!_OS, but I've had this machine running for years. Back when I installed Ubuntu on it, Canonical wasn't widely known as a bad guy. I've got various services running that I would need to resetup if I started from scratch.
I get where you're coming from, but to migrate everything over would take so much time. For now I would really like it if my desktop just worked correctly. When I get the time I can look into putting mint or debian on it.
Popos is based on Ubuntu, but maintained by a separate company and has major differences. I’ve also been running it on a couple of machines for years and have been quite happy with it.