Linux/ubuntu 17.11 and xfig or inkscape

The conversion to ubuntu 17.11 goes smoothly, but regaining access to programs such as xfig, inkscape, and octave requires some small effort. Here’s what i did:

1. In the lower left corner of the desktop is an array of dark squares, and when activated shows you programs not included in the dock. Find and choose “terminal”.
2. In the terminal, type, for example “xfig” (without the quotes)
3. Enter the sudo command the system suggests. Et. voila!

Perhaps there are better ways.

In any case, neither octave nor gnuplot worked properly, and I asked the Ubuntu forums for herlp. Here is what I got back:

up vote down voteaccept

This error can be solved by changing line 30 in /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/apps/mate-panel.rc as shown below. Open the terminal and type: sudo -i cd /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/apps cp mate-panel.rc mate-panel.rc.bak # backup mate-panel.rc file before editing it nano mate-panel.rc Now mate-panel will be open for editing in nano text editor. Scroll down with the ↓ key and change the following line: class "GtkScrollbar" style "murrine-scrollbar" by replacing the string "murrine-scrollbar" with "scrollbar" so that it looks like this: class "GtkScrollbar" style "scrollbar" Press the keyboard combination Ctrl+O and after that press Enter to save the changes in mate-panel.rc. Press the keyboard combination Ctrl+X to exit nano. Logout in the terminal from root back to normal user. exit Now you will be able to use gnuplot and Octave without getting an error message that says: error: invalid string constant "murrine-scrollbar", expected valid string constant The anonymous answerer was "karel". And the good news is that this worked exactly as presented. What a wonderful Ubunutu world!