Just started seeing this today...H18.5.408 throws this error whenever I attempt to change desktops.

It then appears to switch to the chosen desktop layout, then I hit the fatal error dialog and it crashes out.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Running Houdini on Linux (Pop_OS). Was fine until today; not sure what could have changed.

After a reinstall, discovered that Houdini dropped a 'Games' desktop into my home houdini18.5/desktop/ folder. Once I got rid of it, it fixed the issue for the Games desktop (which is what I was after) but the problem persists for the Grooming and Modeling desktops.

Do either of those have some weird context-specificity? In any case, I can't believe a crash is the expected handling of an out-of-context desktop selection; even choosing the TOPs desktop doesn't lead to a crash.

I'd log a bug for the crash if you can. Just compress up the contents of your $HOME/houdini18.5 directory and send them into support (eg. via Support > Report a Bug/RFE in the menu at the top of this website).