Ubuntu is VERY heavily invested in snaps at a very basic level. I think the recommendation is to not mix snaps and Flatpaks as they may not interact well. As a new Ubuntu user, I’m slowly discovering some of the random problems with snaps.
For example, just the other day, I was trying to configure my fish shell using the html-based fish_configure utility, but it just wouldn’t work. Of course, I assumed the problem was with my fish install. After a couple hours fiddling with it, I finally came across a stack exchange comment indicating that the snap version of Firefox simply can’t access the /tmp/ directory, which is where fish_config creates its html configuration page. WTF? Also, you can’t even install a non-snap version of Firefox via apt because the official apt repository just links back to the snap version! I finally installed an apt-based version of librewolf, but had to get it from a non-Ubuntu repository, and then magically I could access to fish_config html page. That’s a pretty long workaround just to view a simple HTML page!
So, if snaps have problems like this just interacting with the base Linux file system, I wouldn’t be surprised if random weird behavior cropped up when trying to use Flatpaks.
I’m a noob using the default Ubuntu DE for a few months now and I’ve gotten used to it, at this point I’m afraid to ask what are the other DEs and whether I should swap over
I particularly like Cinnamon, it’s very simple and nothing fancy (while still looking great and modern).
The other popular choices include:
Gnome
KDE (customizable to hell)
XFCE (very easy on resources, good for old hardware, or if you like simplistic DE)
LXDE (similar to XFCE in the resources department, but looks more modern, IMO)
There are others, but I can’t speak for them as I’ve never tried them. I can’t really describe modern Gnome as well, because the last version I used was 3 and it doesn’t look at all as the same DE, so someone else will have to provide that info.
modern gnome is simpler to learn and more polished than basically all other DEs. i think its better for someone that wants something new and for people who just started using a computer, because of just how easy it is to use. its not good if youre switching from windows or mac and want something similar.
You can use the list there to look up images or videos of the DEs
If you think you’d prefer one then you can try it but you aren’t likely to find an advantage over what you’re used to (there are some like old hardware wanting lighter weight) it’s mostly preference.
If you changed your Window Manager to i3 then you would probably hate it just for being so different
Don’t. It’s a trap. Most of them have compatibility issues with software. Stock Ubuntu is the benchmark for every piece of software these days. Deviating is fun until it isn’t.
Unless you want to go a non Debian based distro, always pick Ubuntu.
Tried switching to KDE Plasma and then OpenCV broke because of outdated QT version or some shit. Same with another distro. And I couldn’t install two versions at the same time.
Fair, that reply above is not helpful at all. I mean yeah, I have had my fair share of dependence hell as well. Mostly when trying to install an external deb package. I know how to prevent it nowadays but it ain’t user friendly at all.
Also I would be hesitant to use Linux as a workstation. If I had the luxury of time I would for ideological reasons alone. But I don’t have that kind of time. Troubleshooting can become costly when you get paid by the hour.
Depends on what you do, most of the deep-learning world and scientific computing is based on Ubuntu. And not just Ubuntu but currently 22.04. Even upgrading the distro can bring compatibility conflicts.
I have a massive hate boner for development on Windows for things such as the \ in the paths and needing to install a 10gig IDE to do cpp development. Or they tell you WSL “just works” while it doesn’t “just work” because it can’t cv2.imshow your images because there’s no X11 passthrough etc.
Ubuntu is shit. It used to only be shit under the hood if you were an enterprise sysadmin building your own packages and managing versioned repos for thousand machine fleets, but now it is shit from a user experience, too. Fuck snaps, fuck walled gardens, and fuck vendors attempting lock-in.
…for nothing this days. The only people using Ubuntu now are dinosaurs and system managers running cheap servers or locked into Canonical’s ecosystem, and the latter are using headless servers, remotely managed, not the DE. Variety is the spice of life. All mainstream DEs are perfectly serviceable, 100% compatible with everything and completely stable and reliable. FFS, Ubuntu’s snaps don’t even work well on their own DE. Stop fearmongering for Canonical, let people live life.
You do you. Just stop wasting other people’s time with this worthless false hope. What I’m saying here is what I would have liked people to tell me before I wasted my time troubleshooting issues caused by custom Desktop Environments. What’s next you’re going to tell me Wayland already runs without issues too?
The stock Ubuntu environment looks pretty decent to begin with.
Wow, you really are aggressive and hostile for no reason. You can use Ubuntu all you want. But don’t go around spreading lies just because you are too cognitively challenged to change your DE without breaking the OS. Most people are fine making a fresh install with the DE they want to try preinstalled and it works fine 100% out of the box. It’s trying to make two different DE live on the same system at the same time that is only partially supported and thoroughly discouraged by every single DE developer. Most of the time installing a new DE on a system and uninstalling the old one is a pretty straightforward, although dirty process. Guess who is particularly bad and incompatible with that process? Ubuntu. It has the worst support for alternative DEs, because Ubuntu is not the benchmark for squat shit anymore. Use a real end user distro, and you’ll be able to change DE to your heart’s content without issue.
Because advice like this is an enormous waste of time. Calling people dinosaurs for using Ubuntu instead of KDE is a pretty out there take. The only more modern option is arch based distros like Manjaro but since every programming tutorial assumes you have APT and are running Ubuntu I don’t see much of a reason to deviate from that.
it seems you should be using debian or distros based on it. ubuntu, as far as i know, uses apt as a mirror to snap, so as long as the tutorials youre following letter for letter arent too recent, you really should be using debian for actual apt packages, since ubuntu used those a couple of years ago.
you can also use fedora or arch, but it seems you dont want to check what package youre downloading at all, and just want to follow tutorials blindly.
No it installs and uninstalls a ton of packages and often relies on specific versions of certain packages. This is like saying Ubuntu isn’t different from Debian.
Some DE’s even use Wayland which will break a ton of software such as OpenCV.
I’m only on Linux for a few months (as a daily driver, always used headless servers before that), and I’m almost certain that my Fedora install came with both KDE and Gnome in Wayland and X11 flavors pre-installed out of the box, and I could just choose between them at login screen. Or am I wrong, and I do I just not remmeber installing the other manually? I mean, that’s also possible, it’s been a while.
For new Linux users choosing a distro IS choosing a desktop environment. Installing a new DE that’s different from the default is not a day one Linux task, so the default for the distro is what matters. Yes. the DE is the most important factor in choosing a distro, but saying that means the distro doesn’t matter is just fundamentally incorrect and unhelpful.
I don’t thibk op intended to imply that new users instal a new DE on whatever distro they choose, but rather it’s clunky to explain that they should prioritize DE when choosing distro. like, imagine a new users asks what distro they should start with, I believe op is advocating we say “anything that uses KDE by default” (or gnome or xfce etc). plenty of distros have derivatives that are basically the same but use a different DE, so it’s pointless to suggest one over the other when a new user is just going to use the DE to do everything graphically anyway.
That’d be nice and all, but they still have to pick a distro. You can’t just install KDE without a distro. A good KDE implementation just becomes one of their considerations. If you don’t suggest one over another they’ll probably just stick with Windows due to analysis paralysis.
On Ubuntu it’s just sudo apt install kde-plasma-desktop. I guess that means you think it’s even easier there and everyone understands all the implications of that and nothing could possibly go wrong?
There are no implications to installing anything in NixOS because you can go back to a previous state at any point.
Running the software might change your settings, but can’t really do anything about that since that’s the software author’s choice and it’s in your home folder
Look, I understand how NixOS works. It has nothing to do with anything I’ve been trying to say though. I’m trying to have a conversation, and you keep derailing it with you NixOS sales pitch. What do you even want from me? Fine. NixOS is the most bestest at everything ever and everyone should immediately jump right into it with no help or context straight out of Windows. Are you happy now?
The only things I can’t play on linux are games with heavy kernel-injected anti-cheats and racing games (AC and BNG). Everything else “just works”. Hell, I even managed to get Overcooked’s cross-platform version to work.
If by AC you mean Assetto Corsa, it works, you just have to follow a guide (it’s easy, you have to remove the Proton data for the game from Steam, then install the older Proton version, run the game with this older version until it crashes, then switch to new version of Proton and run it again. It will install required dependencies and will run fine, even my old G25 steering wheel worked without problems)
Honestly anything that doesn’t get ported to wayland is probably old enough that it doesn’t really make sense to use as your primary desktop anyway. The most niche DE I regularly use is NsCDE, but it’s entirely FVWM scripts and FVWM is planning on adding wayland support. It’ll be a little sad to lose things like Trinity, WindowMaker, and Afterstep, but they were never amazing anyway and either way I doubt X will actually be unusable for a long time still.
I miss bspwm, none of the Wayland compositors work quite the same. Hyprland is close, but it’s just not quite as good. I moved to Wayland for the security benefits, but I miss X11/bspwm.
The worst part is there’s no standardization around screenshots/screen sharing/etc. so every DE/WM in Wayland has to be supported separately, or implement wlroots; which restricts how the software can be written.
Legit question. Outside of FOSS and a few more frames per second on some steam games, why would anyone go through the trouble of installing and configuring a Linux box? Last time I tried I couldn’t get my Bluetooth headphones to work and I had to buy a new webcam because I didn’t know how to compile drivers.
I sorta just accept I’m running a bit slower and everything works on my TinyPC win10 box.
Nvidia drivers can be a hassle on Linux but on windows you need to use the Nvidia driver installer (as far as I know) with a gui and ads, so also a bad experience.
If you get used to the terminal, to connect your bluetooth headphones you turn on your bluetooth and type bluetoothctlscan on it’ll scan and return devices by mac address, find yours, type pair [the mac address]connect [mac address]exitexit done.
It wasn’t recent. I think it has to be at least 5 years ago.
The noname webcam I had was awesome. Had a bright LED when you’re on a call. This was before covid, so before all the webcam innovations. I could get the camera to engage but couldn’t get the LED to turn on.
why would anyone go through the trouble of installing and configuring a Linux box?
It doesn’t cost any money and it doesn’t spy on you. It tends to be “lighter” than Windows, so it generally runs better on older hardware. It is easier to tweak and customize.
I just switch my gaming rig to linux 3 or 4 months ago. First time daily driving linux. I haven’t touched a driver or anything system config related. I don’t think there is a single peice of hardware not working on my box. Im on pop_os! With an amd gpu. Can play any game thanks to steam proton or lutris. Playing wow and cyberpunk right now.
That’s awesome. Thanks for sharing. I honestly haven’t thought about drivers either. Sounds like outside of No ads and bloatware, which is completely removed with the Tiny11 build, I don’t see an advantage. At least not worth the trouble learning it.
FOSS is a really big reason to run Linux. In ten years you can trust that your Linux install will be running and up to date. In ten years there’s a non-zero chance Microsoft will have moved to a forced subscription model for Windows.
It also just runs faster, can fully update itself and all installed software with a few button clicks or one terminal command, and has tons of options for people who have more technical skill.
In my experience it usually doesn’t just work at first but after you get used to it and it’s fine. More importantly, if you have a problem you can find it and fix. If you’re not happy with how it looks, change it and if you don’t want companies spying on you, don’t install their software.
Also as someone that sometimes has to use windows I absolutely hate being forced to do updates, like come on I just wanted to turn it off and leave and then I have to wait 5 minutes for it to go through the update and boot again just to turn it back off because it can’t remember that I pressed the off and not reboot button.
AFAIK games generally still run worse on Linux, there are cases that seem to beat Windows performance, but I’m not kidding myself about that - it’s just not big enough of a difference to worry.
Aside from other reasons people are saying, I love my package manager. Having a centralized system where my stuff comes from and is installed, not having to deal with searching for websites, finding installers, and dealing with the bullshit they sometimes throw your way. And guess what, if something’s not available in the repositories, perhaps because it offers no installers in the first place, I can usually easily make my own build script and install it in the system anyways.
And then when it comes to updating my stuff, I also don’t have to deal with every program having its own updating/auto updating system, I just run a few commands and update everything I have installed.
And then when it comes to updating my stuff, I also don’t have to deal with every program having its own updating/auto updating system, I just run a few commands and update everything I have installed.
This is the best part for me… well, one of the best parts 😁.
When was that last time? In the last 5 years, except for brand new graphics cards, I’ve never had any hardware that didn’t simply work out of the box.
And for the first question, it works much better and breaks less often (these memes exaggerate for comedic effect, usually it’s rock solid), has much greater privacy, and it’s free.
Being real, why DON'T distros just have the ability to do the installation if you double-click whatever file is downloaded?
I feel like we should have either option - download and double-click or just use the command line.
I mean, what else would double-clicking a .tar.gz file or an appimage do than install it (yes, I know, look into the archive, but really - how often is that the desired thing to do)? So, therefore, why don't we just have it install the files that are downloaded?
This is a legit question btw, I really don't know the answer
How would the distro tell if the tar.gz is a program or just a bunch of compressed files? I tend to use tar files for compression rather than for distributing or installing software
Yes, but the header of the file says it’s a binary, that is why it gives you the option to run as a program or open as a file. Because the OS knows that you can do either with binaries.
Some file managers might add the +x automatically if you choose to run the binary through the desktop environment (not the terminal)… or ask you if you’d like to mark the file as an executable (i.e. add +x to permissions).
You can’t do it the same way with tar, what are you gonna execute, tar is neither a script or an ELF binary. It’s like asking for a zip file to be executable, doesn’t make sense. You can change the extension to .exe, but it won’t run, it’s not an exe, no MZ header, nothing 🤷.
I mean, what else would double-clicking a .tar.gz file or an appimage do than install it (yes, I know, look into the archive, but really - how often is that the desired thing to do)?
Personally, I open tarballs quite often. Why? Just wanna know what’s inside them.
Double click translating to install on tar.gz is not wise since anything can be packed in a tarball, a gzip archive or a gzipped tarball.
And then you have a similar problem with tar.xz (it’s becoming more and more popular from what I can see). It doesn’t use gzip to compress the archive, it uses LZMA, so you have to use xz instead of gzip to decompress the tarball.
Basically, it boils down to how UNIX used to work. Mind you, back in the day there were no package managers, it was all done with .tar.zip or make install. This really was hell to be honest… keeping track of what app installed what libraries and versions of it… yes it really was a PITA. This is the real reason why package managers were invented (thank god!) and why having only one package manager on a system is the preferred way to handle apps/software. Otherwise, you’ll soon be in dependency hell. Shared libraries are at the core of any UNIX based OS. Yes, Flatpaks/Snaps/AppImages and package managers like nix circumvent this problem, but in no way is the problem gone. It’s still there, we just don’t mess around with it.
So, basically the idea of having an “installer” came quite late into the game. Plus, having to check on all dependencies and making an install script that worked on every single distro out there was just so complicated, that no one would ever want to go through with it. Sure, there are install.sh scripts in some pacakges out there, but they basically check nothig, it’s more or less “copy this here, that there” which of course could be done by hand anyway… and then run the app and pray it has all of the dependencies it needs 😬… which it never does 😂.
A .tar.gz is a regular archive, the file manager shouldn’t assume it’s a program. Also, how do you expect it to work? There’s no general rule for archives. As for appimages, one of their selling points is that you can run them portably, so it shouldn’t install by default, but run. However, a right click install option would be nice.
Cause .tar.gz is not an executable binary in itself. It is more like a zip of the binary and its support files. Since it would be really difficult to distribute and maintain native binaries for every type of distro, application publishers used to just distribute for distros that has a larger userbase, like a .deb for Debian/Ubuntu and a .rpm for Fedora/RHEL/Suse, and then they would provide a tarball for any other distro. Flatpak and Snap have been introduced to eliminate this overhead from application developers, but they still offer tarballs as the newer solutions are still far from standardization.
I 100% get that (and I know it's an archive), but I'm just saying why doesn't double-clicking a .tar.gz just run "tar xf file.tar.gz | sh" on that file? Or check if there's an executable in the extracted files and then run it if there is, and if it's just an archive of files then open the extracted folder?
What if I don’t want to install it, even if there is a binary in there? What if I just wanna open the archive and see it’s content?
The OS does the smart thing. The header says it’s an archive, so we treat it as just that, an archive. Commercial OSes like Windows and MacOS are the oddballs out, not Linux. It just interprets the cold hard truth - this is an archive, I have no idea what’s in it, you tell me what to do with it, end of story.
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