Any help will be appreciated. In the last 10 days I have reinstalled Mate three times. All seems well at first but after updates, reboots and copying data back (which all takes time) I find that the Software and Updates app fails to launch not only from the panel menu but also from the Administration section in Control Centre. I have spent much time trying to find help by 'Googling' the issue without success. I have in desperation copied and entered all sorts of things, relevant or not, into terminals without any progress. The problem is that I try to click on Software and Updates and nothing happens - not even an error pops up on the screen. I have even tried to launch it by pressing Launch button in the Software centre without success. I know I haven't given any errors but as I said nothing comes up on the screen after selecting the application. If possible I really want to avoid a fourth clean install to try and get a working system.
If I were you, I'd install Synaptic package manager - sudo apt install synaptic and check software and updates from within Synaptic. Just select Settings and then Repositories from the drop down menu.
I hope this helps. Good luck matebod.
Many thanks for taking the time to respond - much appreciated... but no luck here. Installed lots of packages but none worked.
I think I'll give it a few days before doing one final installation. After that will probably go back to Mate 18.04 which was a hassle-free from first install. Can't be lucky all the time!
So you installed packages but none worked.
What precisely did you do if you don't mind my asking? I requested that you install Synaptic and see if you could use Synaptic to open Software & Updates.
Did you do that? Without information people are powerless to help.
Hi,
I installed Synaptic then clicked on settings followed by repositories. At this point I expected to see the Software and Updates box but nothing appeared.
Then I tried a search for Software and Updates but the closest I could find was by using the description 'manage the repositories that you install software from', the package was 'software-properties-qt' so I decided to reinstall that. I really wasn't sure whether it was the correct course to follow.
I have since rebooted a few times but the situation remains unchanged.
As I have now tried reinstalling a few times from scratch I'm beginning to think that maybe this new version of Mate just isn't a good match for my hardware. It's a shame as previous experiences with earlier versions seemed so stable and problem free but this one has been a challenge from the first installation with printing, scanning and booting issues at one point. I've somehow managed to find solutions to those, certainly not by knowledge but purely good luck! It's strange that I haven't been able to find the same problem when I Google the problem which again makes me think maybe my ageing system is the key.
I really must apologise that I'm unable to report any error codes but as I mentioned nothing pops up on the screen to indicate that there are issues..
Once again thanks for your efforts - perhaps reverting to an earlier version of Mate or a different distro might be the way forward as it has taken up so much time so far.