Unity refuses to create project

Unity Engine
1

Hi, I’ve been stuck on this bug for ages. Whenever I try and create a project, Unity responds with the infamous “Multiple Unity instances” error:

It looks like another Unity instance is running with this project open.
Multiple Unity instances cannot open the same project.
Project: {path to my project}

I am running Debian 10 and Unity v2021.3.2f1. I am also booting it off a USB drive, as I do not have enough storage space on my computer. Thank you!

2

Steps to succes:

Fire up tops and start killing processes that look like Unity.

Now make an empty folder structure:

MyGame/Assets
MyGame/ProjectSettings```

Now open folder MyGame with Unity.

Sit back and wait for all the noise to subside, or be more aggressive:

Extra unwanted packages in new projects (collab, testing, rider and other junk):

https://discussions.unity.com/t/846703/2

About the fastest way I have found to make a project and avoid all this noise is to create the project, then as soon as you see the files appear, FORCE-STOP (hard-kill) Unity (with the Activity Manager or Task Manager), then go hand-edit the Packages/manifest.json file as outlined in the above post, then reopen Unity.

Sometimes the package system gets borked from all this unnecessary churn and requires the package cache to be cleared:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53145919/unity3d-package-cache-errors/69779122
3

When I try and open MyGame with unityhub, it gives me the same error and creates the folder “Temp”. In that folder, there is also “UnityLockFile”. If I try to delete them, I get “.fuse_hiddenXXXXXXXXXXXXXX”, where X are seemingly random numbers and letters. I also cannot delete Temp or MyGame. I get the error “rm: cannot remove ‘Temp’: Directory not empty”, including when I use sudo or -rf.‮