My atom text editor version 1.53.0 was not opening files. Initially clearing the state using the following command solved the issue :
atom --clear-window-state
Using this I was able to open files but not able to save any changes I made to the files. I tried reinstalling through
sudo apt-get remove atom
rm -r ~/.atom
sudo apt-get install atom
However this did not solve the issue.
Finally what worked was installing it using snap
sudo snap install atom
Since then atom text editor has been working fine.
Another thing I did different was to click on No, on the telemetry consent page. Earlier I was just closing the window without clicking on anything.
Not sure what made it work but happy to have it working again!