Ubuntu 12.04 changed itself to xubuntu and stopped working

[Bret Busby]

On 30/07/2015, Petter Adsen <petter at synth.no> wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Jul 2015 18:11:05 +0800
> Bret Busby <bret.busby at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In using the recovery mode booting, and getting to a root shell
>> prompt, I tried to use apt-get remove xfce, in the hope that that
>> would get rid of the switch from Ubuntu to xubuntu, and it reurned
>> "xfce not found".
>>
>> How do I reverse this switch to xubuntu, without having to reinstall
>> Ubuntu, if it can be done?
>
> dpkg -l | grep xubuntu
>
> and/or
>
> dpkg -l | grep xfce4
>
> then uninstall the packages that show up as installed that you no
> longer want. The boot logo should be in 'plymouth-theme-xubuntu-logo', I
> would assume. The desktop itself might have been installed via the meta
> package 'xubuntu-desktop', or you might have some/several of the
> 'xfce4-*' packages installed.
>

I tried to use
apt-get remove  plymouth -theme-xubuntu-logo
at the root command line, from within the recovery mode (it is the
only way that I have, of booting into ubuntu 12.04, now), and it
failed, returning two error messages and a warning message;
apparently, the recpovery mode is read only, and, it says that it can
not change /var/cache/apt.

Similarly, when I tried
apt-get remove  plymouth -theme-xubuntu-logo
at the root command line, selected from the menu in booting into recovery mode.

The recovery mode appears to not work.

> You should also probably do a 'sudo apt-get autoremove' afterwards to
> get of any automatically installed dependencies on the packages you
> have removed.
>


-- 
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
 you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
 Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
 "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
 A Trilogy In Four Parts",
 written by Douglas Adams,
 published by Pan Books, 1992

....................................................