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I am new to using Linux, I have always used Windows in the past. My question is regarding the Ubuntu Software station where you can download new software and stuff. I have yet to try to download anything, but when I have tried deleting certain programs it doesn't always work. Half the time I click "Installed" or "Updates" at the top it just continuously loads and goes nowhere. I have yet to be able to access the updates tab but I can see I have 14 available updates. When I have tried deleting programs they sometimes actually are deleted, but sometimes it just says removing and never changes, or it will finish but once I close the Ubuntu software program and return to it, the program I deleted is once again under the "Installed" tab. I am decent with computers but by no means a programmer or anything, I have never used anything like Terminal so any options with that will only get me lost, although I do hope to become better with Terminal.

Any tips or tricks to get the Ubuntu Software "Store" to work properly?

Odin8811
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  • Well, I can post an answer but it will require minimal use of Terminal. The only way you will get better at using it is if you actually use it! – vita-min Dec 27 '16 at 02:07
  • That was slow install, not slow remove Elder Geek – vita-min Dec 27 '16 at 02:26
  • I am not opposed to using Terminal. I would actually love to learn how to use it. I don't understand the rest of your post, this isn't a duplicate it's my first post. – Odin8811 Dec 27 '16 at 05:53
  • For various reasons there are sometimes package management problems even on fresh Ubuntu installations. Could you please open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), run the command sudo apt-get install -f and [edit] your question to include the output of that command? To achieve the latter two you can either 1) select, copy & paste the dialogue text or terminal content or 2) save the program output to a file and use that. Longer listings (>100 lines) should be uploaded to a pastie service and linked to in the question. Thanks. – David Foerster Dec 27 '16 at 08:54

3 Answers3

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Well, here is an answer, but it does require use of terminal. The only way you will get better is if you actually use Terminal ;)

First, find the packages you want to delete using

dpkg -l

Find the package. For example, I want to delete OpenArena. I just do

sudo apt-get --purge remove openarena

Sudo will ask for a password, so enter that in, and the program will be deleted in a short amount of time.

Remember that this is all case-sensitive, so be careful!

They also have package-specific names, so using dpkg -l will definitely help you, as they display package name on there.

More on removing apps through terminal here

If this really seems confusing, then I would suggest going to Synaptic and removing your package there, since it is way less buggy than Ubuntu Software Center. You might have to install it, and this will require use of Terminal. Just type in to your terminal window

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install synaptic

Hope this helps.

Community
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vita-min
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Long story short, the software store is not very good. Use something better.

In linux, software is organized in to pieces called packages. Each package has in it everything a particular program needs to run. Packages can range in size and scale from very large (like KDE, a desktop environment) to having nothing more than a new font. All of these pieces of software are tracked by a package manager.

Personally, when I need a graphical window for managing packages, I use synaptic. In order to install it, you can use the following command in a terminal.

sudo apt install synaptic

This command will use 'apt' to retrieve and install the package for synaptic, run with 'sudo' to give apt permission to install software. When trying to run synaptic after installation, synaptic may complain that it does not have the permissions it needs. To fix this, run it by going into a terminal and typing

sudo synaptic

Synaptic will allow you to search for packages. The way it works is packages are first 'makred', for installation, updating, or removal. Once you have declared all of the changes to your packages that you want, hit the 'apply' button, and synaptic will run all of the commands needed to perform the operations you specified.

While synaptic is very useful, you do not need it in order to install packages. If you know the name of the package, you can install it with the same command we used to install synaptic.

sudo apt install <packageName>

Of course, you would replace with the name of the package you want to install.

Similarly, you can use 'apt' to remove packages you want gone from your system. You use this command:

sudo apt remove <packageName>

If you do not know the exact name of the package you are looking for, you can search for it with the following command.

apt search <packageName>

This will print out a list of packages that had your search term in their name or description. Notice how I did not use 'sudo' for this command, as it does not actually install anything.

So, thats how linux software works (kinda, you may want to investigate how repositories work). I hope this helped you better understand How all of the software on your new linux install works.

MindlessMutagen
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  • I did actually download Synaptic, but had no idea how to use it haha. I will give this a try and try to watch some sort of tutorial on youtube. Thanks! – Odin8811 Dec 27 '16 at 05:56
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In many cases I've always using terminal to install/remove any packages, I rarely use Ubuntu Software because sometimes it just... really buggy and unresponsive.

Many users reportedly not satisfied with Ubuntu Software because it's just plain slow, but in other side Ubuntu Software offer nice GUI interface thus make it wise choice for user that not familiar with CLI.

You can install old Software Center from previous release, according to amount user, this old Software Center working fine on their system.

To install, simply run following command on terminal:

sudo apt install software-center

Also consider try App Grid, It's a very lightweight application center for Ubuntu and it will let you purchase applications too. To install this, press Ctrl+Alt+T to go to a terminal and type:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:appgrid/stable
sudo apt update
sudo apt install appgrid
Liso
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