221–230 of 295 posts
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
- About 90% of the (GUI) software ever developed? I'm happy to hear that there are quality Linux alternatives nowadays, but there's just many order of magnitudes more choice on Windows (and far less, but still more on Mac). For a lot of categories, this might change in the next decade (Electron and other cross-platform frameworks, tech like Proton) but for things like media editing or even image viewers, or until the…
> Trivial app portability The "registry" is not an issue anymore?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know much about python, but for nodejs dev work I have about half a dozen versions of nodejs installed. It’s super handy having all those versions installed so I can test that a certain native nodejs package I develop builds and works properly. And to rule out nodejs itself when reproducing bugs. I use nvm (or fvm) or something to manage all that because the system package managers updated too slowly. What ar…
If you replace the version of python that the upgrade process expects, then yeah, you'll probably run into problems. The upgrade process can't possibly support every single version of any given package, that would defeat the entire purpose of having a stable release cycle. If it's a core package like python which sits really close to the top of the dependency tree then the effects of swapping that out will cascade do…
- The question of which files go in which directories in the system is a question for canonical (or whoever) to decide. Not end users or 3rd party developers
- The namespace of apt package names is special, and 3rd party / external dpkgs shouldn't add anything into it
I think this stance is entirely reasonable. Its essentially what windows and macos both do (and to increasing degrees with each version). But its a pity its taken the current apt packaging disaster to realise it. Its really convenient for users to have a package manager, and for 3rd party developers be able to write software for it. And these problems seem solvable:
- Namespace all 3rd party packages. Eg, @apple/foundationdb-server (as distinct from @canonical/git)
- Use overlayfs or something to essentially make /usr, /usr/bin, etc read only by normal processes. If these paths were only writable by system packages, the whole system would be much more predictable (and verifyable) - since that filesystem would only - could only contain a subset of the files in apt.
I get that flatpak and snap are both attempts to replace apt. But its a pity they're needed. I'm enjoying mint, but if I ever rebuild this machine I'm going to give nix a try.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Debian has a strange approach to security these days. There are over 100 unpatched vurnurabilities in their version of Chromium for example: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s... Because of this, I don't see debian as an option for the Desktop anymore. I hope they still fix the server software in their repos.
Check how many vulnerable packages they have against their stable release across all packages and how long until they’re fixed. It’s an eye opener.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Manjaro seems pretty popular now. It's based in Arch with rolling releases and everything but gives a good experience out of the box while Arch is a full time job to maintain
> Arch is a full time job to maintain I've never understood that sentiment. Are there things I don't know about I should be doing? I installed Arch probably four years ago on my laptop, and have never had to do anything but install updates and read the announcements on archlinux.org since. I do understand the appeal of Manjaro - I did use it briefly when it first came out - but I don't see how maintaining Arch Linux…
Also, it seems to me that ArchLinux had less very impactfull changes in the past years because it has matured quite a lot. It's only an impression though!
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…
- About 90% of the (GUI) software ever developed? I'm happy to hear that there are quality Linux alternatives nowadays, but there's just many order of magnitudes more choice on Windows (and far less, but still more on Mac). For a lot of categories, this might change in the next decade (Electron and other cross-platform frameworks, tech like Proton) but for things like media editing or even image viewers, or until the…
>- About 90% of the (GUI) software ever developed? I'm happy to hear that there are quality Linux alternatives nowadays, but there's just many order of magnitudes more choice on Windows (and far less, but still more on Mac). For a lot of categories, this might change in the next decade (Electron and other cross-platform frameworks, tech like Proton) but for things like media editing or even image viewers, or until there is some tech to seamlessly emulate, this won't be a fight.
I think this is highly subjective, sure if you need some specific piece of software (e.g. photoshop), but for everything else you are pretty much covered. In particular free software for common tasks like image viewing is much better on linux, on windows everyone uses some piece of software they received with some camera or similar, which is often unmaintained and riddled with bugs.
> - Trivial app portability - I absolutely love the concept of portable Windows software. Have a single folder with configuration and binaries, that can run for sure anywhere (give or take a .Net/VisualC install) - and you can achieve this for 90%+ of all available apps.
App binaries and configuration in the same folder? On my windows install there are lots of files in some subfolder o f C:\Users\\AppData\ and C:\Program Files\Common Files\
And finding the correct subfolder is not always trivial if you try to nuke your configuration. Mind you that is not necessarily easier in Linux either however things got better and more and more software adheres to the XDG standard locations.
>With a some sync tool it's simple to have the same (as in reproducible/copiable) work environment on many machines (in the context of ad-hoc gui user applications). I know this concept isn't really transferable to Linux (separated locations per app, "just build from source") and there are attempts (Snap) but due to the fractured scene and #1 it's not that practical for end-users.
Syncing your work environment over to a different computer is trivial in Linux compared to Windows (not that this is a very typical end-user work case either). Sure if you put a different distro on every computer it's not so easy, but why would you do that?
>- Hardware compatibility - cool that you didn't have device issues, but this could be because you just don't use non-mainstream hardware. Even when I did, a lot of special functionality was bound to (Mac/Win) drivers. Sure, not Ubuntu's fault, but still.
Yes you still run into the odd bit of hardware that doesn't work, but that's quite rare even on very recent laptops. This is also not a solved problem on windows either, if you don't use the pre-installed OS on your windows PC then installing a new version can result in quite a bit of chasing drivers.
There are issues with Linux still, but the ones you listed are not among them IMO (and Windows isn't really better on this either). One of the things that I find annoying at times is that developers don't seem to consider upgrades to the configuration files when releasing new versions. After some upgrade the previously saved configuration doesn't work anymore, because the file format changed or parameter names changed or similar. While I suspect this happens in windows as well, it's more of a problem in Linux because one upgrades more frequently.