I am new to linux but not to computers. My first computer had a DOS box for commands. Some of you may not know what that is. What really pisses me off is that I typed this into the forum the first time. I finally clicked "submit" and got "this site cannot be reached". This time I am in the text editor. Save! Some history: I got tired of waiting on windows and installed Linux Mint on an old laptop. Why mint? I like those York mint patties will have to satisfy your curiosity. It worked. This is my first time here. I am not sure if this is the right place to post this.

I am on a new Acer laptop now. In both cases I completely dumped windows. Both happened early this year. This one works....Kinda.

The desktop: I got a new HD (B for the desktop and loaded mint on it beside windows 7 on C:. The object was to transfer all data to B$ then dump windows. That was the task for today. Filezilla seemed a good choice. I loaded SSH on the linux side and so far not one file has moved. Filezilla has yet to connect to anything. I haven't found any instructions about connecting to a different drive on the same computer. Well, maybe it will work from the Acer. While Nemo does see the desktop including B$, Filezilla still says Huh.

Did you notice that "Kinda" above? Someplace along the line the Acer half crapped out. Software manager will not open at all. Here are errors from terminal:

prof@prof-Aspire-A515-43:~$ sudo apt update
E: Malformed entry 2 in list file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xtradeb-applications.list (Suite)
E: The list of sources could not be read.
prof@prof-Aspire-A515-43:~$ sudo apt install extradeb-apt-source_0.3_all.deb
E: Malformed entry 2 in list file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xtradeb-applications.list (Suite)
E: The list of sources could not be read.
E: Malformed entry 2 in list file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xtradeb-applications.list (Suite)
E: The list of sources could not be read.
prof@prof-Aspire-A515-43:~$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nginx-stable.list
sudo: gedit: command not found

And Synaptic:
E: Malformed entry 2 in list file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xtradeb-applications.list (Suite)
E: The list of sources could not be read.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

Report to who, where?

I don't really know that these errors have anything to do with the software manager problem. I have lost count of the multitude of errors I have see today. At one time I had a message that said this is a "major problem" but I can't find it now. I can't find a ligit xtradeb-applications.list to replace the corrupt one. I can't change it anyway because it is read only. It may be that I am lacking some permissions. I tried install/repair the whole shebang but that didn't work. I can't boot from a stick. Forget F2.

Hello, profjim & welcome to LQ.

You said your first pc had a dos box? That musta been windows 95. My earliest was Dos-5.X although I'd used 3.3. I also bought the freshly released windows-3.11.

Your system logs what packages you install, and it has security & checksums on the packages and something in there seems borked.

Anyhow, unless you've a good reason not to, by far the handiest thing if a system goes pear shaped after an install is usually to repeat the fresh install, taking the time to check the disk. There are commands for reconstructing databases, if you want to go that road, but I'm not an expert there. I use slackware.

I've never met xtradeb before and I was curious. Apparently it's an unofficial repository for Ubuntu. Whether it works for Mint too I don't know, but it's always risky adding extra repositories to a system, especially if you're inexperienced. If there was something you particularly wanted from that repository that isn't available in regular Mint, maybe there is a safer way of getting it.

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