Hi to all.
I downloaded 24.04 cd image from Mate official page, I checked the SHA256 checksum, I created a bootable USB stick and booted 24.04.
Everything is fine, so I wish to install the 24.04 in a partition of my nvme disk.
I had to quit because the installer is unstable, it crashes continuously. It's impossible to trust in it.
I am the only experiencing this problem?
Is there a newer version of the CD Image with a trustable installer?
Thx for your answers.
The ubuntu-desktop-installer was available for testing for a long time (since 21.10) though it was called the canary installer before it was deemed stable and the default installer of Ubuntu Desktop 23.04. It has thus remained that for 23.10 & 24.04; though the legacy installer ubiquity was available for download at both 23.04 & 23.10.
Ubuntu Budgie at the 23.10 release was the first Ubuntu flavor to use the ubuntu-desktop-installer, though with 24.04 most flavors are using it as the older ubiquity installer is no longer supported (for Ubuntu) for amd64 which is the most popular architecture.
The ubuntu-desktop-installer is deemed stable, and will install to a single partition (without even requiring an ESP or EFI System partition, though if your machine boots using uEFI, an ESP is required if you want your machine to boot; it creates an ESP by default even if the hardware doesn't require it; but you can manually prevent this)
The alternative to using the installer on Ubuntu-MATE ISOs, is maybe consider an alternate flavor that uses the calamares installer. Lubuntu has used calamares since 18.10, but some releases of Ubuntu Studio also used it (*though Ubuntu Studio switched to using ubuntu-desktop-installer for 24.04). Three flavors used calamares at 24.04 LTS. Installing using one of those, then altering your installed packages to reflect a Ubuntu-MATE install being the option I'm talking about here.
No installer is perfect (in my opinion anyway!), and ubuntu-desktop-installer does have many advantages over calamares for Ubuntu flavors; which is why Ubuntu Studio now use it (over calamares), though its probably true that calamares has advantages too (its only the calamares flavors that offer a snapd free install if that could be seen as an advantage, but that's still small compared to some of what ubuntu-desktop-installer offers). Key though is we all have different hardware, and some hardware combinations can 'by chance' be coped with better by one installer over another.
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No, you are not the only one. I invite you to read the following links:
I've read up a bit on it and it seems that the reason for the new installer is that the old installer was unmaintainable and a bit too sparsely documented to be of any further use. Also changes to the installer would involve an immense amount of work
Yes, the new installer is a bit flakey, not even half as good as the old installer, it has some bugs and it is a bit of a highly complex bloated sluggish pig (it seems to be a snap) but we'll have to do with it because it is, AFAIK, relatively fast and easy to build to the needed specifications and changes to it seem much less timeconsuming than with the old one.
The drawback of this complexity makes it very picky on which systems it wants to run, on top of the fact that the installer forces GPT on any disk (which results in several legacy systems not able to install anymore because not every BIOS followed the standard 100%) and that it eats a lot of RAM and CPU.
Since the installer is so new, I have high hopes that the 24.04.1 pointrelease will have most of the installerbugs ironed out.
Until that time you might want to install an older version and do a "do-release-upgrade" from there.
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I've not encountered that in my testing. It only defaults to GPT I think you'll find; as it can install without even creating an ESP (though it'll default to creating one) and doesn't require a new partition table to be created (thus a legacy system without ESP & another OS can be installed to)
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I can not say that it only defaults to GPT.
On the contrary: It doesn't give any alternative to GPT at all.
I've tested this extensively on several laptops with legacy BIOS:
It doesn't fall back to MBR nor gives it a choice to do so.
It creates GPT wether you like it or not.
With legacy bios it creates a fake partition to make room for a GRUB extention to make the legacy BIOS capable of working with GPT at all.
See this:
To quote the relevant part:
After install on my ASUS F3T, which has a BIOS dated 2005, which predates both GPT and UEFI by several years, I ended up with:.
a GPT partitiontable (!?!), 1 GRUB partition, 1 EFI partition(!?!) and 1 EXT4 partition.
And it just ... works.
But a Sony VAIO of that age doesn't because of BIOS incompatibilities
Also a Toshiba P100 I have couldn't because of BIOS incompatibilities
My T420 won't boot the installer in legacy mode (it does in UEFI mode)
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The Manual Partitioning testcase (Details for testcase: Install (manual partitioning) | Ubuntu QA) doesn't actually mandate creating a new partition table, so there is a possibility I've not actually done this using ubuntu-desktop-installer.
Most of my QA testing is done on specific hardware, which includes a number of BIOS only machines, but I spend much of my time doing Lubuntu testing (ie. using the calamares installer) which does create MBR partitions.. so the partition table I'm often using with Ubuntu-MATE for Manual Partitioning was pre-created, and I've only added/changed/removed an partition from a existing partition table (non-GPT), that often has multiple installs (ie. full.disk.install + install.alongside) with Ubuntu-MATE a third partition, OR replacing an existing install of Lubuntu/Xubuntu/Ubuntu.Desktop (If not obvious; I test more than Ubuntu-MATE).
If I couldn't create a non-GPT partition table, it probably wouldn't worry me, as I'd just create it before starting the installer (I actually prefer this, as I actually feel more confident in gparted anyway; which I suspect is the case for many, as we're more likely to use partitioning tools than we are installers)
I have never experienced anything like this. If I have a dual boot MBR partition table which contains two OSes, and one install is replaced by Ubuntu-MATE, my result has always been the untouched OS and a new Ubuntu-MATE install (overwriting whatever I'd selected to be re-installed). Alternatively if the OSes I had had a new (ie. following the auto-resize testcase - Details for testcase: Install (auto-resize) | Ubuntu QA ) the result has always been only a single additional partition containing the Ubuntu-MATE partition (of course one of the existing partitions is much smaller; having given up space to allow for new install)
I've not experienced any additional partition created; excluding when a new partition table is created, as that does result an unused ESP that my legacy systems cannot use; but I've never worried about (GPT standard says it should exist as I understand it). That ESP won't be created if using Manual Partitioning AND re-using a partition table which does NOT already have an ESP (ie. auto-resize type install)
FYI: The only Sony VAIO device I have is uEFI, the BIOS machines I use are mostly Dell or HP (at least for most my QA test installs)
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Thanks to all for your answers, I'm not so experienced with these things, but I can understand something.
Ok I'm trying a fresh install on AMD Ryzen 3, i don't want an upgrade because the actual install is an upgrade from 20.04 to 22.04.
The installer crashes frequently at any stage of the install, I use cable connection to the internet. The last crash was copying the files to the new partition.
My bios is quite recent, november 2019 (see image), all my nvme is in GPT mode and the UEFI settings are see image.
Maybe there is somethnig I can do in Bios?
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Aha, so it is a reasonably recent system 
Yes, I see that you have CSM enabled (Compatibilidat con CSM: Habilitado).
Try disable it. I had to do that on my Thinkpad T420 to make it boot.
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This is what it looks like
https://ubuntu-mate.community/uploads/default/original/3X/d/d/ddadb3531728276019f9020f90a262af5d00ef9f.jpeg
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Hi tkn,
I tried to disable CMS, but I made a mess and grub was not working. I had to reinstall grub.
Actually my problem is not booting, my problem is installing 24.04, the installer crashes.
If the installer crashes, open a terminal and see if any installmedia-check is going on.
If it does, kill it and start the installer again.
In my case (Toshiba Craptop) it stopped the crashes.
EDIT: Also try to install without any network connected. There seems to be some anecdotal evidence that this might prevent the installer from crashing.
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I'd really need to see it on a machine I can explore; as I'm suspicious its something different on disk, and what you're seeing is how gparted interprets it on screen. In effect (given size) its maybe just an entry in the partition table (minimum allocation to create entry... but I'll look for it next oracular or noble.1 install on a BIOS box (if using full disk install).
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This is the complete story how it works:
(Is it possible to boot Linux from a GPT disk on a BIOS system? - Super User)
The BIOS generally doesn't care anything about your hard drives1. It simply loads the MBR and transfer control to the boot loader in MBR. Therefore technically it'll be possible to boot a GPT drive in BIOS mode, because the GPT drive still has a protective MBR at the beginning. You just need a bootloader that supports GPT disks (such as Grub and many other Linux bootloaders)
However, here a small problem arises. On MBR drives the boot loaders often cheat a bit by storing a part of them in the next sectors called "MBR gap", "boot track", or "embedding area" which are often left empty by disk partitioning tools. On a GPT disk the sectors right after the MBR are GPT data structures, hence can't be used for that purpose and you need to create a small BIOS Boot Partition for Grub to store its data
On a BIOS/GPT configuration, a BIOS boot partition is required. GRUB embeds its core.img into this partition.
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Hi tkn.
I opened a terminal and ran TOP, but I didn't see any process installmedia-check. I switched off the network as well, but no way. The installer crashes and crashes and crashes.
What a shame.
That is quite a bummer.
Best you can do is follow this link:
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Hi!
Well, I reported a bug for the installer and I found 2 more bugs opened for the same reason. Unfortunately nobody answered in none of the 3 bugs (I marked mine as a dupliate), they just confirmed the bug.
Nobody knows when we'll get a stable installer, what a shame.
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Hopefully it will be fixed on the first point release. I tried it to install 24.01 on my brothers Levono desktop as he and his wife didn't want to move to Win 11 and are lost in anything to do with computers. I had the same trouble when I installed in on an older Inspiron Dell laptop with a USB drive, I ended up burning it to a DVD to install 24.01 which worked.
The installer crashed everywhere from immediately to 3/4 of the way through the installation. In the end I installed 22.04 and signed them up for Ubuntu Pro so the installation would be for a longer term. It was somewhat embarrassing after telling the what a great system Ubuntu Mate is to not have the installer work when switching someone from Windows to Ubuntu Mate.
Hi, everyone
(Usual disclaimer: please note that I'm just another Forum user here. I'm NOT an "Ubuntu" Developer and/or "Ubuntu MATE" Developer and/or "MATE" Developer).
In the "Ubuntu MATE 24.04 LTS Release Notes | Ubuntu MATE" - https://ubuntu-mate.org/blog/ubuntu-mate-noble-numbat-release-notes/ - I've found the following information:
"(...)
What changed since the Ubuntu MATE 23.10?
- (...)
- Integrated the new
Ubuntu Desktop Bootstrap [ https://snapcraft.io/ubuntu-desktop-bootstrap ] installer
- (...)"
In that "Ubuntu Desktop Bootstrap" installer web page - https://snapcraft.io/ubuntu-desktop-bootstrap - if we scroll down a bit, we can find the following "block", on the right side:
" (...)
Report a bug
And, if we click on that https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-desktop-provision link, we see indeed many bugs reported there. We can even sort the bugs by "Age" to see the most recently reported bugs first:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-desktop-provision/+bugs?orderby=-datecreated&start=0
What I see, for many of those bugs in that web page, is the following:
1. - Someone reports a bug for "ubuntu-desktop-provision" ...
2. - ... and then "Sebastien Bacher (seb128)" (from Canonical) writes a reply in that bug, saying the following:
" Thank you for your bug report Could you add the logs from/var/log/installer after getting the problem or use 'sudo ubuntu-bug ubuntu-desktop-bootstrap' to report the issue (which would automatically include the needed informations)?"
3. - ... and then... only silence! The person that had reported the bug does not supply the requested information, and the bug report just "sits there". 
So, for the people that are having issues with the installer in Ubuntu MATE 24.04 LTS ("Noble Numbat") - and I've seen in this discussion topic that there are quite some people having problems with the installation - I kindly suggest that those users report those bugs at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-desktop-provision and that they "add the logs from /var/log/installer after getting the problem or use 'sudo ubuntu-bug ubuntu-desktop-bootstrap' to report the issue".
I hope this helps
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