I am using Mate, with debian8, an this has never not worked, so I'm confused now. I have a custom applet (launcher), which reads: ssh user@ip When clicked it does nothing, ordinarily a terminal is launched and I enter my password.
other applets work just fine. such as mate-screenshot -a 
yes, I have ssh, the server is running, and the command works if I put it into a shell manually. Does the launcher keep a log some place? how might I troubleshoot this?
/var/log/syslog? Launchers usex-terminal-emulatorwhich is set by update-alternatives. What doesupdate-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulatorgive?