Hi,
I hope someone can help me, I'm not very tech-knowledgeable. I've been running my Dell laptop on Ubuntu Mate for quite a while now, but have been noticing more and more problems recently, e.g. certain websites don't function correctly, I'm unable to launch the Software Boutique. Any ideas where I should start in trying to troubleshoot?
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EDIT: Welcome to the Ubuntu MATE Forum 
Well for start you could maybe describe what specific version of Ubuntu MATE are you running on your laptop, is it 20.04 or is it 22.04 or newest one?
What specific problems are you noticing?
On this link you will see that the newest version has replaced Software Boutique with App center and many more information as well as instructions on how to upgrade your system and potentially fix all your problems:
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Ok so now we know we are dealing with an outdated version of Ubuntu MATE since End of life was 2023 and for more information visit this link:
My best bet is that you try and upgrade your system to the never version since most of the stuff isn't updated anymore and so things may or may not be fixable in any other way
I myself don't know what your issues are since you haven't specified any so try and do that so we can be able to help you more precisely
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Thank you, I will try that. Just a couple more questions first though:
am I understanding correctly in that this translates as a complete system re-installation?
In which case, I would need to complete a back-up before trying it.
I really appreciate your help here
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Well you should always have your most important information backed up somewhere (I recommend external drives some recommend cloud storage and so on) because you never know what may happen with your system/hardware
In that in mind yes do make sure you backup your files/folders and after you've done it also maybe make a backup via Timeshift or some other app that will make a snapshot of your root system so you can rollback to it in case something bad happens :
snap - Installing Timeshift backup on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS - Ask Ubuntu
(It most likely won't go bad but just to be sure it won't hurt you to try and make one because it's better to be safe than sorry)
And after that you can proceed with the upgrade instructions that are available on the link in my previous message
Hope you make it and do tell us your progress!
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