At this point, I would also suggest you try installing it through Synaptic as well. Let us know how you go with it.

Something's gotta work.

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I will definitely try synaptic next. I'm leaving the machine in its current status of the launchpad attempt in case I hear back from "Panda Jim" who manages the Stepmania package (I sent him an email). If I don't hear back from him in the next few hours, then I'll reboot to start 18.02 from scratch and try synaptic. It's probably to 10th or 15th time I've started from scratch, so feels like Ground Hog's Day. I definitely appreciate all the feedback - I wouldn't even have known where to start without it.

Here's what I get when I try to install synaptic (2 different ways)

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package synaptic is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'synaptic' has no installation candidate
ubuntu@ubuntu:~/Downloads$

Selecting previously unselected package synaptic.
(Reading database ... 147646 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack synaptic_0.81.1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking synaptic (0.81.1) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of synaptic:
synaptic depends on libapt-inst1.5 (>= 0.8.16~exp12); however:
Package libapt-inst1.5 is not installed.
synaptic depends on libapt-pkg4.12 (>= 0.9.11); however:
Package libapt-pkg4.12 is not installed.
synaptic depends on libept1.4.12; however:
Package libept1.4.12 is not installed.
synaptic depends on libvte-2.90-9 (>= 1:0.27.2); however:
Package libvte-2.90-9 is not installed.
synaptic depends on libxapian22; however:
Package libxapian22 is not installed.

dpkg: error processing package synaptic (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.13.3-11ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.23-1ubuntu3) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.60ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.17-2) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.3-2) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
synaptic

Well, it took 6 gazillion times longer than I expected, but I finally got it running by going back to downloading the prebuilt executable, running it, then correcting the library errors as they came up.

Here are the exact steps to get Stepmania 5.0.12 running on Ubuntu 18.04 with an Apollo Lake processor:

1. Changed from standard Ubuntu 18.04 to one respun for Apollo Lake CPU using this -> http://linuxiumcomau.blogspot.com/20...ts-bionic.html (loading on USB with Rufus 3.1)

NOTE: I don't actually know if the above Apollo version actually made a difference since I still was getting the exact same errors as the standard 18.04 release, but I kept using the Apollo verison. It may also work with the standard 18.04

2. Download Stepmania 5.0.12 Linux executable from here -> https://www.stepmania.com/download/

3. Ran ./stepmania in the directory where it was installed.

4. First it came up with libmad.so.0 error, then I loaded the amd64 version of it from this repository -> https://ubuntu.pkgs.org/18.04/ubuntu...amd64.deb.html

5. Then it came up with libjpeg.so.62 error, downloaded from here -> https://ubuntu.pkgs.org/18.04/ubuntu...amd64.deb.html

6. Then it came up with libva.1 error, downloaded from here -> https://ubuntu.pkgs.org/16.04/ubuntu...amd64.deb.html (this is actually 16.04 version because there was no 18.04 version available, but it seems to work)

After that, it actually ran and everything I tried seems to work. My son is the one who uses this, so he will have to check it out to see if there are any issues, but it is at least mostly working.

Thanks to jsbjsb001 especially, and also to AwesomeMachine for the help. I would have given up a long time ago without some guidance. Although I ended up using the pre-built executable, it's possible that the steps we went through would have worked after loading those libraries (libmad.so.0, etc.) because those were the same errors we were seeing.

I'll have my son test it. If it looks good, then I will probably keep Windows 10 on the primary (slow) drive and permanently install Ubuntu on a 2.5" SDD.

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Completely missed that there was a page 2 that could have saved me a lot of trouble, regardless, here are some concise instructions on how to solve this problem to anyone in the future (works on Ubuntu 22.04)

Start by running these 3 commands

sudo apt install libmad0
sudo apt install libjpeg62
sudo apt install libva2

Next you will need to rename the libva2 library (or create a symbolic link or something, I'm not actually sure)

Run "ldconfig -p | grep libva" to get where libva2 is installed, it should be at /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
Run "sudo cp libva.so.2 libva.so.1"

Done.