Hey guys, and welcome to another Linux post. Today we will be fixing the hidden “Mark all upgrade button” in Linux Mint 22 (Willma). As you cannot use Synaptic to update your software by default.
Category: Synaptic Package Manager (Page 1 of 2)
Synaptic package manager happens to be my favorite way of installing software, much better than Gnome software and Software center, I even blogged twice about how it can be used to batch install downloaded packages (one was the older one and the other was a rewrite). but lately it won’t add the downloaded packages and that was frustrating to me!
Describing the issue
When clicking on add downloaded packages nothing happens, the installation prompt doesn’t appear, to me that is a serious issue because I copy the packages from my laptop to other computers around the house to update and add new software
The first solution that cam to mind was to uninstall Synaptic 0.83 and install an older version, 0.82 and 0.81 needed some dependencies so I dropped the idea!
Uninstalling and reinstalling Synaptic didn’t do anything, not even when using the option “completely remove” option from inside Synaptic (ironic, isn’t it?).
Finally fixing the Synaptic package manager 0.83 not adding downloaded packages issue
- To fix the Synaptic package manager 0.83 not adding downloaded packages issue you need to close Synaptic and go to Software and updates.
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| Software and updates interface |
- From there make sure that the first option is checked, if it’s checked then uncheck it and then check it again, you will be promoted to enter your password, then click close.
- A pop up will appear telling you that package information is out of date and needs updating, and that you need a working Internet connection , click on “Reload” to continue.
Reload package information (out of date) - The following windows will appear, the system is updating cached information, After the package reload is complete, it will be closed automatically.
Updating cache - Now you can go into Synaptic and add downloaded packages without a problem!
Final words
Fixing this annoying bug was so easy after all and it felt so good! I hope this helps you go through a hard day.
Please share this post so you can help someone else in need, and leave a comment if you have any questions!
Have a nice day 🙂
It’s been a couple of weeks since Ubuntu 16.04 was out! I decided to take my time and give the new distribution some time before making a review, I think two weeks are enough time, so let’s take a look at Ubuntu Gnome 16.04!!
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| Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 new logo |
The distribution
Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 became an official Ubuntu flavor, making use of the Gnome interface, unlike the official Ubuntu that uses Unity as interface, it comes with Gnome software and isn’t a clone of Ubuntu, there are some minor differences in apps, Basero is the default disk burn utility for example, and gnome software is at 3.20 out of the box.
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| Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 Screenshot |
Please note that some of the tools in the screenshot aren’t installed natively, such as Zim-wiki and Sublime text.
Download and Install
I’ve downloaded Ubuntu Gnome via torrent because I read it’s better for the servers, and come to think of it since the electricity goes out very often here, it’s better to download Ubuntu via torrent to save myself the trouble of downloading it all over again! It was downloaded eventually after 6 hours.
Checkout the download link from here.
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| Torrent download information |
I put it on a USB and began installing, pretty much the same since Ubuntu 10.10.
This version has 3 years of LTS support, why not five years? I’m not sure.
Steps to take after installing Ubuntu Gnome 16.04
Most of these steps are on my blog, but it won’t hurt to collect them all together in one neat list, would it?
- Configuring wireless and Bluetooth, which is really easy to do but very important.
- Installing the extras, the restricted extras needed to view media files and flash, and some fonts.
- Installing my softwares, the usual package of stuff: VLC, Inkscape, Gimp, Xmind and Zimwiki
- Installing extensions: Clipboard indicator and OpenWeather.
- Editing input sources to make it change between languages by pressing alt + shift, you can find how to do it from this link.
- Restore the bookmarks and data (notes), Firefox is pretty easy to restore, and so is Zimwiki! All you have to do is to put the note folder in Home.
- Customize LibreOffice. To make it more compatible with Arabic.
- Disable apport, more details in the defects section.
- Installing powertop for more power save and CPU Frequency to reduce fan noise!
- Pomodro timer works beautifully with Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 and you have to install it, it’s the best timer app for Ubuntu to date! Read my review about it from here.
- Disable tracker-store as shown in this askubuntu link.
- Disable evolution safely without uninstalling it. Saving nearly 170 MB of RAM.
- I also decided to skip the Grub menu since I only use Ubuntu 16.04, to do that you need to download and install Grub Customizer with these commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install grub-customizerAfter that go to Grub customizer and enter your password, go to settings and uncheck: show menu and look for other operating systems. This way you will get rid of Grub and boot to Ubuntu right away, don’t do this if you dual boot!!< red;”
- Install gnome extension TopIcons Plus to move the status icons to the top bar rather than having them on the side abstracting the view!
Features and improvements
- I do appreciate the Gnome 3.18 interface! A huge jump from the 3.10 that Ubuntu 14.04.4 ships with, as it has many improvements and tweaks and fixes for annoying bugs in Gnome 3.10 (LTS to LTS upgraders will relate!).
- The notifications style has changed completely, it’s now displayed in a drop-down menu under the clock.
- The annoying bottom bar was removed completely, a feature I will never miss! It’s replaced with a neat arrow that’s docked on the bottom left corner of the screen.
- The new boot logo is so much better than the old one! That looks like a foot! This is more sleek and streamlined, reminds me of SEGA’s logo somehow!
Ubuntu Gnome’s new logo
Issues and defects
- So far the performance is OK and there are few crashes, pretty much the same as Ubuntu 14.04.4 which is pretty stable by the way.
- I’ve noticed that the network icon sometimes disappears, hopefully an update will fix this, my only fix is to reboot.
- I would recommend that you disable apport as it will bring up a message every time you reboot.
- Software isn’t as clear as it should, I can’t tell how big are the softwares and updates, so I use Synaptic on a daily basis to get things done!
- When disconnecting the wireless network with the hardware key it’s not recognized anymore until several reboots, it’s a known bug but with no fix afaik! The only info I could find was this terminal command: sudo service network-manager restart This command will restart the network manager and allow it to connect without the need to restart several times.
- The fan noise was too much at times, even when the computer was idle, I thought upgrading from Ubuntu Gnome 14.04.4 to Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 would fix this but it didn’t, until I installed CPU Frequency!
- Nautilus 3.14 could use an update and we don’t have to wait till 16.10 to get one! I managed to follow a rather risky tutorial to update it to 3.20 and it’s so much better!
- If you are using an SSD you might want to look at this post to avoid the /dev/sd1 :Recovering Journal issue.
- Starting up without a user interface at times, and my only cure was to restart the computer, I found a fix that suggests to clear the packages config from Synaptic.
- Sometimes shutdown can be slow, I found the steps in here worked like a charm!
“Software”
Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 ships with Gnome software 3.20. Which is the software that is supposed to replace Ubuntu Software center, I find them both buggy and unusable, as I use Synaptic to do my package work.
I do believe it needs more work to become a reliable software center, it stays in the background and behaves oddly, it doesn’t show the download progress on software being downloaded too, which seems odd!
I winded up un-installing software and reinstalling the good’ol Ubuntu software center!
Final words
Ubuntu Gnome is a great choice for anyone who wants to enjoy Gnome without having to leave the Ubuntu universe to Fedora or OpenSuse, it provides the purist Gnome experience possible for Ubuntu, and it preformed better than regular Ubuntu installed on older machines (with proper tweaking mentioned here).
The more I use it the more I could tell that this is the distro for me, great job indeed by the team, and I rate it as a must have!
I hope you enjoyed this post, please let me know what you think in the comments section below, and remember: Sharing is caring!!
Last week I posted about wanting some change by changing the interface, and took a look at several interfaces, this post is the second part, where I actually chose an interface and got down to business.
I decided to go with Cinnamon, it’s visually appealing and the download size is relatively small (51.4 MB). My only concern was reading online that it’s buggy and has many problems. But I was willing to take a chance!
At first I installed Cinnamon using these commands
This command is to add the repository to my system.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lestcape/cinnamon
This command is to update and install.
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install cinnamon.After the first reboot I had Cinnamon as an option on the login screen, which still looked like it was in XFCE and I had to enter my password twice! (it’s a common bug actually!)
I figured that deleting Xubuntu will fix my problem, so I began deleting Xubuntu, once and for all!
I used several commands to make sure the interface went away, like:
sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get purge xfce4
The second command is probably the longest I ever used, thank god for copy and paste!!
sudo apt-get remove abiword abiword-common abiword-plugin-grammar abiword-plugin-mathview bison blueman brltty-x11 catfish elementary-icon-theme exo-utils flex gigolo gimp gimp-data gmusicbrowser gnome-icon-theme-full gnome-system-tools gnome-time-admin gnumeric gnumeric-common gnumeric-doc gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs gthumb gthumb-data gtk2-engines-pixbuf gtk2-engines-xfce indicator-application-gtk2 indicator-messages-gtk2 indicator-sound-gtk2 indicator-status-provider-pidgin leafpad libabiword-2.8 libaiksaurus-1.2-0c2a libaiksaurus-1.2-data libaiksaurusgtk-1.2-0c2a libao-common libao4 libaudio-scrobbler-perl libbabl-0.0-0 libclutter-1.0-0 libclutter-1.0-common libclutter-gtk-1.0-0 libcogl-common libcogl5 libconfig-inifiles-perl libencode-locale-perl libept1 libexo-1-0 libexo-common libfile-listing-perl libfont-afm-perl libgarcon-1-0 libgarcon-common libgdome2-0 libgdome2-cpp-smart0c2a libgegl-0.0-0 libgimp2.0 libglade2-0 libgnomevfs2-extra libgoffice-0.8-8 libgoffice-0.8-8-common libgsf-1-114 libgsf-1-common libgstreamer-perl libgtk2-notify-perl libgtk2-trayicon-perl libgtkmathview0c2a libhtml-form-perl libhtml-format-perl libhtml-parser-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libhtml-tree-perl libhttp-cookies-perl libhttp-daemon-perl libhttp-date-perl libhttp-message-perl libhttp-negotiate-perl libid3tag0 libido-0.1-0 libilmbase6 libio-socket-ssl-perl libjpeg-progs libkeybinder0 liblink-grammar4 libloudmouth1-0 liblwp-mediatypes-perl liblwp-protocol-https-perl libmad0 libmailtools-perl libnet-dbus-perl libnet-http-perl libnet-ssleay-perl liboobs-1-5 libopenexr6 libotr2 libots0 libpolkit-gtk-1-0 libsexy2 libtagc0 libthunarx-2-0 libtie-ixhash-perl libtimedate-perl libtumbler-1-0 liburi-perl libwv-1.2-3 libwww-perl libwww-robotrules-perl libxfce4ui-1-0 libxfce4util-bin libxfce4util-common libxfce4util4 libxfcegui4-4 libxfconf-0-2 libxml-parser-perl libxml-twig-perl libxml-xpath-perl libxss1 lightdm-gtk-greeter link-grammar-dictionaries-en m4 mpg321 murrine-themes orage parole pastebinit pidgin pidgin-data pidgin-libnotify pidgin-microblog pidgin-otr plymouth-theme-xubuntu-logo plymouth-theme-xubuntu-text python-configobj python-glade2 quadrapassel ristretto screensaver-default-images synaptic system-tools-backends tango-icon-theme tango-icon-theme-common tcl8.5 thunar thunar-archive-plugin thunar-data thunar-media-tags-plugin thunar-volman ttf-droid ttf-lyx tumbler tumbler-common xchat xchat-common xfburn xfce-keyboard-shortcuts xfce4-appfinder xfce4-cpugraph-plugin xfce4-dict xfce4-fsguard-plugin xfce4-indicator-plugin xfce4-mailwatch-plugin xfce4-mixer xfce4-mount-plugin xfce4-netload-plugin xfce4-notes xfce4-notes-plugin xfce4-notifyd xfce4-panel xfce4-places-plugin xfce4-power-manager xfce4-power-manager-data xfce4-quicklauncher-plugin xfce4-screenshooter xfce4-session xfce4-settings xfce4-smartbookmark-plugin xfce4-systemload-plugin xfce4-taskmanager xfce4-terminal xfce4-utils xfce4-verve-plugin xfce4-volumed xfce4-weather-plugin xfconf xfdesktop4 xfdesktop4-data xfwm4 xfwm4-themes xscreensaver xscreensaver-data xscreensaver-gl xubuntu-artwork xubuntu-default-settings xubuntu-desktop xubuntu-docs xubuntu-icon-theme xubuntu-wallpapersFinally I used Synaptic to make sure nothing titled XFCE was there, I used the custom filters Sections XFCE desktop environment universe to wipe anything that was left.
Now I was running Cinnamon alone on my computer, and immediately I notice why it was dubbed as “Buggy”..
It was true, Cinnamon was buggy! I noticed several issues right off the bat!
A minor video issue was resolved in one of the reboots (no fix for that sadly).
The power manager is acting up, either this fixed my battery somehow or it’s just not reading it right!
I had to fix Docky like I did after the partial upgrade. This time locked all parts of it.
I rearranged the Grub menu items, now Ubuntu is top, I Also renamed it from Xubutnu to Ubuntu on the boot menut using Grub Customizer.
I was left with a buggy but pretty interface, and the login was messed up! Next week I’ll post what I did next, stay tuned!
أنا الفائز بجائزة المدون المنتظم لعام 2025 من موقع مرجع التدوين
