Problems with Mate 22.04 LTS, some programs no longer work

Support & Help Requests
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tl;dr: The easiest solution is to revert to UM 20.04 LTS and wait until the needed proprietary software catches up.

Allow me to start with a little rant:

The main reason that programs stop working on newer ubuntu versions is this:
Although the father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, is hellbent on not breaking userspace, GTK and Gnome devs are breaking userspace every single time with every update
even their own software

This is the real reason why linux on desktops is not popular but strangely enough this seems to be totally ignored when it comes down to 'making the linux desktop more popular'

We don't need a stable ABI as such. But we sure as hell need a stable API before any company will take the desktop seriously.

It is utter ridiculous that with every new GTK upgrade everybody must revise their sourcecode instead of just recompiling.
After 20+ years , GTK and Gnome are still stuck in the "experimental" phase with respect to the API, breaking other people's software as they go along.
This in stark contrast with the Linux kernel API that has been stable for over 20 bloody years !!

This means that desktop-application developers are constantly hunting a moving target and it also means that older software stops working when Gnome or GTK libraries get updated (i.e. newer desktop versions)

Let's see what can be done:

Get the latest version of 'arubasign' here:
https://updatesfirma.aruba.it/downloads/ArubaSign-latest-LINUX.tar.bz2
It is indeed "closed-source" software so we can't provide you much help.
Best to ask or file a bug at 'arubasign' because they claim to be ubuntu compatible.
There is a big chance that their binaries are just not up to date yet.
(which is very common with this kind of closed source proprietary software)

Get the latest version of 'go-sign' here:

It is indeed "closed-source" software so we can't provide you much help.
Best to ask or file a bug at 'go-sign' because they claim to be ubuntu compatible.
There is a big chance that their binaries are just not up to date yet.
(which is very common with this kind of closed source proprietary software)

Luckily Thunderbird is not proprietary (GPL)
I have Thunderbird running smoothly on 22.04
I use the Thunderbird version from the repository (version 102.2.2)

  1. If you are running a different version, please do update.
  2. If your version is from another source, please uninstall/delete that version and install the version from the repository.
  3. If you are in compliance with point 1 and 2 and it still doesn't work, something is wrong with your system.

Systemback: DEVELOPMENT AND SUPPORT ENDED
You can read this inconvenient message on:

The last version of 'Systemback' dates back to 2016 and is therefore 6 years old. If you really need it, you could try this:

  1. start Systemback from a terminal and save the errormessages.
    It will probably complain about missing libraries.
    Hunt down the missing libraries (GIYF), download and install them while keeping your fingers crossed.

If it spits out a lot of GTK/Gnome related errors related to deprecated function calls you will have to edit the source:

  1. download the last known working source here:
    https://launchpad.net/~nemh/+archive/ubuntu/systemback/+sourcefiles/systemback/1.8.402~ubuntu16.10.1/systemback_1.8.402~ubuntu16.10.1.tar.xz
    make it compatible with GTK3 (sigh) and compile it (or get someone to do that for you).

The alternative is to ditch the standard GTK libs and go 100% STLWRT although I don't know how far the project has come and I don't have any experience with it.
Also, I can't give any guarantee that it will work without extensive tinkering.

The easiest solution is to revert to UM 20.04 LTS and wait until the needed proprietary software catches up.

Thanks for reading this far and for letting me vent a my GTK pet-peeves.
I really hope that what I wrote is somehow helpful to you :slight_smile:

P.S:
Just one extra thing worth mentioning: Applications that are packed as a snap (or flatpack or appimage) are often much more resilient against update-breakage because they carry their own environment and libraries and are therefore practically only dependent on the kernel and its runtime libraries.

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