mintupdate problems, was: Linux Mint 17 synoptic update manager

[Tom Roche]

[endnotes follow .sig]

Josef Lowder[1]
> Every time I open the Synaptic update manager,

Actually, no ...

> Here are three successive screen shots of this problem:

> From Nov 18: http://www.upquick.com/temp/updatemanager1.jpg

That screenshot shows 3 problems, only one of which you discuss in your post. The first problem, which may seem "merely semantic"[2], is that your screenshot is of an application called "Update Manager," not Synaptic. This can be easily shown by launching the two apps via their commandlines. Goto your terminal of choice (I have no idea what that is in KDE, which appears to be problem 2, but we'll deal with that next), and therein utter the following commandlines[3]

kdesudo mintupdate &

kdesudo synaptic &

The first commandline above should (after you type your password) launch the application that troubles you, which I claim is Update Manager, aka UM, aka mintupdate. The second will launch the application commonly known as Synaptic, about which you have no complaint (yet :-)

Now that you're clear on that (hopefully), you can solve your first problem, which is being unclear about the etiology[4] of your problem. The second problem you must solve is, seek help from the appropriate community. Given the presence of the KDE icon in the above screenshot, and the appearance of your window frames in all 3, I'm guessing you're running one of the KDE Mints[5]. If that's false, ignore the following paragraph:

Mint is not anymore a distro, it's an ecosystem including several varying distros as well as numerous associated applications and environments. E.g., I run mostly Cinnamon LMDE, which is somewhat different from MATE LMDE, and quite different from the Ubuntu-based Mints. The vast majority of all of those, however, are GNOME-based, and as such the vast majority of Mint users will have very little of use to say about a problem involving KDE (or, for that matter, LXDE or Xfce--but at least those desktops are based on GTK, which underlies GNOME).

Which leaves the third problem, which is, what's wrong with your mintupdate? I dunno. Someone else on this forum might; if so, ignore the following recommendation. I recommend you goto the Mint forum='Software & Applications'[6] (on which I have several times gotten useful information in the past) and describe your problem with a subject line like

mintupdate problems on KDE [your Mint version here]

Use the term 'mintupdate' because it's generally understood and most exact. (For extra credit, goto Help>About and note which mintupdate version you're running.) Be sure to be clear about which version of Mint you're running, and about the fact (unless I'm completely wrong) that you're running KDE. This is mostly likely to get you performant and skillful help ... though, again, there may not be many folks running KDE on the forum--I dunno. If you *do* get responses:

The verdict may very well be that mintupdate does not run well on KDE, in which case you should seek recommendations about alternate package managers to run. (Personally, I'd recommend one of the fine CLI dpkg/APT tools like `aptitude`, which also has a TUI[7], which kinda "splits the difference" between a GUI and a CLI.) Alternatively, there may be a problem with your host's current repositories, downloaded packages, or other parts of its current dpkg/APT configuration that is choking your host's mintupdate in a manner that has nothing to do with KDE.

HTH, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com>

[1]: http://lists.phxlinux.org/lurker/message/20161215.191124.4beac47c.en.html
[2]: Readers are encouraged to deliver verbal or physical dopeslaps to anyone uttering the phrase "merely semantic." "Semantics" are quite literally the meanings of words, and failures to agree on meanings of words usually lead quickly to failures to communicate. Which is usually bad.
[3]: Note that as someone with extremely limited KDE usage, ICBW here, but I believe its equivalent of `gksudo` is `kdesudo`.
[4]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aetiology#English
[5]: latest being (IIUC) https://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=224 (since I can't find reference to a KDE for Serena yet)
[6]: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewforum.php?f=47
[7]: For TUI screenshots, see https://askubuntu.com/questions/821164/how-do-i-access-the-aptitude-why-functionality-through-aptitude-s-interactive and ignore the answer that describes it as a GUI--it's not.