Ubuntu's settings won't open after setting CPU to 'performance'
jeffgeerling.com
jeffgeerling.com
One of the core strengths of Linux is its modularity, with parts being easily swapped so distro managers or end users can customize what they need. GNOME goes against this by taking on hardware management tasks that are well outside the scope of a desktop environment and munging it all into a giant ball of complexity so everything depends on everything else. If the GNOME project had the resources to hire a massive QA team to catch issues like this, it wouldn't be such a problem. But they don't, so GNOME's shortcomings and poor design choices give desktop Linux a bad reputation.
My experience is that gnome is consistent, consolidated and intuitive. While windows is all over the place, with at least two separate UIs with slightly different overlap in functionality.
Pretty much once a week I lose the cursor, focus is generally locked onto one gnome terminal, once I find it, I can exist the shell, which kills the window, which doesn't help, but I exit the next window window, and eventually I get my cursor back.
Sometimes whenever I launch anything that uses OpenGL I just get a GLX failure.
Sometimes I go to open a new window and it just won't map.
Granted I open many terminals in a day, but it's still pretty disappointing.
I get the "this application <FOO> has closed unexpectedly" about once a day.
For a notion of what GNOME ought to be, I'd point in the direction of lightweight environments like XFCE or LXDE or MATE. None of them are perfect, but in my experience XFCE at least was more stable than GNOME.
Lightweight window managers don't provide things like settings for your wifi card (maybe XFCE does now). The point isn't that desktop Linux users shouldn't have a graphical interface for wifi. The point is that this should be independent of the window manager. Same for power management and mounting filesystems and so on. If GNOME provided a clean framework for these things it would be okay. Instead they've recreated the Windows registry.
I'm stuck on a specific release of my current distro because the whole system will randomly freeze forcing a hard reset (holding the power button for it to turn off) because of something I guess Nvidia's driver is doing to the kernel. Happens on any other distro or newer release of my current distro I've tried.
Still, linux hardware compatibility seems to be far from a sure thing even avoiding Nvidia. I'm thinking of getting a Intel mini PC ThinkCenter for my next system. But I have no way of knowing what issues I'll have until I get it.
This is a bug. Upstream (vanilla GNOME) fixed it. It hasn't been patched to downstream (Ubuntu GNOME).
Exposure to bugs can be reduced by choosing well maintained software projects, but they are sadly the norm past a certain level of complexity for many desktop environments. I could point to analogously silly bugs in my favourite DE (KDE), or even much more minimal projects like Sway and DWM.
At this stage, users have 4 choices (wow!):
1. Just wait for Ubuntu to port the patch (easiest)
2. Install vanilla gnome on Ubuntu (or use another distrowith vanilla gnome)
3. Install KDE or Sway or whatever you want on Ubuntu and learn that (or, again, use a different distro that has a new DE)
4. Become The Cool Terminal Dude (the custom keyboard layout community would like to talk to you about the word of the holy lord, staggered column layouts)
Personally I like option 2 and 3 because then I get to shill all the nice alternatives out there like Fedora and Gentoo, but you do you.
But don't complain about the year of Linux on the Desktop never arriving, because this kind of bug is not acceptable for a production operating system. In every commercial app I've been a part of developing, a crash is a showstopper bug--we don't ship until it is fixed. In a settings app, it's even worse, because now you've got to research how to do all this stuff on the command line. But my experience is that there is always some major bug like this with the GUI. Obviously the command line is the real interface and the GUI is just to paint the pig. Why is it never the Year of Linux on the Desktop? Because (among other things) the real interface is the command line. Ok, fine, just don't ship hobby-grade system software and expect to be taken seriously, just man up and say "the developers of this OS don't have time to write a real GUI, so it is command-line only, expect a high learning curve."
Are we pretending Windows doesn't exist? In my experience, Windows has been awfully buggy and sometimes downright unusable.
When I used KDE Neon for the first time, the first thought that came to my mind was: "How can a trillion dollar corporation not make this good of a software?" because even after being a Windows fanboy for decades, the bugs on the Windows side compared to FOSS made me realize the reality.
'Oh but Linux is so much buggier than commercial stuff' yeah, no. If you honestly believe that linux or BSD is that buggy then go use commercial software. but in my experience, commercial software is the one I cannot rely on.
Who know how long until the fix landed on ubuntu stable. I recently submitted a minor patch to a gnome library and it took almost 4 months after being merged to land on Manjaro.
I echo some other comments... I think perhaps 10-12 years ago, I would strongly recommend Ubuntu to new users. I find now I actively try to get people to stop using it. Here at the uni professors blindly ask for it since it is so popular, but it causes more trouble than it is worth. I used to be a very large Mint proponent, but even now I find it harder to recommend that distro.
In an odd twist, my most stable builds are gentoo boxes, which are by no means built for any kind of novice, or heck, even some real linux users have issues with it. I installed and used MX a few times, and perhaps will migrate most to that distro.
Other than moving to Debian, I wonder what is a truly stable desktop distro these days, which someone could recommend for a new user? Might have to break down and start trying some cherry picked ones from the distrowatch list again...
I haven't upgraded to 37 (which just came out).
But I do think that as long as users have to enter the terminal, the experience won't be very user friendly.
I don't use it, but a friend who built a PC with a new graphics card recently and couldn't get Windows to boot stably with it downloaded it as a live distro for troubleshooting at the recommendation of a popular YouTube channel.
When he asked me to remote in a few hours later to take a look, he'd already replaced Windows with it and installed his Steam library.
His comments were that "he didn't know Linux was like this", "if he'd known it was so easy he would have done it years ago", "he's so sick of Windows, and now he feels like he's in control of his computer again", and "how does it just work without having to install anything". He's a heavy equipment operator living where there's only cellular internet access, 30 minutes from the nearest grocery store, and this is his first computer since before his children were born.
He was very impressed by the free software catalog and customized his own widget to monitor his hardware after showing him lm_sensors. A few months on, I'm having to remind him I don't know everything when he calls about how OpenRGB or WINE prefixes work.
I'm the pig that enjoys being wrestled in the mud by my projects, so I don't pretend to anyone that my way is the best, but to anyone who is looking for something with support for modern gaming hardware, both in the software and community sense, Pop_OS! is what the Ubuntu Forums were circa 2006.
However, I've not had a good time with Ubuntu since I upgraded to 22.04. I normally stick to LTS releases, but I upgraded to 22.10 in the hope it would fix some of my issues. I've switched one of my machines to Mint and it's been pretty good, so I'm thinking about ditching Ubuntu entirely. I haven't really evaluated a the distro space, so I just picked Mint because I used it before and it seems okay.
Immutable filesystem distros such as Fedora Silverblue or MicroOS don't get enough attention in the Linux community but they aim to address this particular issue. If you don't muck around with the "system" partition as I understand it, you can pretty much guarantee a stable UX.
The only real benefit is since ubuntu is more popular, you're more likely to find getting help for it online, more readme's will have ubuntu specific install directions or packaged binaries, googling for errors and such will be easier, etc.
To my knowledge right now they are just that, concerns, no absolute proof, but why risk it when there are so many other distros where those concerns don't exist?
Also theres the whole snap controversy, yeh sadly Ubuntu's issues go beyond stability
Very very true, I'd say that's one of the biggest reasons why Raspberry Pi and Arduino are much more popular then STM32 or other, equality or more capable at an equal or even better price, microcontroller.
How Debian feeds into downstream distros is something that Linux novices might not know, but I think that the differences aren't as intimidating as they might seem.
It's called The Universal OS for a reason, and I think if people give themselves enough credit for using Linux in the first place they would be surprised at how capable in using other distros and they can be and how much the skills transfer over.
I think part of that is because if you're used to using Windows you get a sense of learned helplessness because you're taught you're not worthy of learning how the OS works, so if the first distro people use is Ubuntu that same feeling will carry over, and you tell yourself "this is the only Linux I'm capable of using". Also when you've only ever used one distro having dozens of different options makes it seem like every one is radically different, despite having similar conventions and using the same code within distro families.
So never be afraid to "fuck around and find out" and see what else is out there, if you can use Ubuntu you're capable of using many other distros. Ubuntu is geared for enterprise deployments and cloud VMs nowadays, instead of regular people just dipping their toes into Linux like it used to be. So its status as the default user friendliest distro isn't valid anymore.
You can also get the "just works" experience from other distros, and in fact maybe more so because of all the issues with snap based applications that Canonical forces on you that add complexity, makes troubleshooting more difficult and creates a much worse overall user experience.
I had to use Ubuntu for a couple of days recently, and in just that little time I found a handful of glaring bugs. This bug here doesn't surprise me.
So this is what happens when distros become too commercial, huh?
That's way worse than Windows. All core Windows GUI components actually work and are stable. GUI wise, my Ubuntu 22.04 provided at work is way, way, more buggy than my Windows 11 Pro install at home. Don't know if it's Ubuntu issues, GNOME issues, GNOME extensions issues, Wayland issues, SNAP issues, pipewire/pulseaudio issues, or a combination of those, but as a user trying to get work done, I don't have time to debug which component of this bazaar engineering laundry list is at fault.
The whole point of Ubuntu is that you were getting older packages and components, but it was bulletproof, battle tested, working and stable. They seem to have lost the plot a while ago.
I can't even disable the touchpad when a mouse is plugged in lol.
Granted, Gnome has some stellar UX choices though, credit where credit is due, but if I were to recommend someone a Linux distro reagrdless of desktop environment, to it wouldn't be Ubuntu.
This never happened to me in Windows.
You need to use Ctrl+Shift+F2/3/4/5 and switch to another tty inorder to perform these updates, as the failed x-server start leaves you with a black screen.
I personally use Mac OSX at home and Windows at work. I find both have there own set of issues. For example, I find the Finder app in OSX to be a joke compared to Explorer on Windows.
I remember a Gartner article warning that Mac users will prefer the OS for nonobjective reasons, and that IT leaders just need to learn to accept it. I’ve finally had a Mac for a year, and I can’t agree more on the nonobjective part. It’s not good.
The command key (⌘) is the primary key and is used to implement system-wide (via convention) shortcuts: e.g. copy, paste, find, minimize window, etc.
The option key (⌥) is used for symbols and composing diacritics.
The ctrl (^) key is a tertiary key, used for a small amount of keyboard navigation.
The fn (globe) key is largely unavailable for use in shortcuts.
There is no apple key, it got replaced by the command key.
Since the command key does a lot of work, you end up with a lot of chording.
I grant you that there's a walled garden in iOS, but that's different. I've never had an issue running anything I wished to run on macOS.
As for what the walled garden is, its quite hard to explain. I'm not saying its a wholly bad thing either, I use a mac as my main person computer at the moment. But it certainly does feel like if you don't use your mac the way apple intends you to you'll have a significantly worse time compared to another OS. Opinionated software I guess would be the word, which like I say is a double edged sword.
No, they all suck. Some just suck less than others. Not always the same ones by the same criteria.
Considering it was a default install with nothing but an IP address i was rather confused.
Anyone seen similar in 22.04?
I just got a new MBP from work yesterday. The time zone was off so I went to settings to change it, but I need administrator access to change the time zone (although inexplicably if I turn off my wired connection and turn on wifi the system will switch to my current location). I have a jerry-rigged thing hanging over the camera, since Microsoft Teams randomly decides to turn my camera on during meetings, particularly very large meetings (although once in a while I do need the camera on). I find the new MBP M1 power dongle which plugs into the MBP more bulky than the one on the previous MBP. On my personal MBP, I've also encountered some Intel/ARM headaches with the MBP chip changeover, but that is another story.
I worked for a company three years ago which assigned me a Windows laptop. That had even more issues. I have had so many issues with Windows over the years I don't even need to go into them.
Have not had many problems with Ubuntu in recent times. Last minor problem I had was getting all the nvidia libraries in so I could do Stable Diffusion Dreambooth training. So every time I make the decision to upgrade the system software and kernel stuff comes in, I have to do a little extra work or Nvidia will go away (and the screen will go to 800x600 or something). Much due to Nvidia not playing ball with Linux over the years. I can't think of any system which would be easier to do Automatic1111 Dreambooth training on though along with the rest of the system I'm setting up.
Also there's the X11/Wayland thing. When I resize my terminal in X11 a tooltip shows me what the new size is, not in Wayland. There are some other things I need X11 for, can't even remember them all offhand. So I still use X11 and not wayland, but that's not a big deal currently (although when I upgrade I sometimes forget to switch to X11 initially and get confused why some things break for me).
Also, if you want stability, like in many things in software, it doesn't make much sense to upgrade on the day a new Ubuntu release drops. It usually takes about 2-3 months to shake out some larger bugs. When I had more time in the past I used to fire up a KVM, download the beta, test it out and file bugs if I found anything (or even send in patches sometimes).
Ubuntu has its problems, but it has been the best of all of them for the past years. Forget Windows. MacOS is OK - with MacOS there is a stability/limiting tradeoff - it might be a little more stable, but it is more limiting sometimes. I prefer the limits off, I prefer to be able to dive down into the GTK libraries or even kernel if need be. Also with MacOS I could conceivably get stuck with something, with Ubuntu I'm not going to get stuck with anything because if I want to enough I can always just go down and change the code.
Ubuntu can have issues, but I don't know of anything better for my needs. It can depend on needs - Gentoo in some ways is even less limiting, but seems to need more time devoted to tuning and maintaining it. I just want a nice Linux desktop where I can tune things and dig into the code if I want, but usually won't have to. Ubuntu fits that for me. Some people here say they think Ubuntu has gone downhill in the past few years, but I don't know of an alternative I can switch to and stick with for the next decade like I have with Ubuntu (more than a decade).
The Ubuntu team probably doesn't feel safe updating the Settings app without extensive regression testing.
I think in this case it may have unintentionally riled up the "Ubuntu isn't what it used to be" sensibility that's prevalent among Linux users, but I see it more as an annoying little bug that will hopefully be fixed in stable releases soon... but until then, here's the workaround.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33638959
Loads of folks use their blogs as places to write up stuff like this (I used to as well). It may not seem useful to you but others might discover the post via google and it helps them out if they're in the same situation.
I do not know what 'powerprofilesctl' is (I am on Slackware), but if I want to change scaling I just echo to file:
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
That is the thing, having a fancy GUI when a menu that executes a script to do the same thing seems a bit over kill for me.
People should really look at xmessage(1), poping up an xmessage with a selection for this setting makes for a very simple script. I have many such scripts that use xmessage(1).
Also, if I'm not confusing it with something else, it pretends it's able to "adapt" this to different things. Like, if you start compiling for dear life, it'll crank it up to performance.
I, personally, don't bother with these, I haven't seen much difference between those profiles on my laptops, neither on Windows or Linux (PM works fine on Linux for me, I get comparable battery life to Windows).