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Ubuntu 21.10

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Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#91
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "What do you mean?"? I don't know which window manager. I just use Ubuntus defaults. It looks like this: https://ubuntu.com/wp-content/uploads/a728/2020-04-23-13.05....

Desktop Environments is what they meant (GNOME, Unity, other variants). If your desktop look like similarly to the image you posted, the soft black vertical bar on the far left side of the screen is the taskbar. I think you are using Unity as your DE which is default DE for Ubuntu. You can change to different DE if Unity is not your liking. There is a couple variants you can use, you can find them in the package mana…

Unity is no longer the default DE, Ubuntu uses Gnome3. Unity has not been the default since before 18.04.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#92
I think 20.04 LTS with its 10 years support separates it from the crowd. As soon as you’re updating every nine months there are many great alternatives however.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#93

My setup for last 3 years is Ubuntu with i3wm (gaps) and NIX as a package manager. I keep Ubuntu as it is, just upgrade OS packages from time to time. All custom setup goes to nix package manager. This way I have more flexibility there and up to date tools that I use. I have all dependencies in a repo, so can quickly spin-up the same desktop environment in another computer if needed, as an example I do it between my…

Then why not just go full nixos?

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#94
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, Ubuntu, or Linux in general, works great on desktops but very poorly on laptops due to lack of hardware and driver support. Not a hardware engineer myself, I think this is because desktop hardware is more standardized while laptop hardware is more proprietary, advanced, and custom-made to different makes and models. My previous job was the first job I had wear a company-supported Linux laptop was ev…

> One specific Linux issue I ran into repeatedly is that Chrome and Chromium by default refuse to trust Linux graphics drivers and instead do software rendering. https://i.imgur.com/u1sKBiu.png

I don't remember the details, but I remember it wasn't nearly as simple as toggling a switch. I remember it involving a mixture of:

* Setting custom startup flags to chrome

* accessing a hidden dev-specific page and turning on acceleration features that were deemed unsupported or experimental.

This page looks related though I don't remember if these exact instructions worked for me or not: https://www.linuxuprising.com/2021/01/how-to-enable-hardware.... I had to do a bunch of research before I arrived at a working solution.

After I enabled these features, my desktop started encountering a problem where I would have to kill and restart the display manager once, and thereafter the display manager would occasionally hang and I'd have to restart it.

It was manageable with a few days research and technical skill, but it's not the kind of thing you would expect most people to put up with.

Another thing to note, Chrome's software renderer didn't seem to play well with my skylake? integrated graphics. Not only was it slow, but buggy with screen tearing and other visual artifacts. So I had to get acceleration working so my browser would both render properly and be reasonably responsive and performant.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#95

I loved Ubuntu around 2007-2009 or so. Nowdays it feels like there are plenty of alternative distros that "just work" without so many of the idiosyncratic stuff canonical keeps dumping into what used to be "debian for the masses" > As Linux evangelist Mark Pilgrim once quipped, Ubuntu "is an ancient African word meaning 'can't install Debian'". https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/16/debian_lenny_review/

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.

Is this a 'chromium is not a priority because google' ?

Or maybe lack of resources and the maintainer needs help.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#96
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Fedora, Arch. You can basically look for any popular distro, they're all working very well if you're not entirely out of your depth wrt Linux

Agreed. I've done a lot of Ubuntu and Arch. Arch is fantastic. I recently have been trying out Fedora and I have been enjoying it a lot.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#97
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You described third party repositories and mismatching Python versions. That is a hacked up system, by definition.

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 work in the general case. They don't even namespace properly; apt cannot even tell the difference between a third party installed package and one that came from the distribution. And third party packagers typically don't even consider future upgrades.

This is why Ubuntu is working on snaps: they are a mechanism that allows for third party plugability in a way that does not break the system.

If we want upgrades not to break, the system dpkg/apt installation needs to be left alone and not be interfered with by third parties.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#98
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't expect nothing less than being blamed by Ubuntu developers for a hacked up system, even though I barely described anything. Thanks for giving me another reason to leave the Ubuntu ecosystem behind me. The condescending tone that your message has seems to be relatively popular in the Ubuntu/Canonical community as well, at least compared to NixOS.

You described third party repositories and mismatching Python versions. That is a hacked up system, by definition.

[deleted]

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#99
post #72

I loved Ubuntu around 2007-2009 or so. Nowdays it feels like there are plenty of alternative distros that "just work" without so many of the idiosyncratic stuff canonical keeps dumping into what used to be "debian for the masses" > As Linux evangelist Mark Pilgrim once quipped, Ubuntu "is an ancient African word meaning 'can't install Debian'". https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/16/debian_lenny_review/

If anything, Cannonical is aligning with mainstream in recent years: upstart -> systemd, unity -> gnome, mir -> wayland New things that are Canonical specific are netplan and snap. I think snap is solving software packaging in Linux. If anything, I wish that snap brand stores were more affordable.

It would seem that snap brand stores are essentially hosted private repos something one could do for Ubuntu for as little as $5 a month. Why not just use those?

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#100
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…

For my work PC, I use Ubuntu, period. Too many third party apps just don't work very well outside of the Ubuntu ecosystem, apps which I need in order to function in my workplace.

I'd probably use something like Arch or rolling my own for work if these apps weren't necessary!

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