4

How do I install cinnamon and mate on ubuntu server 12.04? What are the dependencies?

When I install cinnamon it doesn't start when I start the system and when I try to use it with startx command i shows a "Failed to load session "ubuntu" " error while entering the desktop GUI. With MATE it also doesn't start automatically and when I start it with startx some icons are broken and the locale appears to have some problems with the pt_BR special characters.

4
  • 1
    possible duplicate of How do I install the Cinnamon Desktop? (the fact that it is a server install does not really matter)
    – Egil
    May 5, 2012 at 19:13
  • 1
    Actually I've already seen it. My problem is installing it in Ubuntu Server in Ubuntu Desktop I had no problems.
    – msmafra
    May 5, 2012 at 19:25
  • Please update the question with your problems.
    – Egil
    May 5, 2012 at 19:27
  • 1
    possible duplicate of How to install MATE? Dec 13, 2012 at 15:42

3 Answers 3

3

I had the same problem on my company server and I was searching alternatives for days before I get my problem solved with MATE.

That's what I did:

  1. Manually install the minimal packages for get X running on my host.

    sudo apt-get install xserver-org-core
    
  2. Follow the instructions from this post: (I just needed a minimal GUI so I just get installed the mate-core package)

    http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-desktop-74/howto-install-mate-on-ubuntu-12-04-with-no-other-desktop-environments-942438/

  3. I needed my server starts on CLI with NO GUI, so I don't install any display manager (gdm, kdm, etc). so if you need start server on a GUI try to build the Mate-display-manager from the source.

  4. After installation of MATE maybe you want to install some tools.

    sudo apt-get install mate-system-tools mate-text-editor mozo mate-utils
    
  5. Of course, you can install some useful tools from Gnome

    sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends synaptic gparted firefox system-config-lvm 
    

This is it, reboot server, log on and run startx

1
  • Thank you for the answer. MATE I've already installed with success. Now the problem is the other distro with cinnamon that I can't make it work.
    – msmafra
    May 7, 2012 at 0:49
3

What I did after server install (I installed ssh and samba) is to install xserver-xorg-core then add the "cinnamon" repository to "sources and installed cinnamon and xinit.

I got the same error so what I ran

sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm start

It started up fine, rebooted and now lightdm starts automatically

1
  • This worked for me. But I had to use startx instead of lightdm Sep 26, 2014 at 5:53
1

A lazy solution would be first install Ubuntu Desktop (sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop) and then proceed as fossfreedom has suggested.

2
  • Thank you, but I want to make two simple "distros" one only with Cinnamon and the other only with MATE. That is for machines with less resources and for those that don't like the newest interfaces like Gnome 3 and the hateful Unity.
    – msmafra
    May 6, 2012 at 14:13
  • Looks like a dependency problem. We must find which packages are required for the Cinnamon and MATE to run. Have you installed the xserver and lightdm (or gdm)?
    – desgua
    May 6, 2012 at 14:25

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .