Will I destroy my lambda labs notebook if I do autoremove? How do I finish upgrading from ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04?

Hi,

I am trying to get my lambda labs notebook deep learning research computer (laptop) that I bought in 2018 for > $3,000 back in a workable state. I haven’t used it much… although I did use it for a deep learning course I took for a masters degree in computer science awhile back.

Now, because my bookcase fell on my Windows 10 machine & destroyed it, I need to use this expensive deep learning computer for every day stuff (like end user stuff as well as all my personal programming stuff as I consider myself a hobbyist at comp sci, etc.).

I’m having problems upgrading my notebook all the way from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04. C.f. the screenshots below. I feel like I’ve read numerous horror stories in these forums about people having to re-install ubuntu b/c they were staring at a black screen when they used autoremove. Is that correct? Someone in these forums suggested I used autoremove but I feel like I’m asking for serious trouble if I do that.

My computer has been telling me this for days & I don’t know what to do:

Why did you buy a laptop with an operating system you have no clue how to operate? JW.

apt-get autoremove is almost always safe to run, especially on a single-user system where you know what software is installed.

But, there are scenarios where running apt-get autoremove could cause problems, for example: if software you’ve installed, or someone else sharing the system installed, depends on packages being auto-removed by apt. This could happen if software was installed from GitHub, for example, instead of using apt or dpkg.

It’s best to first review the list of packages being auto-removed instead of blindly running the command.

@markd Do you have thoughts on this?

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Does anybody have suggestions on how / where to learn Ubuntu?

There are quite the great deal of very informative videos on YouTube for nearly every topic imaginable regarding UNIX systems. You can also feel free to go on stackoverflow and type some search queries in there related to whatever you may have in mind…

EDIT: You could also just straight up read the docs on the website lol

Which docs? Can you post a link?

@seneca_wolf

https://help.ubuntu.com

These should point you in the right direction

Thanks I was already looking at the Free Code Camp video before you suggested it… seems like a good suggestion… that other dude is like “uMMMbuntu” (how he pronounces it) LoLz… Thanks Daniel!

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The autoremove is just packages that were not specified, but were installed for packages that were dependencies for other packages. And either the original package was removed or the dependency changed.

/var/log/dpkg.log* has the history of packages added/removed. But you can also simply note which packages are being removed, and if you find you are missing one, you can reinstall the package.

These are just apt packages (so not pip or github manually installed software).

Here is the exert from the man page:

autoremove (apt-get(8))
autoremove is used to remove packages that were automatically installed to satisfy
dependencies for other packages and are now no longer needed as dependencies
changed or the package(s) needing them were removed in the meantime.

You should check that the list does not include applications you have grown to
like even though they were once installed just as a dependency of another
package. You can mark such a package as manually installed by using
apt-mark(8). Packages which you have installed explicitly via install are also
never proposed for automatic removal.

Just be aware of what you install/remove. I prefer to keep it clean, but you can also mark the packages you want or just reinstall them.

To mark a package as ‘manual install’ (and no longer show up on auto remove):
sudo apt-mark manual <package_name>

Mark