Linux software center cannot run anymore

Question

I am using Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon.

Linux Mint has Software Center, just like Ubuntu Software Center in Ubuntu. After LinuxMint installation, I could run the software center in my system. But someday, may be after some operation like remove OpenJDK, install Oracle JDK,...the Software Center doesn't run anymore. When I click the Software Center icon or run from Terminal, the OS ask for super user password too, after entered the password, the round-spin (waiting) cursor appear for some seconds. After all, nothing happen. The Software Center doesn't run. Something I tried:

1. Reinstall default JRE (OpenJRE)
2. remove software-manager and reinstall software-manager

This is the output when I try to run sudo mintinstall

$ sudo mintinstall
Vector smash protection is enabled.
add_categories took 13.497 ms
build_matched_packages took 0.298 ms
add_packages took 3828.769 ms
First run detected, initial set of reviews used
add_reviews took 1022.018 ms
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintinstall/mintinstall.py", line 1920, in <module>
    Application()
  File "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintinstall/mintinstall.py", line 59, in wrapper
    res = func(*arg)
  File "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintinstall/mintinstall.py", line 617, in __init__
    sans26 = ImageFont.truetype(self.FONT, 26)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL/ImageFont.py", line 239, in truetype
    return FreeTypeFont(font, size, index, encoding)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL/ImageFont.py", line 128, in __init__
    self.font = core.getfont(font, size, index, encoding)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL/ImageFont.py", line 37, in __getattr__
    raise ImportError("The _imagingft C module is not installed")
ImportError: The _imagingft C module is not installed

Answer 1

EDIT:

sudo pip uninstall pil
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL

Linux Mint has its own "software center" called mintinstall

You may find if it is installed with:

apt-cache policy mintinstall

As it is an essential part of the Linux Mint system, it should be installed.

However, if it is not, although I can't imagine how you removed it, you can install it with:

sudo apt-get install mintinstall

In any case, I don't recommend using Ubuntu's software center on Linux Mint.

It is also possible you have some broken packages, to attempt to fix this, run:

sudo apt-get install -f

Another possibility is, that some packages are not yet configured, to fix that, run:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

After these two commands, you should be able to install/remove software with apt.

So, if you fixed some packages' dependencies and configured all packages, you may safely run:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

And further install anything you like.

If this answer does not solve your problem, please do comment. I will try to assist you further.

Further, it seems mintinstall needs OpenJDK, you can install it as follows:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jre-headless