Opening mdb files in Ubuntu

I think you'd better install the mdbtools-gmdb (http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/mdbtools-gmdb) through Ubuntu package manager, otherwise there are no guarantees that the package is binary compatible. (Lots of distros use .deb)

Re: Installing mdbtools, line should be:

sudo apt-get install mdbtools-gmdb

That's why you go the 'Invalid operation...' error.

(can't comment yet, hence the separate answer)

On Ubuntu 18.04 I tried installing mdbtools-gmdb but it couldn't find the package. I ended up installing mdbtools with apt install mdbtools.

This package provides libraries to connect to mdb files as well as command line utilities including mdb-tables, mdb-export, mdb-sql, etc.