26.04 mate-screenshot and GDebi not working

zarcondeegrissom · August 20, 2026, 11:48am

Ubuntu Support Template, did I break it, am I missing something? This stuff was working before the old drive died a month and change ago (with I think 25.04 or 25.10 not-LTS on it. I wiped the USB stick and can’t get that ver number any more)

Ubuntu Version: (installed last night)
Release 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon) 64-bit
Kernel Linux 7.0.0-30-generic x86_64
MATE 1.28.2
AMD 8400F with 64GB ram, RTX3060.

Desktop Environment (if applicable):
Example: whatever mate uses by default, I don’t know.

Problem Description:

mate-screenshot just hangs on save or exit (and won’t save the screen cap), I have to use system monitor to kill the process.

Example:

clicking save or close just makes everything go gray in the window and the mouse does the circle of doom when hovering over the window.

GDebi appears to do the same when I try to install a deb file, it was refusing to update the app till I reinstalled the OS now it won’t do anything other than ask for my password to not install the deb file. I noticed it wouldn’t update 4k downloader, and the screen cap was having issues, so I wiped the install, now screen cap still hangs and GDebi won’t install any deb file.

Relevant System Information:
brand new install on a new SSD (the old drive died)

Screenshots or Error Messages:
I tried to close all of them windows, and they just hung there in processes.

if you click ‘save’ it goes gray and just sits there.

What I’ve Tried:

press prnt-scrn key, copy to clipboard, open anything that is not Eye of Mate (have to install another image app to paste from clipboard) to paste the image from the clipboard, then use that app to save the screen cap. then open system monitor to force the screen-cap utility to close. there must be a better way, please (begging).

(edit)
found some version info, still not sure if mate uses x11 or tricks stuff into thinking Wayland is x11, or kde or something other GUI. I see one comment elsewhere mentioning in passing that “it has been fixed upstream in 1.28.1” yet it goes no further than that, not sure what them numbers are at all to be honest (mate ver, some GUI thing ver, screenshot ver, or something else, and no mention of how to get whatever that is)? also Ubuntu-mate 26.04 is using mate ver 1.28.2 so maybe it needs more work if it’s that?

zarcondeegrissom · August 21, 2026, 2:30am

Well, after fussing with installers all day, I have determined the point that the GDebi Package Installer and mate-screenshot break. the point you reboot from 25.10 not-LTS into 26.04 LTS following the update of the OS.

Staying on 25.10 not-LTS from the install iso is untenable as the app center is unresponsive, making it so you can not install any other apps to use the computer, until you update to 26.04 that breaks the other stuff above.

I am not keen on wearing out write cycles on a brand new SSD, nor am I able to dig deeper into whatever is braking that stuff. I’m sorry, I just can’t figure out any more than that.

guiverc · August 21, 2026, 3:18am

Your details contain a number of errors; firstly you keep referring to Ubuntu MATE 25.10 as an long term support release which it was not.

Refer https://ubuntu-mate.org/download/ where you’ll note 25.10 is only mentioned as as interim release, with it being EOL for awhile now.

Your question indicates you have installed 26.04 and have tagged the question about Ubuntu MATE; but that flavor wasn’t involved in the resolute or 26.04 release; as they didn’t get past the alpha. You’ll find no images at Index of /ubuntu-mate/releases as no official/supported images exist; and what you’re using is unclear as details don’t fit reality.

What happened with Ubuntu MATE 26.04 release was covered over on the Ubuntu MATE Community site (now a RO archive) and also elsewhere on this site too (eg. MATE: No 26.04 Release, How does that Affect You, and What Is the Future of Ubuntu MATE?), but for us to understand your situation so we can actually help, we need specifics of what you’re using as the errors make it confusing.

No Ubuntu MATE 26.04 LTS exists, so did you install Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS? Ubuntu Desktop 26.04 LTS or what?? Please be specific.

zarcondeegrissom · August 21, 2026, 3:50am

not-LTS, my bad, is 25.10 (Questing Quokka) 64-bit (not LTS) from the Ubuntu MATE install iso, then the Update utility thing wants to put 26.04 LTS in the comp. I was unaware that this OS was in Limbo, my apologies for the confusion.

so the latest ISO for mate is 25.10, and half the stuff don’t work without updating/upgrading the install to 26.04 that breaks other stuff that is no-longer maintained? this is the best I can understand at this point, I am mentally burnt out at this point.

so I need some sleep, then to find a new home, is the gist I get from all of this. Ubuntu MATE, The OS I have used for a very long time between SBCs and PCs, is in limbo and I need something that works now.

guiverc · August 21, 2026, 3:56am

The old Ubuntu MATE developer team stepped down PRIOR to release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, thus [Ubuntu MATE] were not involved in that release.

There is a new Ubuntu MATE development team though, who introduced themselves earlier this year

They’ll have their first release with Ubuntu MATE 26.10 in October.

Addendum: Ubuntu MATE 26.04 is still on-topic here, as outlined in the list of currently supported releases

este-el-paz · August 21, 2026, 6:02pm

Just passing by . . . as a regular MATE user I had the same problem with mate-screenshot a few months back . . . but that might have been in my Tumbleweed install. The temp fix was to install the XFCE screenshot app (whatever name that was) . . . and then there was a fix for the MATE app.

I haven’t had this issue you are experiencing with GDebi . . . so that might go back to problems with ubuntu-mate?? I had a U-MAte install at one point on my older Apple machine, but then something happened with it and it was likely nuked. I have a multi-boot situation, in which I have a couple of systems with MATE DE, possibly in TW and Endeavor??

There are so many choices to pick from as far as base systems go, and then add your DE to it . . . . Don’t sweat it . . . if it ain’t woikin’ move on to something that does . . . . Not sure where you are in your linux journey, but I usually have manual partition for bootloader, /, and separate /home . . . that way if / blows up it can be re-installed with user name for ‘/home and back in business in a few minutes . . . all user prefs intact, etc.

zarcondeegrissom · August 21, 2026, 8:45pm

thanks much, I will look into that XFCE after morning coffee. long night and late morning.

I hesitate is speculating about GDebi, given timing of when the old drive died and when I noticed it behaving a bit odd. keeping in mind that Ubuntu MATE is a bit behind the primary Ubuntu distro, and many if’s. if GDebi Package Installer is a graphic front end for APT, I had seen a many-month-old vid claiming that some ubuntu 26.04 systems had some difficulty with APT redirecting to snap instead of putting in the deb file. makes some sense, given I’m trying to install/update a pro ver of an app that snap only has an older free version (at the time). if if if if, don’t know if GDebi uses APT, don’t know if that was fixed months ago or if it was exaggerations about APT, etc etc etc.

(my experience after updating to 26.04) I right click the deb file and select GDebi Package installer, I get the preview window displaying all the cool info for the deb file. I click the install button, it asks for my password, as soon as click Authenticate on the password screen, it all goes away and I’m looking at an empty desktop with just the file manager open asking “did it do anything” (no progress bar or anything it usually does, it just goes poof). I check the programs menu and the program I tried to install isn’t there.

My speculation is that both apps are trying to write something to a drive, and the internal communications have changed between 26.04 and older whatever so they are just crashing out or hanging in limbo. I do know that some apps don’t like being in the snap tree and only work in the older FHS/UFS/bash/korn/whatever folder trees, I just don’t know enough to try to figure out what’s going on with the two apps when they get to the point of writing to disk and crash out, everything else works so far.

coffee, XFCE, I need to do more homework. There is just so much I like about Ubuntu and mate desktop that moving is not happening today, if ever. (looks at my coffee cup) at least we are not in the days of converting machine-code from VAX to x86, I do hope you all well, and thanks, lol.

(edit) not seeing “mate-screenshot” in app center with show system snaps selected, hmmm. how to find, uninstall, and reinstall that, before I break anything? I don’t want to just dump XFCE in as it may have conflicts with mate-screenshot arguing over the prnt-scrn key.

https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/better-alternatives-to-screenshot/22756/3

may be of some use, maybe, just trying to find term commands for this stuff. I see something else about “reinstall mate-utils” yet I need to dig further for the actual “mate-screenshot” part of that without breaking all of the mate desktop.
zdg@zdg-AMD-Ryzen-5-8400F-6-Core-Processor:~$ which mate-screenshot
/usr/bin/mate-screenshot
path found, sort of.

was worth a try, cool game by the way, lol. pacman isn’t a package manager, lol. also “sudo apt remove pacman” does NOT remove latent paths to the wrong app, otherwise “user/games/pacman” should not be a thing after running that command.

este-el-paz · August 22, 2026, 12:03am

Can you say “corruption”??? I knew you could . . . “pacman” is the “apt” of Manjaro, which is a stack on Arch . . . did you ever have an Arch install or a Manjaro install on that machine??? “sudo pacman -Syu” is the same more or less as “sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade” . . . to check the repos and download and install updates . . . . Seems like some “wires” might have been crossed somewhere???

So, you are similar to me in that my linux use is a “subjective” experience, in which “feelings” and “emotions” are part of the process, rather than, as many in linux, . . . “objective” . . . “just post the output of these commands and keep the winge to yourself” (as I have heard many times over the years) . . . you have raised a number of questions to which I can’t know what would be the best choice for you. It seems like at least a couple of apps in your OS are not working. Sometimes it’s easy to figure out the error and fix it and other times it’s easier to run a fresh install to get over the hump. In terms of Gdebi, I don’t think it is just “apt” . . . but might be like “apt install”?? It does come in handy, like if a package isn’t showing in synaptic and you find the .deb file online you can install it without knowing the full path say for a “wget” . . . ??? But, for the most part a system can be maintained just via console and “apt” . . . . Speaking of which did you try “sudo apt -f install” to try to “fix the install”?? sometimes that actually does fix it. Or in synaptic under one of the tabs “fix broken dependencies” ??? Sometimes that also works.

In terms of simply adding in whatever one package it is “xfce-screenshooter” that wouldn’t cause too many issues, I don’t use right-click for screenshot so I don’t know about that. However, let’s say your “/” is “OK” and not “corrupt” (which is now a question) . . . adding a DE to it is not a big problem, some DEs have more packages and thus take up more disk space but MATE & XFCE should not cause conflict . . . and then you could check and see if the problems go away in XFCE, etc.

I happen to be in Sid again and in there I found part of my thread discussing my mate-screenshot problem “upstream” on the MATE github discussion forum . . . it might link over to the openSUSE discussion as well?? I just glazed over it, but I think it either helped me fix the problem in my system or they fixed it and I moved to the newer package?? Enjoy the read.

https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-desktop/issues/667

zarcondeegrissom · August 22, 2026, 4:27am

made the mistake of looking somewhere else at a 4-year old thread, someone somehow removed the mate-screenshot file, and the suggested fix was that pacman line. because the opp was talking Ubuntu mate, I wrongfully assumed the fix was also for Ubuntu mate. funny thing is term gave me options for installing two different pacman’s when it didn’t originality exist. anyway, apt not pacman for ubuntu mate it is.

I will give “sudo apt -f install” a try, thanks for the line to do a system check.
(rdit. results the same on both drives. Summary: Upgrading: 0, Installing: 0, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 0)

/ being corrupt was why I tossed the used steam library drive and did the install on the new SSD that had been siting on the desk for a few weeks, after noticing that I couldn’t update a program that installed fine using the same method. The screen cap thing has been an issue for a while, ever since the old drive failed and I tossed in a used drive a month ago as a hold-over till the new SSD arrived. the fresh install is on the new drive, and both installs (used and new drive) show the same behavior after upgrading to 26.04.

feelings OT, yes, feelings are very much part of this. I like the desktop layout and I don’t want to put everything else on hold till I learn how to use a new OS for working on everything else. I dragged my feet on installing the new drive for that same reason, I need the comp today for stuff can it wait till tomorrow, lol. call it sentimental lazy of a sorts, lol.

I’m hitting send, swapping drives, and giving that command a try. thanks much for the help in understanding the DE stuff, I wasn’t sure how deep into the OS the screenshot thing was.
(old used drive is a 500gb ssd that has five years of steam game usage, new drive is a brand new 1TB I just got. the dead drive was a 6 month old 1tb SSD, it went into 1mbps mode then vanished from the bios)

(edit) also thanks on the other thread. I recall seeing gdk-pixbuf somewhere and not being able to follow the thread discussing it at the time. I may need to look into that more. “TWs YaSt app” I don’t see a YaST in app center, google only shows results for SUSE, not ubuntu mate? does it go by a different name in Ubuntu?

este-el-paz · August 22, 2026, 1:58pm

YaSt is what TW used to manage the system and find and install software. That linked thread is coming from a forum post on the openSUSE forum, because that is where I had the problem with my MATE screenshot. So, entirely up to you, if most things are working then no reason to change it; but, if there are some problems then at some point finding a fresh base system install, one that offers MATE as an optional DE might be in order. I also “like” MATE DE, preferring it over the more popular Plasma option . . . . You could run a fresh install of Ubuntu and then pick MATE??? That was possible before ubuntu-mate came along . . . OR looks like you could wait a few months for it to be revived??

One month on a drive doesn’t seem very good . . . jes sayin’ . . . .

Just for kicks, today I am in Debian Forky and I tried “pacman” in the console & got “command not found” then I sudoed it, same again. Then, thinking that apt would ask me if I wanted to go forward before going forward, I ran “sudo apt install pacman” . . . and it did . . . . Then I ran “pacman” and the old video game window opened and started eating stuff . . . . So then I removed “pacman” . . . .

So that might explain the “two” pacman?? Because that command “pacman -Syu” is the Manjaro and possible the Arch variation of the apt moves . . . .

[edit] edit) also thanks on the other thread. I recall seeing gdk-pixbuf somewhere and not being able to follow the thread discussing it at the time. I may need to look into that more. “TWs YaSt app” I don’t see a YaST in app center, google only shows results for SUSE, not ubuntu mate? does it go by a different name in Ubuntu?

Synaptic package manager is what we traditionally used in the GUI to check for packages, install or remove them, update the system . . . . Sometimes I used synaptic to get the precise name for the package to then install it via apt, sometimes I use synaptic to install or lock packages . . . .

Seems like you ran the “apt -f install” and it didn’t report any errors, which could be a good thing . . . one thing to think about, sometimes, even if you select “update the packages as you run the install,” that after rebooting the system running “apt update && apt dist-upgrade” via “sudo” will pull in a bunch of packages to upgrade . . . and you might be able to upgrade your way out of these problems??? [/edit]

zarcondeegrissom · August 22, 2026, 5:29pm

thanks much, and thanks to Stevecook172001 from 2015
https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/where-is-synaptic-package-manager/2755

sudo apt-get install synaptic

still works on 26.04. working on coffee and will poke around for that gdk-pixbuf, see if I can find it. pixbuf or pixbuf2 if I recall, may depend on distro what is used as well. …

are a few things from the looks of it, searched for “pixbuf”. (this is the install on the used drive that I have all my web-stuff on)
is there a version list somewhere to compare the list to, maybe? if that other drive wasn’t dead, may have been good to see what’s different between 25.whatever and 26.04, hmmm. reinstall the 25.10 iso, don’t upgrade, and look, after coffee (assuming apt isn’t as unresponsive as app center on the 25.10 iso).

este-el-paz · August 22, 2026, 7:02pm

OK, the cool thing about synaptic is that it shows what is in the repos for your system . . . so sometimes you might “see a package” but it isn’t in the repos, etc. And it shows what is installed versus what is available, which also is handy.

However, like many things, even “AI” it doesn’t “think for you," and “figure out what you are looking for” . . . meaning, you might have to type more of that “pixbuf” package name to get it to show up?

Other question, as I said, I didn’t re-re-read that thread from the github MATE dev group . . . I thought they might have “fixed it” upstream in the next version???

BUt, as far as “rolling back” to 25.10, of course you could do that, but linux is generally “moving forward” . . . like “new is always coming” . . . in my Lubuntu install I am running “stonking” with LXQT DE . . . that is I think 26.10. “Resistance is futile,” even with coffee . . . I would say to try to fix your problems in your new install, or move forward, rather than backward??? Your machine is relatively new-ish??? Able to move forward and play with the other kids in the linux playground???

maik-adamietz · August 22, 2026, 8:48pm

Rolling back to 25.10 is no option since it’s EOL (End Of Life) and thus no longer supported.

este-el-paz · August 23, 2026, 12:01am

I just had to run the updates on my ‘20 Sys76 laptop, and that is a multi-boot with three OSs . . . one of them is Debian Sid/unstable . . . which is contrary to its name or former behaviors is “very stable” and that has MATE DE installed, version 1.28.2 . . . and I tested mate-screenshot and it snapped the photo of the desktop just fine . . . . I forget the original problem, which might have snapped the image but then couldn’t save it?? Oops, I didn’t try to save it. But, there is a version of MATE that has the problem, before OR after that version and all is well . . . .

zarcondeegrissom · August 23, 2026, 12:25pm

yeah, mate-snapshot hangs on save. And if you try to close it rather than save, the program appears to vanish from the desktop, However the process just lingers in system monitor till you kill the process in system monitor. it never really closes.

I have no idea what “pull_schedule_timeout.constprop.0” or “do_wait” or “futex do_wait” are all about. I closed all them mate-screenshot windows yet there they are in system monitor just lingering.

25.10 install iso vs 26.04 confusion. I was looking at installed vs not installed components and thinking maybe it needs something the update removed, or wasn’t installed, that’s why I was thinking of looking back and forth at the install list in synaptic package manager.

a simple what is different between them thought. (Douh! I missed a pixbuf, lol)

the point it breaks is when I run the 26.04 update and reboot, on a fresh install.

now that I think about it, I may have told 26.04 to wait while I was working on stuff over a month ago when the first SSD died. I wasn’t sure of the health of the well-used 500GB steam game SSD, so let the issue linger for a bit till the new 1TB SSD arrived, now here we are.

este-el-paz · August 23, 2026, 2:25pm

Did you check synaptic to see if there is an upgrade on mate-screenshot available?? As mentioned, in my case the version I had in TW had the problem and then, I found the TW forum thread on it, with bug report filed on it, according to the last post the problem was resolved upstream??

I’m not reading through all of it to check for where your problems might lie, but checking the version of mate-screenshot you have and then see if a newer one is available . . . .?? MATE is IMHO under-utilized, so possibly issues are flying under the radar, because there aren’t a bunch of folks using it??

https://forums.opensuse.org/t/tw-take-screenshot-app-is-not-save-screenshot-capable/188707/34

PS: I’ll re-check my Debian Sid MATE screenshot later for full function or not . . . .

PPS: I’m in Endeavor w/MATE 1.28.2 and that is the problem child. I also had a thread on their forum about it, and . . . trying to use screenshot the failure to save the screenshot problem is still there . . . . So, it never got resolved in Endeavor . . . prolly the same over in Debian Sid . . . ???

zarcondeegrissom · August 23, 2026, 2:56pm

yeah, so many levels of translation from arch to Ubuntu and from XFCE to mate. Another thread elsewhere was also talking about it being fixed in 1.28.1 yet no clue if that was mate-screenshot ver or overall mate ver. (“allegedly” this is now 1.28.2 mate ver with the 26.04 update, lol.)

looks like this has mate-utils ver 1.26.1-1build5, that just adds to the confusion of how do I look for just that part of mate, and maybe swap it out if there is a newer ver. Synaptic appears to only link to the mate home page for that mate-screenshot part, and I don’t see a listing for just mate-screenshot there. hmmm. (and the mate-utils link leads to another forum github homepage)

is there a mate-utils 1.28.1 or 1.28.2, and how do I get it, lol, or am I missing something? is that the point of going to dev forums, scraping C code from posts, and build-world my own mate-utils (forehead on desk) not something I look forward to if I can just install a deb or whatever file? (//some sarcasm detected in that)

FYI. github post ””Fix window screenshot including invisible borders” includes a c file, yet not sure if that’s what I need or how to get it into my install, I’m not that advanced, lol.

(edit) found that elusive 1.28.1 ref from the other forum, unfortunately I can’t do anything with this info. And the post from 4 NOV 2025 appears to be describing what I’m experiencing.

I’m guessing that’s the point of limbo between dev teams, fixed upstream and never made it into the 26.04 update? according to synaptic posted above, 1.26.1-1build5 is the latest ver, yet that post eludes to a 1.28.1 somewhere?

(typo fixed, 1.26.1-1build5 not 1.26.1-build5)

este-el-paz · August 23, 2026, 4:37pm

So, just from the seat o the pants . . . the MATE 1.28.2 problems don’t specifically relate to the 26.04, other than whatever version of MATE they provide when you added it as the DE??

As I’m now in Endeavor, which I don’t over-use it, as I recall the mate-screenshot is a separate app, whether that is included in mate-utils or not I don’t know. Something at the time gave me the impression that the problem was “fixed” . . . but it could have been that Sid and Endeavor upgraded into the problem . . . ???

So, I’ll have to check through my various systems and see what packages are included with what system; but for you now the easiest exit is to just add the xfce-screenshot app into your MATE system and use it. You don’t have to add the entire XFCE DE, although you could.

And then as far as the GDebi issues go, that would be likely another github group in charge of that.

The other question for you is can you run an apt dist-upgrade in your 26.04 install and it runs through cleanly OR it shows various “E” or “W” problems??

[edit] Looked through my post about this problem on the Endeavor forum and it shows:

Following up on this thread . . . both of my Endeavor && TW installs have MATE 1.28.2 version, that version does not save screenshots.

My Debian Sid install on another machine with MATE has 1.26.2 and that version works. A gent on the MATE github discussion group is using a newer version of MATE 1.29 and that version has working screenshot app.

Right now in TW there is “no way to get to 1.29” via the repos . . . so in TW I needed to grab some screenshots for another problem, so I installed “xfce4-screenshooter” . . . modestly sized app, gets the job done in the DE using 1.28.2 with no path to upgrading out of it . . . .

[/edit]

[edit2] So Take Screenshot is working in my TW/MATE install and it has MATE 1.28.2 but seemingly they got the problem fixed?? From the thread on the TW forum there was a link to the “mate-utils” post https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/X11:MATE:Next/mate-utils

And, here is successful screenshot just taken in their version of synaptic . . . YaSt:

este-el-paz · August 23, 2026, 5:49pm

So, as part of my own search into the problem, most of my MATE installs are running MATE 1.28.2, but Take Screenshot is working in TW, but not working in Endeavor–so I added the “xfce4-screenshooter” to that system to get a working screenshot app.

Over in my Sys76 laptop install of Debian Sid MATE also running MATE 1.28.2 the MATE-screenshot app is working to save images to the desktop!!!???

zarcondeegrissom · August 23, 2026, 6:17pm

ok, so looks like whatever is feeding the “upgrade” for Ubuntu mate 26.04 is on 1.26.1-1 instead of later versions that have the fix (1.26.1-2, or 1.28.0-2.6, etc).

openSUSE I’m not seeing a amd64 branch, risc (DEC/sun/HP/etc?), arm, IBM Power, and something called ‘zSystems’?

is there an apt term command for xfce4-screenshooter? that sounds more promising?

(edit) ok, download was wrong, click x86 lower down on the right. mate-screenshot-1.28.0-115.22.x86_64, saved, …. Archive type not supported, hmmm. what to do with an rpm file. it’s probably going to expect IO stuff from SUSE anyway, hmm.

I’ll head that warning, don’t look good to force that.
so, back to xfce4-screenshooter…
sudo apt update wget (web address, link for a 1.9.8-1_amd64 2021 era Ubuntu 18.04 version from an ancient post on askubuntu forum)
, so I need today’s version link, hmmm.