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.
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:
Manually install the minimal packages for get X running on my host.
sudo apt-get install xserver-org-core
Follow the instructions from this post: (I just needed a minimal GUI so I just get installed the mate-core package)
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.
After installation of MATE maybe you want to install some tools.
sudo apt-get install mate-system-tools mate-text-editor mozo mate-utils
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
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
A lazy solution would be first install Ubuntu Desktop (sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop) and then proceed as fossfreedom has suggested.
I was installing on Hyper-V and fixed by selecting:
Cinnamon (Software Rendering) at login
I did run sudo /etc/init.d/lightdm start during the process too so that might have helped.
