After update, Ubuntu has now become PopOS
I'm running Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS. I was recently prompted to install an update from Ubuntu's GUI software updater, but I'm not sure which update. Now, I seem to have... a strange amalgamation of Ubuntu and PopOS all of a sudden?
After booting up today, my desktop looks quite different:
- It appears to be using Pop Shell, the tiling window manager that PopOS uses.
- The left-hand dock is gone.
- Looking at 'Appearance -> Background' in Settings, the PopOS wallpapers are present. If I go to 'Appearance -> Appearance', the light/dark theme chooser shows a visual with "Pop!_OS User" in it.
- The scrolling direction has been reversed.
- The icons are different.
- The Ubuntu Software Center is missing, but there's no "Pop Shop" in its place.
- The list goes on...
At the same time, a lot of my system is still very much how it was a few days ago when it was "pure Ubuntu" so to speak. My browser, IDE, files/folders, etc. are all the same...
For context, I used to dual boot Windows and PopOS on a single SSD, but I've since wiped the drives I use (including resetting partitions). Now I use Windows on the SSD and Ubuntu on a new second drive... I can't imagine how anything from my old PopOS installation would carry over, let alone suddenly reappear inside Ubuntu after an update.
EDIT: When running Software Updater again, it shows a full list of what it's trying to install: Software Updater Screenshot. When I try to install these packages, it fails midway through. That partially explains things... but why is this even happening?
EDIT2: It is trying to install pop-gnome-initial-setup.deb which seems to conflict with gnome-initial-setup. Weird.
You have to purge Pop OS PPA with
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:system76/pop
to transform the system back to ordinary Ubuntu. You can use Synaptic to determine left-overs of PopOS and to revert packages to official Ubuntu by specifying their versions.
Manual way is to parse output of saved dpkg -l for pop[0-9] package versions and pop- package names. Be careful with popularity-contest and poppler stuff, they are useful.
To get only Popsicle USB flasher you can grab only its packages by
cd ~/Downloads
wget -c https://launchpad.net/~system76/+archive/ubuntu/pop/+files/popsicle_1.3.0~1609365419~20.04~5a49bee_amd64.deb
wget -c https://launchpad.net/~system76/+archive/ubuntu/pop/+files/popsicle-gtk_1.3.0~1609365419~20.04~5a49bee_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install ./*popsicle*.deb
without adding whole PPA to the system.