Hello. I finally did a full install of Ubuntu Mate on my trusty Dell studio 1749. Tested in virtual box first (although it was on a different laptop), and everything worked flawlessly. Most things work great on the Dell studio 1749, but PPA's are very temperamental. Sometimes they work, and sometimes I get a warning like failed to connect to IP address 192.XX.XX.X could not load repository, the software list might not be up-to-date. I know the conventional wisdom of be careful with PPA's, but this even happens with the Ubuntu mate colors repo that is linked in the welcome screen. And if any PPA should be reliable, it's that one. Any thoughts as to what's going on or how to fix it?
Sounds like something is temperamental with your wireless or Ethernet card (likely the driver), and won't be specific to PPAs.
How do you connect to the Internet? What chipset does it use?
lspci
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Thanks for the smooth troubleshooting. Connected the computer directly to my router with an ethernet cable and the problem evaporated. Still a little perplexed though, because the Wi-Fi on the laptop works, I can hop on YouTube and watch videos no problem when connected to Wi-Fi.
Here's the output of the command you requested
Summary
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 02)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 06)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 06)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 06)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 06)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev 06)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 06)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 06)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a6)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM55 Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 06)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 06)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 06)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 06)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Madison [Mobility Radeon HD 5650/5750 / 6530M/6550M]
02:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Redwood HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5000 Series]
08:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6200 (rev 35)
14:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc. 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller (rev 01)
14:00.1 SD Host controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MMC/SD Controller (rev 01)
14:00.2 Mass storage controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MS/MSPRO/xD Controller (rev 01)
20:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 03)
ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 05)
ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 05)
ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 05)
ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 1st Generation Core i3/5/7 Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 05)
ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 1st Generation Core i3/5/7 Processor Reserved (rev 05)
ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 1st Generation Core i3/5/7 Processor Reserved (rev 05)
Any further insights or steps I should take?
Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6200 (rev 35)
Thanks, so here's your Wi-Fi chipset, which will be useful for your research.
The "can't connect to IP address" to me suggests the Wi-Fi connection is dropping packets so requests doesn't actually deliver (or receive) between the computer and router properly. If you've got a precise error output, that may be useful.
I found this thread that might be worth a try - someone very kindly laid out instructions:
It's 6 years old, but it may still work. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu.
It seems odd that something "heavier" like YouTube works, but many years ago I had a temperamental wireless issue on a laptop where it starts fine then degrades. Thankfully, later kernel updates addressed the issue.
Thanks, the suggestion you linked to does seem to stabilize the connection. However, when connected to Wi-Fi, I'm still getting about 1/4 of the speed I should be getting. When I had it set up as a dual boot with linux mint 18.3 XFCE and Windows 7, the Wi-Fi support was great. Although that version of mint runs on an older kernel. Is there an easy way to roll back to an older supported kernel series in Ubuntu Mate?
Unrelated: Talk about packets.
About packets, as @lah7 mentioned dropped packets can be an issue, and if subsequent packet requests continue to be dropped then issues will occur with any operations using apt which require a connection to the Internet. The reason why this isn't a problem with YouTube (and other streaming services) is because in spite of how bandwidth-intensive video is, loading it on your end into a buffer means even with dropped packets, subsequent requests can be fulfilled some time after without interruption to video.
Depending on which release of Ubuntu MATE you have installed, there are normally packages of older kernels which are named linux-generic, linux-image-generic and linux-headers-generic with a version suffix. These are easy to find and install using the Synaptic Package Manager.
When there are multiple kernels, hold Shift when starting up the computer and go to "(Advanced options)" to boot a different kernel.
However, if this is 20.04, there's no older kernels packaged for this release. Theoretically, you may be able to pick up packages from 18.04 (bionic) and install them using this command:
sudo apt install ~/Downloads/linux-generic-*.deb
Once you find a kernel version that works, you can persist the changes by updating the bootloader (GRUB 2):