Ubuntu MATE 20.04 Pre-release Testing

Development Discussion
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Welcome to the Ubuntu MATE 20.04 Pre-release Testing thread.

This week begins the Ubuntu Testing Week for 20.04 and thus is an appropriate time to get the Ubuntu MATE community involved in testing as well. For the 19.10 release we had a Beta Testing thread that generated a lot of responses and got some eye-balls looking at things the Dev and QA Teams might have missed.

Our hope is that we can get a similar response (hopefully an even better one) to this thread. :grinning:

20.04 Focal Fosa is an LTS release and will be supported by Ubuntu MATE for 3 years so it's going to be with us for a while.

You can find the current version of the daily build here:

If you have a spare machine or a virtual machine you can help us test and let us know if there are any issues you encounter; the earlier we know about them the sooner we can address them.

You can also upgrade to the developmental version on your system (make sure to backup first!).

To upgrade:

Alt-F2 then enter update-manager -cd

Feedback on the upgrade process is very valuable and we would like to hear your experiences.

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I'm using the daily (2020-01-13) 64-bit Desktop image installed in virt-manager, configured with 2GB RAM, 20GB Disk, 4 CPUs. I installed 3rd party software at installation. Everything else is "vanilla" configuration.

  1. As soon as Ubuntu-MATE-Welcome launches system crashes and I am returned to the login screen. I uninstalled the snap package at a virtual terminal and restarted.
  2. Installed other snap packages (Skype and Gimp). They both launch without crashing.
  3. Pressing F1 at the desktop (to launch MATE desktop help) causes system crash and I am returned to the login screen.
  4. Launching Ubuntu MATE Guide from the menus causes system crash and I am returned to the login screen.
  5. Launching yelp from the terminal causes system crash and I am returned to the login screen.
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Larry,

I just tested this in the 20200114 daily and I cannot replicate the issues.

@Norbert_X had a similar reported issue with X11 crashing on the Welcome.

Can you try this again and let us know.

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@franksmcb I blew away the old vm and created a new one with a little more memory. I used the 20200115 daily and as soon as I booted after the install, when Ubuntu MATE Welcome starts, the system crashes. I haven't tried any of the other stuff, but it doesn't look good. Are you using hardware or a VM. If it's a VM, are you using virt-manager or something else? I'm wondering if it's a virt-manager issue.

If it helps, I have an old HP laptop (10+ years old) and can try the installation there.

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I did it on VirtualBox. I'll check it on hardware tonight.

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I'm running 20.04 on a couple of laptops and one desktop and posting from the laptop I upgraded using the sudo do-release-upgrade -d command from 19.10 last night. I just opened the Welcome app and experienced no crash. Thought you might like to know that.

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I just cloned a perfectly functioning Ubuntu MATE 19.10 VM (virt-manager) and upgraded using sudo do-release-upgrade -d. Now, when I start Ubuntu MATE Welcome, the system crashes -- just like the clean install.

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I think it might be your virt-manager. I'm on my old (relatively speaking) laptop and Welcome never crashed it. Looks like I removed it (being useless at the moment) but when I opened it upon first reboot and once again, nothing squeaked or crashed. This laptop has 8 Gb ram and the previous one probably did too.

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Updating here as well.

Everything worked on bare metal. I tested it with virt-man with 2GB and it crashed as Larry described. I will do some more testing tomorrow.

In the mean time can you install VirtualBox and install there for testing?

As this is more in-line with pre-release testing let's move this discussion over to Ubuntu MATE 20.04 Pre-release Testing thread.

Thanks

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I can switch to Virtual Box. Thanks for the help on this.

Additional note: When I use the same virt-manager image that crashes when booting from the virtual hard drive, and I boot instead from the CD image as though I were going to re-install, I can use the "Try Ubuntu MATE" option and everything works without crashing. I was beginning to think that it was virt-manager (or QEMU which virt-manager uses) but this wrinkle seems to point elsewhere.

Also, my older virtual machines of previous releases all function fine.

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Is there an alternate down load file, burnable to USB?
I downloaded from the provided link. file is not recognized
by usb creator package. using 8 G stiks process worked
fine with download of 18.04 the beaver!

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If you click the link above, you should be taken to a page from which you can choose the image that fits your hardware. For example, if your computer is an Intel or AMD 64-bit device, then this image is what you need: focal-desktop-amd64.iso

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Ok, here's first official post

  1. test box has no optical drive. had to burn cd on wife's pc then pull the drive
    for install in test box, she was'nt happy but install went ok.

Test platform ASUS P5K-E MB
Q6600 C2D
8 g Ram
Video = EVGA GTX760

  1. Software boutique shows nothing can't locate T Bird
    2 Printer ADD panel will not configure. the panel shows the HP 8210
    at 192.168.1.69 but I can't select it, will not configure to system

Firefox seems fine, system found it's way through my switch / Router combo

I am able to mount all shared drives from 3 Win 7 Boxes
via the smb:// xxxxx/x route

I'm only on my 3rd week with ubuntu, so if feedback needs to be formatted
differently, I'll try to do better next time

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Thanks for the report. You don't have to go to such extremes to test :grinning:

You can use Etcher to "burn" the ISO image to a USB drive and boot from that USB drive and install.

It's normal for the Software Boutique to not show any available applications at this stage of the developmental process.

It's great to have "new" users giving us feedback. And you did fine on your first time!

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I upgraded my laptop on 19.10 to 20.04 because 19.10 was locking up so far so good, but I haven't used it on the web where 19.10 was locking up, but in all that I have used it it works perfectly as well as 19.10

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update:did clean install of the jan 17 daily. the add printer still throws
a CUPS error.
Just an observation, I did a line by line comparison between the 20.04
manifest and the manifest for 18.04

The majority of the packets for 18.04 = 2.2.7-1 ubuntu 2.7

while 20.04 = 2.3.0-7 ubuntu1

  1. why the difference?
    2.printer install in 18.04 was smooth & painless, why fix something that is'nt
    broken
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I have the same issue on my side.
Virtualbox: 5.2.36
Installed UM 19.10 a few weeks ago on a 20 GB new VM. I use Redmond UI.
Upgraded to UM20.04 this morning using update-manager - cd (means the latest version must be installed).
Result: system launches fine because Welcome screen is disabled
I clicked in Control Center/ Mate Menu on Software Boutique, and I'm in the system's log in window.
Desktop is ready again.
By default, I have an automated login.
I restarted the system and automated login works fine.
System has a problem "Report the problem" appears.

Created a new VM just for the today downloaded UM 20.04 from official link here in forum.
First, I chose Try Ubuntu Mate and Welcome screen launches fine.
I then clicked on Install.
Left the system as it is after the installation.
Control Center is also affected as well as Software Boutique, a click on both and I'm back in the login screen.
From now on, I can't do anything, I'm asked to report a problem, and I'm back in the login screen.
Reason: the Welcome screen wants to load.

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About crash on loading of Ubuntu MATE Welcome we have bug-report on LaunchPad - it is https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/1796437 .
For me it crashes using all versions of VirtualBox with 2 Gb RAM and default video adapter (16 Mb VRAM). See comment 16 in the bug-report for details about reproducibility. I suppose that some component from ubuntu-restricted-extras or ubuntu-restricted-addons cause the crash of Xorg.
My daily driver laptop is still running Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS, so I use VirtualBox 5.1.38 here (from Oracle repository, but really it does not matter).
Just ended the test with 20200118 ISO using default VM settings and Xorg crashed.
Will investigate further.

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I'm testing UM Focal on virtualbox. System in general is stable. I tried mate-tweak and see only two options GNOME2 and openSUSE. Redmond, Cupertino, Mutiny, Familiar etc. are not available. If I choose either of them the bottom panel goes below top panel and clock/indicator applets go missing.