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Ubuntu 21.10

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201–210 of 295 posts

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#201
post #15

Funny, I run Ubuntu on my laptop and tried just today to upgrade it (since I'm on 18.04 and have been for a while). But no matter how I try, `do-release-upgrade` won't do the upgrade, complaining about third party repositories (removed all of them as a result), mismatched python versions, and a load of other issues. When I fix one, another one appears. Tried for 5 hours today and eventually gave up. On the other hand…

> I wonder why Ubuntu/Canonical can never get their upgrade game to work properly. Ubuntu developer here. Sounds like you have a really hacked up system there, and that it's your existing system that has issues. Under these circumstances, I don't think it's reasonable to expect an upgrade to be able to work smoothly. Scripts that handle upgrade paths necessarily need to make assumptions that what they are upgrading f…

> If you want to run an Ubuntu LTS system then I suggest that you do your hacking inside containers (whether system containers like lxd, or app containers like Docker). Then you won't need to hack up your system itself, and then upgrades will generally work fine.

Configuring additional apt sources isn't hacking anything up. It's utilizing the normal functionality of your operating system's package manager. It's part of the point of using an operating system with uniform and sane tools for managing software.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#202
post #17

The one thing that I don't like about Ubuntu is that you don't have a taskbar. It is such a productivity boost to see a list of all windows and their titles. And it let's me organize my work much better when I can organize this list by changing the order of the buttons. Is anybody here using Ubuntu with a taskbar?

Yes, I just install KDE. Gnome drives me crazy too.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#203
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems uncommon that those things would prevent upgrades. It sounds more like Ubuntu is beginning to suffer from an excess of complexity.

I think part of the problem is that third party apt repositories have become normalised as if they're a reasonable way to "add on" to your existing system. In reality they're a hack on a packaging system that was never designed for third party plugability in this way. They very often break future upgrades. Third party apt repositories fundamentally cannot express all the necessary metadata to allow for upgrades to wo…

> Third party apt repositories [...] don't even namespace properly; apt cannot even tell the difference between a third party installed package and one that came from the distribution.

This is true. dnf and zypper handle this just fine in the RPM world, and they operate under basically the same paradigm. Are there no plans for apt to catch up?

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably google. Chromium has made the decision to bundle all their dependencies instead of play nice with system libraries. Which means you either need to re-roll all of chromium when something is found, or you need to undo google's efforts. I don't blame distributions for refusing to give chromium poor support - it is intentionally not playing nice.

Yeah because when your software is at the scale of Chrome, "playing nice" with system libraries as you put it means your software is unreliable, difficult to debug and reason about. You want as few unbundled dependencies as possible.

That is their excuse, but I don't buy it. Plenty of other projects manage just fine.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#205
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a long time Ubuntu user and haven’t really shopped for other distros. Any recommendations besides Debian?

If you like (or are okay with) GNOME, I'd recommend giving Fedora a try. Been using for a few years now and it has been the closest thing to "set up and forget" to me (I needed to install some codecs to play H.264/HEVC video). Painless upgrades, decent software catalog... It has been extremely reliable. Highly recommend it.

My home server uses Fedora. I've upgraded it on every release, from Fedora 29 all the way to 34 today. I've been dailying the 35 beta on my desktop and it's been great so far as well.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#206
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no issues with snaps. If anything, I wish more userspace software is provided via snap packages.

The problem with snap is not the software selection, but how obnoxious it is on the system.

Can you explain that a bit?

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#207
post #180
post #19

I love Ubuntu. But I wish their package manager supported "undo".

It does, if you use ZFS, for which there's an option during the install: https://www.maketecheasier.com/use-zfs-snapshots-ubuntu/

etckeeper helps, too, if you're not on a CoW filesystem

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#208
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A negligible percentage of apps use the registry to store configuration, and even if, when missing, it's not an issue. If absolutely needed, conf can be easily exported/imported on a per app basis. What's far more common is to store stuff in AppData, but that can be synced as well (with a whitelist).

I'm not sure how this is easier than just synching up your dotfiles on Linux

You can do the same thing in Windows if the software supports dotfiles. There's plenty of Linux software that requires additional configuration beyond dotfiles.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#209
post #12

Over a decade of Ubuntu use, could not be happier! I remember in 2000s, I had to edit /etc/ text files to set up internet etc. Nowadays everything works out of box. All sorts of peripherals and hardware is recognized automatically. High quality free open source software is available for most stuff I need. The freedom to choose software and customize Linux, if required, is amazing! Am I missing anything ignoring close…

>Am I missing anything ignoring closed source Windows and MacOS?

I went back to Windows with WSL. My employer relies heavily on Outlook and especially the Outlook calendar. The equivalent in Thunderbird does not work well at all with missed invites/missed reminders/missed meetings.

WSL with Ubuntu is amazing for dev work!

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are fades in the interface that cannot seem to be disabled. Unjustifiable. That's an accessibility option. GNOME Settings -> Accessibility -> Enable Animations; or `gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations false`. Should apply everywhere.

> org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations Yes, but it does not disable the fades, nor all the gratuitous animations I see in the GUI of gnome-font-viewer (one of the very few pieces I can try not having uninstalled it). Those animations must have been hardcoded in the software, it must probably be recompiled - and I do not take it for granted they can be disabled through a configuration flag.

I just tried it and it disabled the fades. Maybe you made a typo in the setting? Most GNOME apps are not going to have animations hardcoded, they typically use standard widgets like GtkStack or GtkRevealer that handle the animations automatically and respect the system setting. You can verify this by opening the GTK inspector in Font Viewer.
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