Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) • Hacker News Board

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)

#141

Post by geokon » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 10:13 AM UTC

tlamponi wrote: post #68

doublesCs wrote: post #32

For a long time I've been using Lubuntu on my laptop. However, a couple of years ago they changed focus and From wikipedia: Lubuntu was originally touted as being "lighter, less resource hungry and more energy-efficient", but now aims to be "a functional yet modular distribution focused on getting out of the way and letting users use their computer" I stopped updating my OS since (I'm on 14). Does anyone care to sugg…

> Does anyone care to suggest an ubuntu-like distribution for someone like me who wants their OS light? What about Debian? You staying on 14.04 for so long surely means that the slightly slower moving Debian stable is not an issue for you. It supports lots of window managers. I'm using i3 with a simple xinitrc here, but also XFCE or LXDE are available. You can install it very very lightweight and as Ubuntu bases of D…

how well do ppa's work on Debian?

I don't like my system constantly updating (and occasionally breaking) - esp secretly behind my back like snap/flatpak

but occasionally I do need the latest version of some package and i don't want to manage manually installations tucked away in some folder with random bashrc tweaks

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)

#142

Post by flavor8 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 10:13 AM UTC

thdrdt wrote: post #2

Most reviews are very positive. Faster, better, Amazon removed, maybe the best Ubuntu release until now. The only 'con' is the pushing of Snap packages. It looks like deb files only can be installed via the terminal. Ubuntu is also researching if they can get Adobe on board. I doubt this would ever happen, but that would be huge. Most people stick on Windows and MacOS because Adobe software is not available on Linux.…

> The only 'con' is the pushing of Snap packages. It looks like deb files only can be installed via the terminal.

Another solution to this (aside from synaptic, command line, other clients) is to use Kubuntu (which has an apt based package manager called Discover, much improved in this release over prior versions). KDE still doesn't work great on tablets, but in all other respects it's a lot nicer than Gnome. Spend 30 minutes tweaking it to your preferences after install (apt install kubuntu-desktop) and you'll have a desktop that does exactly what you need it to. (You could also install KDE Neon, which packages latest stable KDE with a LTS Ubuntu core.)

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)

#143

Post by llarsson » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 10:14 AM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #126

I've been running this since mid Feb at home. It's been rock solid. I've only had 1 issue (other than it never remembering default audio devices which I set manually to resolve) Snaps break all the time for me. I installed VS Code, after reboot I couldn't launch it, had to uninstall/reinstall. Fixed, reboot, broken. Installed it via terminal. 0 issues. Same with Slack, Chrome, and Skype, and anything else I tried wit…

That sounds like a huge "1 issue", then, if Snaps are supposed to be the way forward for installing packages in Ubuntu as other threads make it seem.

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)

#144

Post by simosx » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 10:15 AM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #9

thdrdt wrote: post #2

Most reviews are very positive. Faster, better, Amazon removed, maybe the best Ubuntu release until now. The only 'con' is the pushing of Snap packages. It looks like deb files only can be installed via the terminal. Ubuntu is also researching if they can get Adobe on board. I doubt this would ever happen, but that would be huge. Most people stick on Windows and MacOS because Adobe software is not available on Linux.…

I've not used Snap, Flatpack, Appimage and all the other types of app packaging tools before. What are the benefits? Are they effectively like bundling an application with all its dependencies? Is it a way of running "native" apps instead of in a docker container? What should I and shouldn't be using it for?

There is sandboxing to protect the security of your computer.

An application that runs as a snap does not see the system-wide "/tmp". They get their own /tmp. If the snap is chromium, it has /tmp/snap.chromium/

The chromium snap would not be able to view files outside your $HOME. Also, it would not be able to read any dot files in your $HOME. Any configuration it makes, is separated into $HOME/snap/chromium/

There are a few rough edges, but the end of the discussion is that you get better security if something goes wrong, and it makes it cheaper for maintainers to created updated packages, and distribute them.

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)

#145

Post by doublesCs » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 10:16 AM UTC

a_imho wrote: post #131

doublesCs wrote: post #32

For a long time I've been using Lubuntu on my laptop. However, a couple of years ago they changed focus and From wikipedia: Lubuntu was originally touted as being "lighter, less resource hungry and more energy-efficient", but now aims to be "a functional yet modular distribution focused on getting out of the way and letting users use their computer" I stopped updating my OS since (I'm on 14). Does anyone care to sugg…

I'm using Lubuntu 18.04 as a desktop OS without any problem whatsoever, works like a charm.

Since I know nothing about your machine, that response doesn't really tell me anything. My laptop has 2 cores and 5GB ram.

But bigger picture my point was: Lubuntu's focus has changed, so it's not for me any more.

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)

#146

Post by distances » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 10:16 AM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #106

LeonM wrote: post #22

Looking through the features Gnome 3.36 - X11 fractional scaling. I got all excited, because this means that now finally Ubuntu will be usable on my Lenovo X1E with High-DPI display. But then further down below: Fractional scaling does not work with the NVIDIA proprietary driver (bug 1870736, bug 1873403). OK, nevermind, back to Windows with WSL...

I can recommend Kubuntu, KDE has better support for fractional scaling and is a very usable and distraction-free window manager. In general I'd try to stay away from NVIDIA drivers on Linux, unless you're doing GPU-intensive work the embedded graphics is often the better choice as it's less power-hungry as well and sufficient for most tasks.

And for KDE+Ubuntu it's always advisable to also check the official KDE distro KDE Neon, based on Ubuntu LTS. I don't know of the timeline for 20.04 based version though.

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)

#147

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 10:16 AM UTC

innocenat wrote: post #70

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just switch to LibreOffice. The dependency on .docx/.xlsx is an overblown propaganda. I personally had a business in 2007..2011 that replaced windows for Linux. All that time I heard that same old song again: "But but MS Office is so essential!". Turned out, not so much, on over 5000 PCs in several dozen companies. Update: business eventually failed, for one simple reason - Ubuntu Linux is too freaking stable. The id…

In addition to sibling comments about UI, if you work with Asian/Complex Script Language, Libre/OpenOffice is terrible choice. I use WPS Office (not open source) on Ubuntu mainly because it supports Asian/Complex script much, much better (as in, almost identical to MS Office).

Well, it's a matter of preference and tastes. I can't stand the ribbon interface introduced in MS Office 2007.

I'm not familiar enough with Asian/Complex Script language, but I once was in China and have installed a few Ubuntu 10.04 (brand new at the time) to a class of PCs where students were struggling greatly with Chinese version of Windows. On Ubuntu they were quite happy with how pinyin support worked in OS and LibreOffice.

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)

#148

Post by suby » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 10:17 AM UTC

cies wrote: post #81

thdrdt wrote: post #2

Most reviews are very positive. Faster, better, Amazon removed, maybe the best Ubuntu release until now. The only 'con' is the pushing of Snap packages. It looks like deb files only can be installed via the terminal. Ubuntu is also researching if they can get Adobe on board. I doubt this would ever happen, but that would be huge. Most people stick on Windows and MacOS because Adobe software is not available on Linux.…

I hate snap. It makes my system less predictable, increases load times, makes UI stuff look ugly, obfuscates process monitoring, hogs memory, cannot deal with files in /tmp (and I happen to use /tmp a lot), makes if hard to do audio (like connecting a mic to Chromium)... I can go on. But in 2019 versions of buntu it could still be removed: https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-snap I found a way to use Debian…

Out of curiosity, do you feel the same way about Flatpak?

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)

#149

Post by readwind » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 10:18 AM UTC

usr1106 wrote: post #138

thdrdt wrote: post #2

Most reviews are very positive. Faster, better, Amazon removed, maybe the best Ubuntu release until now. The only 'con' is the pushing of Snap packages. It looks like deb files only can be installed via the terminal. Ubuntu is also researching if they can get Adobe on board. I doubt this would ever happen, but that would be huge. Most people stick on Windows and MacOS because Adobe software is not available on Linux.…

> It looks like deb files only can be installed via the terminal. Oh, I did not even notice that during 4+ weeks on the unreleased Xubuntu Focal because I never use anything else but the command line to install software. But the target audience Ubuntu is wider, so I think that is a very bad change. One might think they have learned from https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 , but obviously not. Well, formally they…

One can dpkg -i , but, how about dependencies? I always had a problem with that. Whenever the app-store didn't work, which usually pulled-in all deps, I just naively used dpkg -i pkg.deb, and chased all the deps manually, through google. I have done that at least. Thank god for arch. No politics/"religion(s/*)" intended.

Re: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)

#150

Post by viraptor » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 10:18 AM UTC

Jean-Philipe wrote: post #31

thdrdt wrote: post #2

Most reviews are very positive. Faster, better, Amazon removed, maybe the best Ubuntu release until now. The only 'con' is the pushing of Snap packages. It looks like deb files only can be installed via the terminal. Ubuntu is also researching if they can get Adobe on board. I doubt this would ever happen, but that would be huge. Most people stick on Windows and MacOS because Adobe software is not available on Linux.…

> The only 'con' is the pushing of Snap packages. I don't get why they're doing that. Snaps have mostly created problems for me, like they don't scale when other apps do, or the styling is off, or they don't show up properly in the software manager. The snap daemon on one of my laptops always blocks the shutdown by 30 seconds. Generally a rather confusing experience.

> Snaps have mostly created problems for me

I think this is the wrong way to look at it. You still have access to the same packages as before without snap. If you're using snap, that means you either explicitly chose it, or the package is not available in the repo.

The choice here isn't between a package or a snap most of the time. It's between: not using the app, packaging it on your own, or using a snap which is not perfect.