Ubuntu Cinnamon (Minimal) is not Minimal

Support and Help
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This is the 2nd time I’ve tried installing this as a Minimal desktop. it still installs everything games ect. Is their a site I can get the ISO for ubuntu cinnamon Minimal desktop? the iso from the Ubuntu cinnamon website is not working correctly as like I stated it still install everything.

Ubuntu cinnamon 24.04.2LTS

2

Please see Start Here. You are missing a valuable piece of information here.

Without this information, we don’t know how to help you because there have been quite a few releases of Ubuntu Cinnamon.

Thanks!

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Sorry, I have edited my original post with that information.

Ubuntu Cinnamon 24.04.2LTS is the version ISO this is happening on

4

For what it’s worth, I had a hand in making the minimal seed and configuring the .iso build system.

Here’s the contents of what is not supposed to be in the minimal installation:

= Apps =
 * (deja-dup)
 * (gimp)
 * (rhythmbox)
 * (simple-scan)

= Games =
 * (four-or-more)
 * (gnome-2048)
 * (gnome-chess)
 * (gnome-mahjongg)
 * (gnome-sudoku)

= Libreoffice Suite =
 * (libreoffice-calc)
 * (libreoffice-draw)
 * (libreoffice-gtk3)
 * (libreoffice-impress)
 * (libreoffice-writer)

Additionally, I looked at livecd-rootfs which is the tool that builds the .iso image and couldn’t find anything wrong there.

Note that we now create what are called “layered” squashfs systems in the .iso image, so the full install is one layer on top of the minimal install. The installer basically dumps the contents of the squashfs of the minimal to your install target drive, and then if full install is requested, dumps the rest (the items I pasted above).

So this implies one of these things, or perhaps a combination:

  • livecd-rootfs isn’t building the squashfs for the minimal install correctly
  • subiquity, the installer, is not honoring the selection in ubuntu-desktop-bootstrap (the frontend you interact with)
  • ubuntu-desktop-bootstrap isn’t passing the correct information on to subiquity to trigger it to only install the minimum.
  • There’s an error in the seed
  • There’s a bug in germinate: the tool that creates a list of every package that needs to be included in the .iso image, causing the minimal install to be identical to the full install.

So, as you can see, this is a complicated situation, and cannot be retroactively fixed (once an .iso image is released, it’s released). Perhaps we can fix this for 25.04.3’s image, but until that is released (I think it’s scheduled for August, but I could be wrong), this is what we have to deal with.

That said, what you have found is likely a bug. Please execute this in a terminal window:

ubuntu-bug ubuntucinnamon-desktop

and follow the instructions to file a bug report. Once done with that, subscribe myself (eeickmeyer) so that I can do some very brief triage and manipulation of the bug report to make sure the right teams see it.

Thanks!

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The command provided returns this.

REDACTED config part /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/90-installer-network.cfg, insufficient permissions
dpkg-query: no packages found matching ubuntucinnamon-meta

No notepad program I’ve tried has been able to open the said document and the error message that pops up after typing in sudo password says” the problem can’t be reported. this report is about a package not installed”

Will try a reinstall tomorrow as I have no idea how to fix this.

6

I’m a bonehead, I meant this:

ubuntu-bug ubuntucinnamon-desktop-minimal

I was thinking of the source package and not the binary package.

:man_facepalming:

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I have sent the Bug report # via PM