Gregory's ServerI can use even a very poorly functioning OS because the OS, to me, is just a thin support system that allows a web browser to run. Linux is not succeeding well at this very minimal goal.
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92 comments
  @mcc only one of those issues is a ubuntu problem anyway. then there's a few wayland ones, and i guess the last one is just firefox being broken. it's certainly a game of choose your broken, or perhaps roll the dice and have the broken chosen for you. @mcc the "popups opening in the background" is an xwayland issue, unless there's a specific bonus problem with your configuration, hurray for a rare dice roll. the firefox attachment one is because you're using snap indeed (which is arguably a ubuntu thing because snap is ubuntu only madness).   @dotstdy @mcc yep, the forced snapification of everything (and especially firefox) is the main reason why I won't be installing Ubuntu anywhere anymore. Fool me once and all that. Pity because it used to be the distro I could put on machine I didn't want to get handsy with. Oh well, back to Debian 12 even for non-power users it seems.  @mcc Heh, I was going to say "try Ubuntu, it's worked pretty seemlessly on my laptop". the struggle is real though Someday Cosmic DE will get released, and I will switch to Pop!_OS, and then all the problems on my laptop will be because Cosmic DE is an unfinished product rather than because GNOME is a finished product which made design decisions I disagree with, and I will be Happy because the problems with my laptop will be happening for the correct reasons   Note: I don't mind Snap. I'd rather my OS be using Flatpak, but I mostly use Snap on purpose and I don't specifically object to my applications being installed as Snap. I just want Snap/Flatpak to like… work right.  @mcc I agree that as an end user you shouldn't have to care about the philosophy of native v/s namespace v/s whatever snap does, you should just be able to trust the OS default to JustWork(tm). but this is kind of why I have been against this whole snap and flatpak business. I trust my distro, and by extension, the native packages the maintainers have put in the repos to work well in concert with each other. @double_a_runi Well, my experience is that the distro maintainers are very, very conservative and always have very old versions of things, and that Homebrew is very high quality and always has new versions of things, so I'm in principle interested in a software distribution system that looks more like Homebrew than apt @mcc wait we have brew on Linux? anyway yeah, you are describing why I slowly moved from ubuntu -> mint -> arch . ubuntu got annoying, and mint packages were always old. I know arch is a meme, but its been working for me, and I will move to something else when it stops working for me? @double_a_runi I was using OS X locally and linux only on servers until quite recently! Then I rapidly abandoned Mac for Windows and then rapidly abandoned Windows for Linux. But also, yeah, you can use Homebrew on Linux, if you're feeling adventurous… https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-on-Linux @mcc curl to bash to install, looks promising. sorry I have nothing useful to reply, I've used brew to install lima on macos, so I can have linux in there, but not beyond that. I don't know how it works, and what kind of conflicts it can have. @mcc if you prefer newer versions, you may want to try Arch (or Endeavour OS, which is basically Arch, but with a more user-friendly installation process, and even more shiny new things). In the last couple of years, I barely did any maintenance to make it work for me, and I'm on Wayland and all. Also, in my experience, KDE is much more sensible than Gnome. I love it. It's still nice even when compared to OS X, and a lot better than Windows 11. @mcc I try not to use snap because got tired of path and config issues, and that there's no easy way to remove cache or old installs, it can quickly fill a drive. My experience with Linux desktop is similar to windows nowadays in terms of time invested in removing bloat and configure tools, and cursing the system due to crashes (I don't have access to freshly new hardware so whatever I get has some years of testing and fixes on top) @mcc are you attached to gnome, because if not, I would suggest a more consistent DE? (I know I just apologized for replies like this, but gnome is especially pesky in my experience. I have to deal with gnome on my office workstation, and I hate it) @double_a_runi I am very picky about margins on interface elements and IMO the ones in GNOME are Good and the ones in KDE and FVWM are Bad . Despite this I may switch to KDE at some point simply because I very much like Qt. My current plan is to shelter in place until Cosmic lands (see post elsewhere in thread) and if I'm already doing that then switching to Kubuntu only to quickly tear it down again is not a good use of time.  @mcc I've been using Ubuntu version whichever is recent for years now and I guess I got used to it. These days I mostly switch between a full screen Web browser and a full screen terminal on different workspaces. Gnome3 has been especially painful so far, trying to fix its gestures that nobody asked for @mcc That's fair. I use Ubuntu because I wanted deb. I didn't want Snaps. It says there's an update then can't find it. I lose things a lot. I certainly don't want help with that.  @mcc I have never once heard the advice to switch distros come from somebody who wanted to make any effort whatsoever to understand and solve a problem, only from people who want to say they don't have your problem. I have had success forcibly disabling touchscreens by adding the appropriate module - "usbtouchscreen" I think? to /etc/modules.d/blacklist, but you're I think right to consider this an indignity. @mcc @mhoye I've distro dabbled and was annoyed with lots of Mint crashes, so had a go with OpenSUSE (ok) & Fedora (nope) too. Turns out it was bad RAM. I need a reinstall to upgrade Mint from 20 to 22 (my fault tinkering) so tried them all again. Sticking with Mint—best no-fuss driver support for nvidia and for software. @mcc 👋 I switched to Mint Debian edition (LMDE) on my framework 13 laptop, and after about a month of semi-daily use I like it a lot. Been feeling like I should do a serious tryout of NixOS but haven't made time for it yet. (Ubuntu switched my Firefox to snap, *despite* being carefullly configured to never use snap's FF ever, which meant an old FF version, which made my profile unusable. grrr... no more Ubuntu.)   @mcc@mastodon.social Yeah, my experience is that changing distros can fix some problems while introducing new ones. Like I went from Debian to Ubuntu and it improved hardware support while causing a number of other issues. @mcc Hear Hear. I've stuck with Linux Mint MATE ("Gnome 2") _because_ I know it works and I don't want to pull the multi-arm bandit to see what else breaks on other distros or window managers (or how bad the UI is). It works wonderfully on my Lenovo Yoga 730 (15" touchscreen) and Thinkpad P1 Gen 5 (no touchscreen). Videos playing in Firefox no longer prevent screen lock, but easily fixed by an applet toggle. I had issues with the P1 Gen 3 touchpad tap timing after awakening but .... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  @mcc Some of those issues are Ubuntu issues, but a lot of them sound like Gnome issues and it's hard to get away from that. As I've said before, the terrible thing about the equality of the desktops is that, instead of Linux desktop getting better to match old Windows and Apple, Win/Apple got worse to match Linux. @mcc I've given up on giving any kind of advice by now because I know it usually doesn't help and is usually annoying, so nowadays I just sort of watch and be sad whenever something is wrong on the computer somewhere I mean I know these things wouldn't happen if the computer was originally designed for use with linux, and if canonical didn't keep on doing their BS, and a million other things, but instead we got a world that's on fire and where people are only used to windows's weird bugs  @mcc Depressed chuckle at the replies suggesting things that are far beyond the scope of "thin support system that allows a web browser to run." Me: "my streetcar keeps getting caught in traffic due to city policies" Some Linux fans: "Oh I've seen that before, don't worry, just repave the street in a new shape and you'll be all set." @mcc I call it the 'emacs gambit', and it works with almost every tech problem. I love Mastodon! ;)  @mcc @TomF Purely anecdotal, but I'm a Windows-since-forever user that installed Linux (EndeavourOS) on my laptop about a month back and I was surprised with how well it worked. Funnily enough especially with the lid. I've had trouble with it in Windows having no idea what state it will be in when I open the lid (where I left off, rebooted or fully locked up so I need to hold power). Now it's pretty much always just at login. (Like a MacBook, which also works well in this regard.) @mcc The Firefox snap is not good. I use a ppa to install firefox as deb package on all the Ubuntu machines I manage. Using the process in the best answer here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1399383/how-to-install-firefox-as-a-traditional-deb-package-without-snap-in-ubuntu-22 It will not solve all your problems, but maybe one of the important ones? It really sounds like you may want to buy a Mac next time though 😀 It is very hard to compete with the MacOS laptop experience. |
Note: I assume that I will get responses to these posts (okay, I was GOING to say that, but I have got two such responses so far, I didn't even get to finish typing the thread) saying I wouldn't have problems if I didn't use Ubuntu. *I don't believe you!* Using a different distro means yanking an arm on a slot machine. MAYBE I get a functioning system. MAYBE it gets worse! And the cost of *trying* is a few days of intensive work and maybe screwing up my daily-use computer.