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I recently installed Ubuntu on my old MacBook Pro 2016 (ubuntu-22.04.3-live-server-amd64.iso). Why does the UI look like a terminal (see the following picture) rather than all the pretty UIs that I see from others?

picture of screen

muru
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James
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    The ISO you used is the Server ISO. It's designed to run on a headless machine without a GUI. You need to use the Desktop edition installer, not the server edition installer. – Thomas Ward Feb 11 '24 at 20:35
  • Ah that makes sense (I'm such an idiot!), so I need to reinstall it? Basically follow all the previous steps but use the correct ISO?

    Thanks for the reply @ThomasWard!

     – James Feb 11 '24 at 20:40
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    @James see my answer and the comment from Daniel T that links to the explanation which explains the difference. YOu can either reinstall with the Desktop ISO or try installing ubuntu-desktop – Thomas Ward Feb 12 '24 at 01:53
  • FYI: I'll affirm the suggestion to read Thomas' answer, where he actually suggests re-install of the Desktop system.. If it was my system, since you have a working Ubuntu system I'd just add the desktop via ubuntu-desktop as Thomas suggests and expect the result to be what I wanted. Sure there will be differences (on your disk due to how you got there) but they should not impact operation or anything you see (unless you look). If you want a learning experience you could do that & see how it turns out, then re-install Ubuntu Desktop as you intended and see if you see any difference :) – guiverc Feb 12 '24 at 02:29
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    Your suggestion worked @ThomasWard! I tried 'sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop' and it flashed an error where it couldn't find the IP? So I redid the install with the desktop ISO, and now the UI is looking as expected. Thanks so much. – James Feb 12 '24 at 04:20
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    Please remember to clean your screen and keyboard regularly :) – Ilmari Karonen Feb 12 '24 at 07:46
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    @IlmariKaronen At this level of muck, I suspect the fans could also do with a blast-out! – spender Feb 12 '24 at 15:13
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    @James that suggests your system's networking wasn't set up. Glad installing with the Desktop ISO helped, feel free to mark my answer as accepted since it helped! – Thomas Ward Feb 12 '24 at 16:28

1 Answers1

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The ISO you used is the Server ISO. It's designed to run on a headless machine without a GUI. You need to use the Desktop edition installer, not the server edition installer.

While theoretically you can get the desktop up by running sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop, if you haven't done anything with the machine yet then the simpler solution is to download the Desktop ISO, make an installer disk for it, and then install the Desktop edition and wipe the Server edition from your system. That's one of the easiest solutions.

Thomas Ward
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