New install of 18.04, couple of issues

Support & Help Requests
#1

Just installed Ubuntu-Mate 18.04.1 on an i3 system. I needed dual boot with Windows 7 and ran into the “no EFI partition” grub2 install failure bug. I re-ran Gparted and made an EFI partition. The re-install completed but wouldn’t boot. So I booted the install media to “Try Ubuntu” again and installed Grub customizer. I reinstalled the MBR with it and am now dual booting successfully. I got these “tips” from the webpage link in the failure message. The discussion makes it look like the bug is fixed, sure wasn’t for me. This is a show stopper bug for normal folks who haven’t achieved assistant-guru status and makes it seem like the whole system has been hosed by the installation.

Second issue, using the software boutique, Etcher-IO installation failed: “wrong package name”.

My initial reaction to the main menu changes from 16.04 is negative. I think someone has Windows envy and has been looking at Windows 10 too much :slight_smile:

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#2

Luckily that part at least is very easy to change. Either change to a different layout that uses the old main menu, such as Traditional in MATE Tweak > Panel, or just manually change it. Right click the current menu, unlock it, right click again to remove it, and right click once more to add and then choose Main Menu.

#3

Thanks.

I had seen discussion of this before I installed, but didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. But for the purposes of this dual boot system I want to minimize the “customization’s”. Other than turning off the screen saver and power management I want to keep it as “stock as installed” as much as possible (if we want the screen blank we will turn off the monitor!).

It was mentioning the Etcher problem in software boutique and the dual boot installation failure issue that motivated the thread.

#4

I’m on 18.10 so I can’t say if things are exactly the same on 18.04 (but in that case, they should) and the issue with Etcher is that it’s not in the Ubuntu repos, so the Boutique uses a 3rd-party Debian repo and it seems that it’s not signed, so it can’t be properly used. You should have an error message saying that rather than “wrong package name”, unless you tried to install it manually (with apt-get or Synaptic). It’s quite possible that the repo has been abandoned.

Anyway, there’s an AppImage version available on the website that you can try. First, remove the Debian repo if it’s been added and reload the sources list:

sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/etcher.list
sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/etcher.list.save
sudo apt-get update

(Don’t worry if you get an error message saying that the .list and/or the .list.save doesn’t exist, just continue.)

There’s another issue on Etcher’s website, as the link to the 64 bit version seems to be broken. You can grab it from GitHub directly. In case you’re on a 32 bit Ubuntu MATE, the link to the 32 bit AppImage works fine.

Once it’s downloaded, extract it from the zip archive and run it. The AppImage format is kind of an executable package, similar to Windows’ .exe: just double-click on it to launch it. At first start, it’ll ask you if you want to create a desktop file; it’s only if you want it to appear in the Applications menu, in which case it’ll point to where you started it from, so put it somewhere in your home folder where you won’t move it.

There have been a few apps in the Boutique recently that are broken because they rely on 3rd-party repos that are not available.

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#5

Since I was checking out the boutique and saw Etcher I thought I grab it. I don’t really need it on this system, but thought I should report the problem.

All things considered, when I need etcher I prefer downloading the appimage version instead of a deb file as it generally stays current (its what I’ve used on 16.04 for years).

I thought the boutique was for “well curated” apps, hence I thought I should mention the problem. Maybe the boutique should look into installing the app image version instead of relying on a potentially poorly maintained repo.

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