this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
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Long story short I was messing around in the terminal and messed up my Linux Mint Installation and now when I boot into Linux I only get a CLI and don't even see the Linux mint logo. I tried to restore to a previous state using Timeshift but it did not work so I ended up taking a live usb and backing up all my important documents to an external drive. I want to just do a fresh installation but unfortunally for me the boot drive is also the same drive I use to boot into Windows (which I am still able to boot into from GRUB). Is there a way I can reinstall the OS without affecting my ability to boot into Windows?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It seems to me that uninstalling udev removed a great deal more than just that package. Likely the first time you attempted to install it, the response was something like "udev already installed, set to manual", which means that it was previously automatically already installed as a requirement for another package, but was set to "manual" selection by your attempt to reinstall it manually, when it was already there.

When you uninstalled it, everything that depends on it in some way was also removed.

The /var/log/apt directory will have log files showing what was actually removed.

I don't have a computer in front of me, but it's likely that the entire desktop was removed when you uninstalled udev.

Reinstalling udev would only install the things that udev depends on, not the things that depend on udev.

I'm not sure what the meta package for a Mint install is precisely called, but it's likely something like mint-desktop.

A meta package is an empty package that doesn't install anything itself, but it has a great many dependencies which automatically get installed when you install it.

Finally, rm -r and sudo rm -ror worse , sudo rm -rf are not commands you should be using with your level of experience because one misplaced space will cause you to irrevocably shoot yourself in the foot with no chance of undo.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I went to that directory and did a cat on the history.log and got this. I also tried looking for the meta package you were talking about and installed mint-meta-cinnamon.

Edit: Holy Shit. I just tried installing gnome and got my desktop back. Thank you so much.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Given that the list for removed is longer than the one for subsequent install, you didn't install the correct package. It doesn't have to be called meta to be a meta package.

Essentially, you need to reinstall all the things you removed.

Also stop using -y with apt, it's a very bad habit to create.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Welcome to Linux my guy. You can fix basically anything here without ever having to reinstall

Also you should reinstall all those packages your removal of udev uninstalled, otherwise some things might not work as they should/not work at all