What's new in Ubuntu 19.04
linuxuprising.com
linuxuprising.com
They also mention a "better" multi-monitor support. that scares me. I have a multi-monitor setup that works. I could do with a few more options but it works. Every change of behavior has required me to whack down some quirks. I am pretty sure the behavior when booting/rebooting with our without the screen connected, with or without the power plugged, is going to change in a way they found "logical, practical and intuitive" and that will waste me a few hours of correcting.
So if you have multiple windows of the same application, it will now switch between them? that's a good thing and that's how it used to be a while ago
Different people prefer different defaults. Personally I can't stand the MacOS version, and for the few years I used MacOS, it drove me nuts. That said, I don't use Ubuntu, so this doesn't matter to me either way.
However most of the time I switch focus by pointing my mouse to another window (mouse focus / click to raise)
That and:
- ctrl and fn being swapped on the laptop keyboard (but not on the full size keyboard), with no way to fix it in settings or bios.
- movement and selection key combos varying wildly between apps.
Rumours has it both can be fixed now. Meanwhile Windows is now less annoying to me than it has been since XP was fresh and KDE has left the 4 series behind so, all while Apple fans are raging furiously everywhere about the new keyboards, so I'm not asking dor a Mac bext time either it seems.
I've only got a half-dozen or so things open. For me, it's just faster to have one shortcut (alt-tab) let me cycle directly to what I want, instead of having to bounce between multiple shortcut commands.
* If you have a Firefox window focused, press alt-`
* If you have anything other than Firefox focused, press alt-tab
If you have Slack running as an Electron app, this is how you switch to Slack:
* Press alt-tab.
When I want to switch to the last window I had focused, the decision should be to press the "switch to the last window you had focused" key combo, NOT "figure out which application you currently have focused, and press a key combination based on whether it's the same or not".
Having multiple windows and multiple desktops makes it worse. One thing I hit far too often:
Monitor X has vscode on Desktop 1, Firefox window A on Desktop 2.
Monitor Y has Firefox window B.
I want to switch from Firefox window A to vscode. I press alt+tab. It works -- monitor X changes to Desktop 1 and vscode is the active window.
I now want to change batch to Firefox window A. I press alt-tab. FAIL: Active window is Firefox window B on monitor Y. (Subsequently pressing alt+` to switch doesn't help. there's only one Firefox window on the current desktops, so nothing happens.)
Thus, I can switch OFF of a desktop using alt-tab, but I can't switch back to it without some other key combo I don't know. (I end up having to just use the mouse.)
An additional example that isn't strictly alt-tab / alt-`, but related to how it's implemented:
I have two Firefox windows open. If I alt-tab to one, they both come up to the front, including the one I'm not using -- which may now be obscuring another window I was using.
Monitor X has vscode + a Firefox window A I'm not currently using.
monitor Y has the Firefox window B I am using.
When I alt-tab from vscode to the Firefox window B on the other monitor, the other Firefox window A also moves to the foreground, obscuring my vscode window. They could fix this while still using the alt-tab/alt-` system. It's just a related issue.
I'm sure I could get around this by aggressively minimizing whatever window I'm not currently using, but it's aggravating that I have to do that for, as best I can tell, no benefit whatsoever.
I will say that pre-Windows 95 I was on 3.11 and switching wasn't "last-focused" based. It was simply in the order of when your applications were opened. At the time I thought the change to last-focused was stupid. (I think today I'd probably still be okay with the old method, but it does make less sense when you have a lot of windows open at once.)
However, I'm now about four years into Mac OS as my only environment, so this isn't doesn't seem to just be about what I'm used to. I'm not quite to the 10k hour mark yet, but I'm well past the halfway mark.
- Ctrl + Tab: within window
- Alt + Tab: between windows
- Alt + ~: between applications
- takes twice as long time,
- forces me move your hands around
- and forces me to think
I do dislike the constant changes, but I also think there's far more exciting things in the post to praise :-)
X/Y are running some stuff I'm not interested right now. Related stackoverflow answers are in tabs in C. Z is in the left part of the mornitor: I'm currently working on it. D is on the right side showing some dashboard.
Was looking at D, pressed Alt-Tab to go back to Z.
X and Y pop up from behind, completely obscuring D. Disgusted, press Alt-Tab again, and watch C covering Z.
Groan.
Yes, yes, I know, a true developer should be able to afford enough monitors to spread all windows evenly. Or use a tile-based window manager and memorize 12 hot keys for each mixture of task. Sigh.
(And I think it should be configurable so people who prefer weird alt-tab behaviour won't have to suffer the way I had to ;-)
LTS releases also don't offer upgrades to non-LTS versions unless you explicitly enable that via the "Software & Updates" tool.
It was also a revelation to me - easiest install ever. Prior to that I was running some version of Mandrake (and prior to that, Woody).
I've been running Linux in some form or another since around 1995; I started with Turbo Linux 2.0 (ok, ok - my first Linux was Monkey Linux over DOS, but it was more a plaything). I'm not unfamiliar with the intricacies of installing Linux (and I've compiled my own kernel before just to get certain things working - did that for a 486 laptop just to get everything on it working - sound, modem, PCMCIA, ethernet card, video, etc).
Being able to just "point and click" - while Mandrake allowed it, and SuSe also to an extent - it wasn't anywhere near as clean as what Ubuntu allowed for. I've pretty much stuck with Ubuntu since then (though not with their wm/desktop - blech at times).
Small things like would help me convince family members to switch
They should be just “Ubuntu 18.04” but “Ubuntu Preview 0.1810”, “Ubuntu Preview 0.1904” etc.
The non-LTS releases are really not for everyone, and should not even attract the normal users with the "bigger" number. They should really warn the "normal users" that only 18.04, 20.04 are somewhat "safer" for them (I've personally had significant problems with 17.10 which used "wayland" as default even if a lot of applications just didn't work correctly under it, then 18.04 thankfully changed that default. And even 18.04 had initial issues which were removed only some months later -- so who wants less issues shouldn't install 20.04 before, let's say, September 2020).
I've also actually tried to keep up with upgrading every 6 months, and it's... such a waste of time when something breaks... and it will. Once the breakage was such that eventually the answer was "oh, you upgrade in place? We don't test it much like this, you should back up your home partition, install clean, copy back your home partition, then it will work."
That being said, given that I haven't paid for it, except with my time, sometimes the price is right. But sometimes, once can actually decide to trade money for the time spent debugging the OS... unless it's just about programming. Linux has some advantages there.
Additionally, to me it seems that KDE is still easier to use, so most users should start with Kubuntu and only LTS.
Ubuntu could try to make things clearer - but one would think that "LTS" would be clear enough. "Long Term Support" - and they give enough other warnings about things...
I've been running Linux in some fashion since 1995; if installing Ubuntu isn't easy enough, I don't know how you could make it much easier (that said - my latest install was Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 LTS - and that was probably the best install experience I've ever had).
Are you posting from some parallel universe, I've sat Windows users down in front of this Ubuntu desktop and they can't tell the difference. What's complicated about clicking on 'software Updater'?
It should be noted that while the website typically steers you towards LTS; that's only if you find your own way there and aren't linked to a specific image by someone else. I think it's entirely understandable why some people might get confused.
NinjaEdit: Also of note is people brand new to linux probably won't know anything about Ubuntu being based on Debian or what that even means, so the idea of Stable, Testing, Unstable is a wildly new idea to them.
- The LTS is the first one listed, on the top, and it is actually the best choice for anyone who doesn't know what to pick
- The meaning of LTS is explained pretty clearly on this page
I don't know who they could make it any more explicit.
The Windows world also has a lot of conventions you just need to know about that aren't friendly for newcomers.
If you are dealing with the version number, it means you are installing the system. How many everyday Windows users do you think have ever had to install their own system?
You could take a non-advanced user, sit them in front of the first step of the Ubuntu install procedure, and I can guarantee you that they would make it to the end and boot into a perfectly working system. Do the same with a Windows install procedure, and if you are lucky they will make it to the end and boot into an absolutely useless machine that doesn't even connect to the internet because it's missing drivers. Now good luck sending your user on a drivers scavenger hunt over the internet. 30 seconds in they will have installed some ad-ware "Driver Doctor 2019 Express Deluxe TM" and will require a new install anyway.
The reality is that the Linux world today is really not bad at all. I would argue that Linux major distros today aren't any less friendly than anything else on the market. The article mentions Jason Evangelho's article, and I would encourage anyone who thinks Linux is not user friendly to go check out his articles and his Twitter feed. He also recently started a podcast called ChooseLinux, where they talk about the challenges and experiments in having a complete newcomer (himself) approach Linux from different angles (gaming included).
Performance issues shouldn't appear between LTS-1 and LTS. Ideally LTS should be the polished and stable version from all that came before it and not a rushed testbed for DE that aren't battle-tested.
Is it really so crazy to want a stable platform on which to run current applications? In the Linux world: yes.
I'm only an occasional linux user as a developer, I never dove into the history or the design. Is there a particular reason why linux distributions couple the system so heavily with the application layer?
The proprietary solution to that instability is to appoint people who ensure ABIs don't change. Microsoft is a great example of that strategy. Many apps made for Windows 3.1 still run today on Windows 10, almost 30 years later.
The typical open source solution to ABI instability is to freeze library ABIs and build all the applications on those temporarily frozen libraries. Applications are built for a particular release. While it would be possible to keep updating the applications during the release cycle, it appears no one has yet figured out how to do that economically.
An interesting exception to the rule is web browsers. Firefox and Chromium get regular feature updates in major Linux distributions. That's probably because browsers have a very large attack surface, yet people use them all day long, so they deserve extra attention from software distributors.
That's a novel concept if you don't mind me saying so ;]
In any case Things like ostree and flatpak seem to be heading in this direction.
AppImage solves the problem in a different way, although AppImage doesn't have a concept of automatic upgrades like Snap:
I suppose one could put an appimage in a snap, leading to either the best or worst of both worlds.
There are other downsides, too.
At the same time, the upsides of such systems are really nice; they are very much reminiscent of MacOS apps - and that I really like. If the whole theming and such can be fixed - it would be perfect.
For example, they could have an optional "recent applications" repository that you add if you want up-to-date applications. This way Firefox, LibreOffice, etc would be up2date but the system would be stable.
If you install Chrome on an LTS by the way, it will come with the Google repository and be always up2date.
I7 4/8 16gb and ssd. Laptop isn't a slouch
I have tons of snaps and the only one that is really slow is Cura.
And that's a good thing. If I wanted my system to force software updates on me, I'd use windows.
Users should always have the ability to control updates. Always.
I did this - and it saved my bacon recently.
I had a 14.04 LTS install, from around the time that that Crunchbang "went away" (just before Bunsen and CB++). At the time, it was my upgrade (completely new system). I decided to make it look as close to CB as I could; in a large part, I was very successful and happy with the result. But when I installed the OS, I decided to put in on an SSD (with certain partitions done as ramfs, so as not to kill the SSD). My /home went on another drive.
All was good and happy, but over time, things became more and more difficult to get newer software, etc. Over the years I really buggered my system; the nearly final blow was doing a "hand-upgrade" to the latest gcc so I could get certain features needed to compile some stuff for a Udacity course I was taking (also got CUDA installed and working for that course as well). Doing this upgrade, though, ended up breaking a portion of the standard "upgrade" process to the point where it would fail if I tried to move to say, 15.04 LTS or similar. Even simple installs of software from the repos would sometimes throw errors in the logs. It was really messed up.
Then one day last year, I decided to try to upgrade my NVidia drivers, and in the process fubar'd the whole system; all I could do was land to a console. Ultimately, I ended up switching over to the FB drivers just to get X back so I could do some research easier with a browser, and to see what I could recover to. I decided that since my /home was still ok - that I would attempt to just upgrade the OS and see what happened pointing /home at the old drive.
So - I bought a new SSD and pulled the old one (so I'd have something to fall back on), and then tried out a variety of distros to see what things had gotten up to in the years I'd been away. I had considered just moving to Bunsen, but as I started to think about things, and research stuff, I decided that I wanted something less compact.
Ultimately, via a series of steps which I won't delve into, I settled on Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 LTS.
The install went perfectly, and it had no problem picking up my old /home partition and such; I ended creating a new user instead of going through the rigamarole of trying to get the old user and such all configured with the login system (I've been there and done that, and it's a damn pain); besides, that also allowed me a "backup" of my old user directory in /home - a good thing, I could move over what I wanted as I needed it or such, and keep the old one around for a while.
It turned out to be a fairly easy and painless upgrade. Since then, I've decided and stuck with the idea of not using any software that isn't from a repo, or .deb file or such. No more compiling from source and wondering where/what I have on my system. Instead, I either do without, or install it on a VM, or build a .deb package myself, or try a snap or appimage, etc. Basically, I'm trying to keep my system clean and "uncontaminated" so I don't fall into this issue of a broken upgrade system again.
Now I need to see if Ubuntu Budgie 19.04 LTS is available yet - when it comes out, it's supposed to have all the newer features of the latest Budgie desktop; I had played with that and the distro (I forget the name), but I didn't like the package manager that distro used; it felt too limiting since most things out there are distributed as .deb or .rpm packages, etc.
It seems essentially to be what you want - separation of "system" and "apps". An immutable containers host with custom things running on top.
There is a config.json for defining inheritance only.
edit: Here are my recipes: https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch-recipes/tree/master/re...
At least the PPAs are actually a better solution than a platform like Windows (whose "system" is separated from "application"), where you download binaries for upgrades, since you have visibility of the source code and build process.
I have around two dozen PPAs for the software I need to keep up to date. In the past, I used to upgrade Ubuntu on every release; now, I barely do it on every LTS.
Example: recently I had need of the of the DOSBox debugger, which you need to enable at compilation. On Windows this was as simple as finding some zip file from someone who'd done it and extracting the executable. On my Lubuntu system though, it wasn't in the repo for my version, nor was there a PPA. It was, however, in the very newest repo for Ubuntu and required up to date dependencies and I didn't want to upgrade my perfectly working base system.
Ultimately I had to manually download the package and its dependencies, extract their contents, and use LD_LIBRARY_PATH and the like to get it to run out of a self-contained directory.
That's what's fascinating to me. All the technology is there to distribute portable self-contained applications on Linux, but basically no one does it, or they pull a flatpak and still tie it into the horrifically silly repo model (and still aren't portable!). Only AppImage makes any sense, but hardly anyone embraces it.
Half of the time, PPAs don't work. Snaps and Flatpaks are a step forward, but they still require a central server for fetching dependencies.
AppImages are good.
I don't believe this, and I suspect you're doing something unorthodox with your apt sources (it wouldn't be the first time I hear a story like this).
PPAs build from source on a vanilla platform for the given configuration, so they're guaranteed to have standard output (binaries etc.) and dependencies. When there is a problem with a certain configuration, such build won't be available to the user.
Can you list the PPAs that don't work?
As far as better multimonitor support, one of my coworkers has had a lot of problems with his third monitor, some kernels are working and some aren't. I have no problems with my 3 monitors, but again I3...
Considering its 'rough-hack-a-text-config.file' roots to make changes I really am impressed with it. I've used i3 for many years, (I recently moved to sway but I'm going to move back) and I am so impressed with how it gets out of my way.
Don't want to change to a different monitor because otherwise I love this "cheap" 4K 42" panel. I had gone around and around about a new monitor, and don't want to open that process up again. So I'm using a kludge.
Using keyboard+mouse: To resize you bring the mouse to the vertical or horizontal frame that you want to adjust, hold down the meta key (Win in my case), and right-click+move to adjust it. In i3: you only adjust that single frame. In Sway: you adjust the whole vertical & horizontal window size. This effects all other 'attached/touching' windows and unintentionally screws up some formatting for me.
Like I said, 'feature'.
I am using this on a cheap 42" 4k AOC monitor. I get 4k@60Hz.
Well, in this case I believe they are changing defaults back from when they were last changed in a "totally unnecessary way" (I believe it was unnecessary when Gnome changed it originally, I'm sure others that prefer this mode disagree). At this point complaining about it just a roundabout way of stating your preferring window manager application switching mode.
Yeah, but they're changing it _back_ to the way it should have been, and the way it used to be. Which is wayyyyyyyy better.
>They also mention a "better" multi-monitor support. that scares me. I have a multi-monitor setup that works. I could do with a few more options but it works.
I share your fear, but I have a multi-monitor setup that doesn't work. Half the the time I disconnect the monitor, all my windows get stranded in never-never land and I have to come up with some arcane way to rescue them from the desktop that isn't really there. So I don't think they have a particularly great framework with the status quo.
For harder freezes I've been seeing where I can't interact with the GUI anymore, switching to a tty and running 'killall -3 gnome-shell' gives the best chance of recovering without losing all my processes.
Not excuses for the bugs, but best workarounds I have so far.
Is something similar possible with Gnome? That is, once you explicitly configured something, even if your setting is the same as the current default value, would it be preserved?
On a side note, Windows key in Linux should map to meta and behave like command key in OS X so I can use GUI commands without screwing up emacs/vim/etc. Super/Meta are all over historical Unix programs but modern x11/guis/distros seem to refuse to allow you to actually bind keys to them.
P.S. OS X has similar feature to xfce to setup key commands and have them just keep working across os updates for years. It’s easy to setup emacs like key binding for alt-f, ctrl-e, etc and have almost every text widget just inherit those commands. You just need to use the terminal/finder to set them.
Do this from a shell:
kwriteconfig5 --file ~/.config/kwinrc --group ModifierOnlyShortcuts --key Meta ""
qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin reconfigure
> Windows key in Linux should map to meta
That's what KDE does. But for emacs it's Super, with Meta on Alt. It's likely fixable, but I'm used to it now so just leave it like that. What's nice with KDE is that you can use the application window settings to force passing all keyboard shortcuts to the apps. So for example KDE shortcuts don't override emacs ones when emacs has the focus.
> What's nice with KDE is that you can use the application window settings to force passing all keyboard shortcuts to the apps. So for example KDE shortcuts don't override emacs ones when emacs has the focus.
Oddly I want the opposite, at least for 95% of the apps. That's where I find the MacOS command-key as a generally a superior solution. `Ctrl-F` and `Cmd-F` don't conflict.
As mentioned before on MacOS (OS X) you only need to add a couple of text files to the key-bindings subsystem to add broad support for "emacs like" keybindings to every (default) text field [1,2]. So shortcuts like `Ctrl-Y` does replace-yank, `Ctrl-P` does line up, `Alt-F` word-forward, etc. KDE has shortcuts for those but they don't affect Firefox or Chrome, etc. It's _really_ annoying now that I have the muscle memory for those basics Emacs ops, but can't use them in Jupyter notebooks or similar in Linux, or the email client, or whatever random app comes up. Sure the shell uses them, but typing a message in Slack doesn't.
I had hopes the "Pop! OS" people would do something similar to the OS X/Cocoa sub-system, but they seem to be stuck in the same mode of copying the inconsistent mishmash of Windows and old-school Unix shortcuts. Seriously, that one MacOS feature keeps me switching back to my MacBook despite having a much faster Linux desktop, bigger screen and all of that.
1: http://simonganz.com/2013/06/add-emacs-key-bindings-to-mac-o... 2: http://ttscoff.github.io/KeyBindings/
Primarily, they have very low resources (and/or skills, it's unclear), which is a problem, since resources need to be distributed between bug fixes, improvements, and chasing library updates (see: GTK3 updates).
A few days ago I've booted the 19.04 beta Xubuntu live image, and it was showing minuscule fonts on a 3000x2000 screen. This is a bit embarrassing for a stable DE.
I don't discourage it in an active way, but one should consider it very carefully (there are alternatives nowadays, that are equally lean, but more stable and flexibile).
(heading to their gift shop to support them by more than words... )
I saw multiple UX hiccups and small missing functionalities that makes me wonder when would a DE reach the full maturity to stay as it is with small improvements and doing what's intended to be done. For the time being I think KDE is a more stable and functional DE than Gnome, hope Gnome returns to its glorious days soon though.
It has advantages, and of course disadvantages too. (The expressiveness of the plugin API is naturally lacking compared to possibilities of built-in features, but with time that can/will change.)
I still prefer GNOME for the rest of its UX, but if you ask me, the next rewrite can't happen too soon.
Edit: I noticed that some of the new improvements seem to be addressing just this, so what I'm saying may be out of date in regards to the latest version.
Some of the reasons I really like KDE:
* I have keyboard shortcuts for switching desktops; I feel much more productive with 9 easily accessible virtual desktops. I use the "windows" key, sometimes called "meta": meta-Q, meta-W, meta-E, meta-A, etc.
* I've added rules for automatically changing the window title bar colors to make it easier to distinguish between very similar-looking windows. My Sublime Text windows in particular have a different bar color for each project. Sometimes I have as many as 4 projects open at once.
* I can lay out and enhance my screen any way I like. KDE doesn't quibble and even encourages it.
It's also the only desktop I know with a Fuzzy Clock that can be set to "accuracy=halfling" so you know when second breakfast has turned into elevenses.
It hadn't occured to me until now to try going back to kubuntu though (having been on Arch since KDE4).
I used Gnome before it for a while. I remember writing extensions for it and fixing other people's extensions. I remember logging in to some crash message every day, possibly because of the idiotic way extensions work: they just monkeypatch the actual DE code (?!?!??!)
KDE provides all the functionality that I need without extensions. Nothing crashes, ever.
I think Gnome is fine for people that are OK with default settings. For anyone that needs more, Gnome just doesn't suffice.
Gnome still leaks and Nautilus is still an old asthmatic tractor though. Nautilus is 50% of the reasons why I switched to kubuntu and I still keep on using awesome-wm when sysadmining. edit: Now that I think about it I also upgraded to an SSD some months after switching to KDE so maybe gnome is way snappier on that same machine and I wouldn't feel the same about it.
Frankly, I seem to remember the KDE harware thing is like 15 years old.
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=212094
And all that problems still appear strange to me, as the computer is not too old, it just has slower processor, whereas I've had better experience playing videos on the notebook bought in 2000, in Windows XP (using open source mplayer!)
And using some of the "lighter" editions apparently doesn't mean "plays better" just... something (as some don't even have an official goal anymore to be actually better on older hardware).
Maybe someone here can explain what is the best way to play videos on slower (from a perspective of the developers who probably have 500 W graphic cards, because "who doesn't"?) machines. I have, more or less, accepted that I still can't expect that from Linuxes:
Relevant: https://xkcd.com/619/
Is this specific to KDE? This sounds like a really nice feature for when I’ve got tons of windows floating around. I’m a big fan of obvious tells so you can get your bearings at a glance.
Maybe this isn't what you like - but to me, it's the closest I've come to having a "MacOS"-like interface on my Linux desktop.
I've heard a lot of grief people have on MacOS (maybe it's just the people I hang around with?) - but I honestly like it, for the most part. It has its quirks, true. But overall, Apple did a helluva job in making it "just work".
Ubuntu Budgie seems to come closest to that experience, without the Apple tax (ie - the hardware - stuff is expensive).
It seems like Gnome's game plan was to intentionally remove a bunch of stuff for the sake of simplification. Then Linux Desktops actually started innovating (macOS style app launcher, fast search to launch, ditching status bar and desktop). Windows seems to have made their own UX missteps as well.
It's guaranteed that if I upgrade right now I will be troubleshooting black screens, hangs, and compiler incompatibilities for hours if not days in an attempt to install a working set of ML tools including up to date drivers and CUDA.
It's sad that one required proprietary component ruins the whole experience. But there's no other option for ML research. AMD just isn't investing enough.
1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/04/15/ubunt...
It's been like this for almost a decade, and I haven't even gotten into Laptops with Integrated/Discrete "piggyback" setups. That nut still is not cracked.
It's kind of sad.
The main issues with GPUs in Linux rests squarely on nvidia's shoulders. Intel has worked flawlessly for ages, and after AMD actually started upstreaming their drivers, their cards have been a dream to work with.
And (please correct me if I'm wrong) OpenCL support in NVidia drivers is still in the "consideration" phases as far as I understand it.
Coincidentally, I decided to try getting into OpenCL a couple days ago. I've just used the Intel OpenCL runtime, but Arch Wiki's GPGPU page mentions opencl-nvidia: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GPGPU#NVIDIA
I don't understand why CUDA is that big, when it's locked down and supported by only one vendor, and OpenCL exists and is open and supported by all vendors. But then again, there are probably some market forces I don't understand; I also can't really grasp why Direct3D is that big when it's locked down and supported by only one OS vendor and OpenGL exists.
That said, while I do have the latest NVidia drivers now (albeit on an old 750 ti/sc card), I haven't tried to re-install CUDA or other ML tools that I had before (it was done for Udacity's "Self-driving Car Engineer Nanodegree" - to compile code for the assignments, and to utilize my GPU to the fullest, I needed to do a bit of a mashup that subtly broke things - but it worked well enough for the course).
Maybe doing that might show something similar to what you describe?
I know when I did it the first time, I was kinda surprised at how easy it worked out; I had CUDA working with Tensorflow quickly, and it all played nice with the GPU rendering at the same time (we had to do things like train a model using data from a Unity-based 3D driving simulator, so when you ran the model to drive the car, it had to use both CUDA for the model and GL for the graphics, and amazingly it all worked on that poor 750 - and had a decent frame rate!)...
The screenshots really made me pine for the days of using Ubuntu as my daily driver circa ~2010, right before the (IMO detrimental and pointless) switch to Unity instead of Gnome 3.
Giving Unity up and switching back to Gnome was such a step in the right direction. Look how big that feature list is because they can lean on Gnome's development! This represents open source at its best.
The same thing has been seen with KDE 4 and 5, Gnome 3, and how long LXQT has taken. Users hate experience regressions passionately, and will actively hate projects that depreciate or replace their workflows, sometimes for years, and sometimes forever.
At the time, I was quite unhappy at Canonical for making their OS so difficult for me to use. I felt that I was being totally left behind, with a machine that was just old enough that it wasn't worth it to them to support it.
1 or 2 years later, I tried a newer release of Ubuntu on that machine. Unity was definitely more stable than before, but it was still frustratingly slow, and had sprouted the weird, unwanted amazon search feature. I continued to be disappointed that the default install of Ubuntu had become so needlessly graphics-intensive, and haven't played with it since.
---
One other gripe with Unity -- I really didn't like how it thought that applications were more important than windows. It was difficult to switch between 2 or more windows of the same applications on the same desktop. The icon on the taskbar just showed a tiny arrow for each window. You had to hover over it before it would show buttons (icons? previews?) of each window that you could select. Alt+Tab was the same. You could only rotate between applications, but if you held it down for a moment, it would show the windows of that applications, and there was some way to pick between those on the keyboard.
I really didn't like that. I would often have 2 or more terminals open, or text editors, or file browsers, and I would want to switch to the one that I had least-recently used, and I would have to do this whole dance of pulling up the application, waiting to see the individual windows, and finally picking the one I wanted. The 2-3 seconds that took were very frustrating, since I knew that I had used to be able to hit Alt+Tab a couple of times to go directly to the window I wanted.
I have the same frustration every time I have to use an apple computer. It bugged me enough that I read through the keyboard shortcuts settings and learned about Cmd+Tilde, which helps, but is still very frustrating. I want a window! Why does it take two different kinds of keyboard shortcuts to get to the window I want!
---
Between those two troubles, I am happy to have avoided using Unity.
I was using Cinnamon (first on Linux Mint and then on Manjaro) for a few months before the release of Gnome 3.32. I've switched to Gnome 3.32 and it feels much more responsive than Cinnamon. In particular cycling windows and doing anything while a notification is being displayed.
I really wish Cinnamon didn't stutter as much. It's the right amount of "desktop" I need.
The constant UI flux is the worst part about using Linux.
I've moved on from Mint, but the fact that the MATE dev community took the tried and true paradigms learned from Gnome 2 and made kept them alive in spirit won me over. I installed Ubuntu MATE to a box just the other day.
Not to imply that it isn't valuable on high end machines (it is), but I personally really like Gnome 3 these days once I got used to it's way of doing things.
A constant window manager is actually one of the strong points of linux. Lot of people still use twm.
Both responses on their own are perfectly reasonable, but it's understandable if users get a bit frustrated.
To give another example, one upgrade my Xmodmap stopped working, and I had to stop everything to learn how xkb worked. If there is some package I could install to just have Xmodmap work again, that'd be great, but I wasn't able to figure it out at the time.
I'm getting old enough to belive you.
For me however while I can believe it I really really cannot understand it: it broke my workflow in a number of ways by default and unlike Gnome 3, Unity was next to impossible to reconfigure to something I could use productively.
It is actually somewhat of a learning experience for me to see something I almost despised be missed by a number of people.
I think two easy conclusions should be "different strokes for different folks" and "make your software configurable".
sudo apt install ubuntu-unity-desktop
Out of the box its not very configurable, but install compiz settings manager and its very good.
Oh sweet, did they make NetworkManager not garbage?
>no
Cool, cool.
I do appreciate some of the other updates though. A little user-friendly support for Nvidia cards is a welcome add, and the latest Gnome is looking sexy.
And is a dependency of Nautilus – cannot remove tracker but keep Nautilus :-(
"Tracker is installed by default with Ubuntu 19.04. Tracker is a filesystem indexer, metadata storage system and search tool"
So no real privacy issue here or anything. But load on the system may be annoying. Boloo should be the KDE equivalent and I don't like it.
PS: Yes, this stuff can be annoying: " It wasn't installed by default until now due to performance concerns, but those issues seem to have been resolved."
For finding stuff I use recoll. Not sure if baloo has also other uses.
Even more annoying if by "solved" they mean "everybody has SSDs now so we don't care". Windows 10 does that and it can become extremely painful to use on old spinning disks. I've seen machines where average seek times go over 1 second because Windows won't leave the damn disk alone after a few updates.
https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Tracker/
Tracker is GNOME's analogue to Spotlight (from macOS/iOS) and Windows Search.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204014
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/search/wind...
I use recoll and it has literally saved my hours of work.
apt-get install recoll
one does not need to _remove_ software to make sure it's not impacting you.
I'm actually excited to try the new version.
Consistent system-wide clipboard behavior with consistent keyboard shortcuts. Look to Mac OS for an example of how to get this right. And I don't even need graphics/media support in the first iteration: just get me basic plaintext copy/paste.
I never realized there was a problem with clipboards on mainstream Linux desktops?
Edit: after a couple of minutes of thinking I have found one single thing that isn't consistent: when copying and pasting from/to a terminal I have to use ctrl + shift + c or ctrl + shift + v (understandable since ctrl + c is used to terminate running programs).
Personally I guess cut, copy and paste should have been moved to Super + x/c/v since they are global os-level shortcuts, but it would break the habits of many of us so I guess that should be configurable as well.
Highlight, middleclick, job done
Improvements shouldn't break things.
But the GP might be referring to the fact that copy and paste with anything but straight text is an outright shitshow on X. Compare to the copy and paste facilities from even ancient MacOS 6 it's downright stone age.
If anything I find OS X more annoying, as things like screenshots into the clipboard work far less reliably.
It's not macOS' problem if people seem to prefer writing mediocre cross-platform apps than proper, native apps with full support for macOS-specific features like system-wide automation, proper integration with the system pasteboard, Quick Look, accessibility features, etc.
Or is this the projector problem again: when you plug a mac into a projector and it doesn't work, people blame the projector. When you plug a linux machine in, people blame linux.
I'd never heard of the projector problem, but given Linux's unreliable track record with multiple monitors, I'm not surprised people blame Linux. The problem as stated doesn't define whether or not the projector is actually at fault or not, so we can only really start diagnosis where intuition leads us.
Used Mac for almost three years.
Was enthusiastic when I got one and after close to three years enthusiastic to get back to Linux or even Windows.
I realize Mac users experience it to be much better and I guess with a different workflow it is.
I tried hard to pick it up. I failed miserably.
Going back was a relief for me.
Then I started using Mac OS X and I realized that it's actually nice to be able to select text and NOT have it auto-copied obliterating my clipboard, but instead be able to replace it using Command-V. And it's a pretty cool invention that the same shortcuts work in all applications, consistently. And that I can copy text in any application and paste it in any other using the same shortcut. And that I don't have to use the middle mouse button, which is a scrollwheel these days and is difficult to hit without invoking the scroll functionality. And it's pretty nice to be able to paste to where the cursor is RIGHT NOW without carefully positioning the mouse pointer and making sure it doesn't move while you carefully try to hit the middle button (otherwise your text will get inserted wherever the mouse moves in the meantime, if you are in a browser edit window).
I could go on. There are so many things which can be done better if we drop the "the way X11 did this is the best way, ever" attitude.
And then, eventually, once we get text copy/paste right, we can get to copying images, which again is a totally solved problem on Mac OS X.
> is a totally solved problem on Mac OS X.
It's solved there because it's a walled garden. It's essentially a different problem that they've solved. The problem here is making that work while still being the free software operating system we love.
Can't you just use ctrl+c and ctrl+v and ignore the other clipboard?
"The other clipboard" is part of the problem I'm describing. Why would you have "the other clipboard" in your system?
But you know what: I've read the replies in this discussion and I rest my case. It seems that most Linux users are OK with the current situation and do not even want to hear about the possibility of a better solution. This is why things will not change.
I'll just use OS X for development, happily paying Apple a premium for getting things to work for me.
There are plenty of Linux users with gripes about the UI and various aspects of the environment, hence why there are so many bloody Linux apps that basically do the same thing, so many desktop environments, and more being made every day.
An idea about the user experience is worth paying attention to even if they can't implement it themselves. To brush off the idea with a "well, if you like it so much, make it yourself" is churlish and dismissive. It's not an attitude that helps advance beyond the status quo.
It seems like closed-mindedness to constructive criticism, alarmingly similar to the mindset GNOME's developers have towards basically everybody, stubbornly refusing to accept that other peoples' points of view can have merit and value.
Ironically, it's a very closed, Microsoftian value for a Linux user to hold: Not Invented Here.
My point is only to highlight that these are very different worlds. Apple decides what you want then charges for it. We say, here, this is what I want, but feel free to make it what you want. There are always going to be pros and cons.
But why must you put it down?
It may not be your itch, but equally, Linux is not your OS. It's everybody's. Other people may happen to share the same sentiment about certain things. That's how things change, evolve, develop, improve.
You cannot be dismissive on everybody else's behalf.
> Apple decides what you want and then charges for it. We say, here, this is what I want, but feel free to make it what you want
First, who is 'we'? I still feel like you're trying to represent the feeling of a lot of people whose opinions may differ wildly from your own.
Aside from that, not everybody who uses Linux does so for this factor of openness and flexibility. There are plenty of Linux users who wish it would Just Work™ — but, again, their contributions to the discussion shouldn't be poo-pooed just because they don't have the time or resources to reimplement that with which they're familiar.
Some people can only contribute ideas, and that's just fine; it might turn out that only when some developer with some free time on his or her hands sees those ideas that they might then be implemented.
I use Gentoo and it really does Just Work for me. My definition of working is clearly a world apart from others', though.
Most people are saying they aren't even _aware_ of the problem, and you've completely failed to describe it here. No one even knows what the hell you are talking about, maybe give it a rest?
We really would, but no one in this thread is clearly describing this better solution.
I never used it because I don't like having a history of my actions.
0: Also to get working (not blurry) fonts and a couple of other assorted improvements.
Still working on killing that damn line discipline, though.
> consistent keyboard shortcuts
Apart from the terminal which obviously needs an alternative to Ctrl-C (same as Windows, and shift-ctrl-C beats shift-insert or whatever any day), and Emacs which is, you know, emacs, I can't think of any programs that do not consistently use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. So what are you referring to here?
Why? Whyyy why why.
Very happy with it, good job Ubuntu and Linux teams! :D
$ do-release-upgrade
Checking for a new Ubuntu release
Get:1 Upgrade tool signature [819 B]
Get:2 Upgrade tool [1,243 kB]
Fetched 1,244 kB in 0s (0 B/s)
authenticate 'cosmic.tar.gz' against 'cosmic.tar.gz.gpg'
extracting 'cosmic.tar.gz'
[sudo] password for $USER:
$ $ do-release-upgrade -p -c
Checking for a new Ubuntu release
New release '18.10' available.
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.it's strange that that's all the output you get, though. Apparently it puts logs in /var/log/dist-upgrade/, is there more there?
sudo apt-get install python-distro-info python3-distro-info
[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-release-upg...
I particularly love the Overview mode when you press the Super key.
That alone isn’t a deal breaker, it’s not very difficult to replicate all the tweaks that I prefer, but I also have a 144hz monitor and Gnome has some of the best support for that that I’ve found. I don’t like having my window manager lagging behind, and the combination of the two leave basically only Gnome in the intersection.
Besides, in my experience, there isn’t a huge benefit in changing either. I try new options now and then and never feel like I’m missing out.
Can anybody comment?
tldr: if you verify the download against a trusted PGP key, it doesn't matter where the download actually came from.
Why yes, this is dumb. Why yes, I can't do anything about it. This is why having an https path matters.
If there is a vuln in (or before) the GPG signature check, using HTTPS has a good chance of making it a lot harder to exploit (because the attacker will likely need to get into a trusted position instead of MitMing any HTTP connection).
If you're more looking for familiarity coming from Windows, go with KDE and their Ubuntu-based distro, Neon - https://neon.kde.org -
Also, I have to mention, If what you want is the latest & greatest, want continual updates, great setup for multimedia & gaming etc. try https://manjaro.org - this is not based on Ubuntu, but rather on a distro called Arch, however the advantages are that you're always getting the latest software & as a result there's much better support in terms of the latest GPU drivers etc.
Many are afraid of occasional instability that can come with fresh software that Manjaro ships, which is something to consider, but it hasn't been a problem from what I've seen.
All Ubuntu (and indeed most major Linux disto) releases come with a "live image" - so there's no reason to start off with an actual install - it's easy to boot off an USB and play around.
There will be pain. You get the choice of horrendously outdated software where really annoying bugs don't get fixed for 2 years (if you go with LTS) and major upgrades that rarely go smoothly every 6 months (if you don't).
I'd recommend not going with LTS; one day you'll hit some missing feature in GIMP, Inkscape or whatever you're using and start cursing your life choices.
If you are disciplined enough to document the changes you make to the system (installed packages, changed settings, anything outside your home dir basically) you can simplify your life a lot, because you can reinstall from scratch easily. While the update process has gotten better, old wisdom often suggested to reinstall instead of attempting an in-place upgrade.
Apparently things often use 16% less battery now too based on some benchmarks I read. Its been about 3.5 hours I guess and I've went through half my battery wile downloading packages and browsing, and haven't set up powertop or tlp yet.
Its a lot snappier than before. I know that before I had an issue with resume from suspend where the machine was just slow on waking, haven't used it enough to tell if its still happening though.
xps-9360
For reference, a quick search on launchpad appears that yes, this is now the case for Disco:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gcc-9
`sudo apt-get install gcc-9` away!
They only do long-term-support (LTS) releases every two years, and those are always in April, so you're reading references to the most recent LTS release, 18.04.
I'll be upgrading to 19.04 from 18.10, though.