Ubuntu 26.04(lwn.net) |
Ubuntu 26.04(lwn.net) |
* Select - Middle-click paste does not seem to work
* When something requires a password (ie just tried a bitlocker volume) the whole screen is blocked, so no password manager for you (unless you copy it before, or cancel - unplug drive-copy password - replug drive - paste.)
* The default tiling does not jive with me, sometimes I don't even know what it wants (it always tries to force you to also set a left windows if you tile right and vice versa) so I disabled it `gnome-extensions disable tiling-assistant@ubuntu.com`. Default Gnome tiling is ok (but missing quarter tiling (and 1/8th would be nice on my ultra-wide) imho so I use [0]
* I've been trying to use Nix home-manager for packages but I have GPU errors, need workarounds, icons that just remain generic. But I guess that is not Ubuntu's fault.
Ubuntu remains my nr. 2 choice, after NixOS (but I didn't get the latter to install on this Nuc, perhaps a bios update will help).
The installer offered (under experimental) to run root on zfs, I didn't end up selecting it because only on the forth try (and by that time you're clicking at a fast rate just taking defaults) I understood that it would only download packages via wifi, not the cable (same for NixOS installer, so must be my network).
I've spent the last 10 years off and on from Linux. Had I used something other than GNOME, I believe my experience would have been better.
I've been on KDE for the last 3-4 years and things work so well I could never imagine going back to GNOME.
As for the negative Gnome feedback (not from you but others) I do like Gnome, it's just enough window manager for me, I like the defaults and I like the touchpad gestures etc. Generally looks and works well for all I do. I always feel swamped by KDE.
I miss KDE 3.5 it felt drastically more stable than KDE today.
I've tried other DE's but they get weird if your Distro is not built for them.
Nowadays it is quite easy https://github.com/AntonFriberg/dotfiles/blob/master/modules...
Note that the way this works is that after you activate your home manager generation it outputs a script path that you need to run manually as root which installs a Systemd service which ensures that the drivers are linked correctly.
Good. It shouldn't be on by default. It's surprising behavior, too easy to fat-finger, and too disruptive when it accidentally triggers.
They did it on purpose for some reason. If I were you I'd give Plasma a try.
I've been using the Kubuntu 26.04 prereleases for a few weeks. No surprises from KDE, but Wayland has broken a few things. Autotype in Keepass does not work, keynav and even the Wayland keynav forks don't work, and Wayland does not support priority keyboard layouts for switching between two specific layouts.
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/an-update-on-rust-coreutils/8...
Goes to show that not all security bugs are memory related bugs
I'd rather use something written in a crappier language that has been battle-tested for decades, personally.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-35338 - `chmod --preserve-root` can be bypassed. That doesn't seem that bad tbh.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-35341 - `mkfifo` accidentally resets the permissions of files that already exist, so if you manage to do `sudo mkfifo /etc/shadow` then it becomes world readable.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-35352 - TOCTOU in `mkfifo` lets you do the symlink trick to get it to change permissions on an unrelated file.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-35368 - You might be able to get chroot to execute arbitrary code.
Tbh I doubt if any of these would ever result in a real hack, unless your system is doing really mental things like running shell scripts with untrusted input.
I could only find a couple of CVEs that looked actually serious for GNU Coreutils too though. IMO if you're using these tools with untrusted input your system is janky enough that there are going to be serious flaws in it anyway. Probably though quoting mistakes.
I am pragmatic about it though so I still run Ubuntu for some things but it's no longer my first recommendation.
The rot set in when #ubuntu on Freenode (now Libera) became rigidly enforced as on-topic discussions of Ubuntu support only.
The channel is absolutely dead now. Maybe one person will say something in any given 12-hour period and no-one replies, just page after page of joins and parts.
I just got a new laptop this month and saw that Ubuntu MATE was probably going to be unsupported, so I switched to Manjaro Sway.
https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/meeting_matrix_fedoraproje...
I am starting to suspect this even might be intentional.
And yes, using a user-base as Beta testers is fairly cheeky. =3
For now, that is. I am afraid that they will stop providing coreutils and sudo for some of the future releases (like they did with upstart) because obviously they know better what's good for the users.
not sure if this confirms the impression you have there... I wasn't like this until a couple of headless VPS'es (on Arm8) got through the upgrade from 18.x -> 20.x -> 22.x and then crashed out over -> 24.x for a still unknown reason. now I'm just afraid .. or I should say reluctant ..to repeat that whole fiasco.
Maybe they fixed it since the rc release, but there were some rough edges in Feb... the kernel USB support cooked the thumb drive partition structure.
In 22.04 to 24.04 the kernel Nvidia GPU driver EOL abandonment began... In 26.04 people will discover most EOL hardware support prior to RTX series will be difficult to bring up.
Probably wise to wait a few weeks for the bug reports to clear out a bit. =3
How well does 26.04 with the 7.0 kernel support these? Can it, say, use their GPU and NPU for compute out of the box?
The release notes don't seem to mention zfs. I hope these issues have been fixed?
The installer would stop an upgrade if it found a mounted volume - it apparently checks for zfs volumes as follows: sudo zpool list -H
I could get around the installer's ZFS check by unmounting the drive: sudo zpool export poolname
I upgraded.
Then remounted the volume: sudo zpool import poolname
Then I was up and running...
This is going to be very useful for servers hosted in third party DCs.
Personally I'm more worried about someone stealing the entire server or a local threat actor.
Sure, keep TPM to help with boot integrity, maybe even a factor for unlock, but things like Clevis+Tang (or Bitlock Network Unlock for our windows brethren) is essential in my opinion.
The TPM locked disk encryption is more like embedding your safe in concrete with deep foundations. It doesn't affect the thickness or quality of your safe.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your situation, I think you should look up the "Evil Maid Attack" to better understand how to mitigate risk for your threat model.
The installer let me connect to my WiFi, but then spun indefinitely trying to get an ipv4 address.
If I skip connecting to WiFi, and just let the installer do its thing, I get no network on the fresh install either (all the tutorials say to use nmcli, which I don't have).
The latest version of PrivateInternetAccess doesn't seem to run (the window never opens).
I also could not get my wifi connection to use my local DNS server.
Something gnome could do well to learn
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/02/ubuntu-core-desktop-dela...
Snaps are hard coded to only be able to get snaps from the official Canonical-licensed store URL. Especially on Ubuntu Core, where everything can only be a snap. Even the commercial licensed version for embedding in products requires private companies to use a private space on the Canonical Snap store to distribute thier custom/proprietary software. Absolutely no one is willing to let Canonical become the Apple Store of thier devices, especially given thier even shittier track record.
Why must everyone feel the need to change things for change's sake?
...interested to know since I couldn't ever get v25 to work — never tried using OCLP, but v24 is absolutely stable (for some reason not directly; had to USB install v22 then internet update to v24 (i.e. v24 USB wouldn't finish install).
Linux Mint is widely praised for being basically Ubuntu without the worst Canonicalisms (such as Snap). They maintain a Debian edition in parallel to their main one, as an exit strategy in case Ubuntu ever becomes unsuitable for their base. Some people already use that as their daily driver.
Just in case you're not aware, the default desktop environment on whatever distro you pick doesn't have to be what you use. I switched to KDE Plasma when Gtk-based desktops became intolerable, and haven't looked back.
Do the Mint team treat fixing the other half of the problem, the GNOMEisms, as out-of-scope?
Asking because I maintain my own pile of gsettings and .gtkrc tweaks as mitigations yet pain points remain, apparently unfixable outside the source code.
MX Linux also looks interesting. Like Ubuntu, it's a Debian derivative. It offers a supported path for avoiding systemd and has an official KDE Plasma edition, both of which appeal to me. I haven't had a chance to try it yet.
If you feel the need for newer packages, try other alternatives (or Debian unstable). I’ve set down on Fedora with XFCE, it’s really stable yet packages feel new.
Dunno about the this release, but till 24.4 it was simply a matter of removing some packages then holding/masking the primary snapd one, followed by manually adding the official PPAs for Mozilla’s stuff (or just use the Flatpak).
Of course, there’s still the philosophical and long term issues with staying on a distro that’s promoting and continuosuly expanding the thing you dislike…
My choice for now is Debian, didn't finish transition yet, very annoying to plan this in my schedule. I'll churn from Ubuntu after more than 15 years of daily driving... I also don't like ubuntu user with uid:gid 1000 in their Docker images. It's a cancer.
I initially tried to just use snaps but firefox was crashing quite often so I had to go with adding the mozilla's repository and of course configure the fake "firefox" package that actually installs the snap to be low priority for apt.
If you want something desktop oriented and Ubuntu based without the focus on snaps, take a look at Linux Mint: https://www.linuxmint.com/ (there's Cinnamon, Xfce and MATE versions; personally I think Cinnamon is pretty good nowadays)
You get all the driver support and tools from the Ubuntu base, with some nice additons. However, not all desktop environment are supported.
Make a list of all ppa before proceeding.
What is your use case?
I was using Ubuntu and installed the apt version of Firefox as the snap version would not open html files in locations like /var/tmp and would not work with USB devices. Every time I ran `do-release-upgrade`, all of that work would need to be redone. It was very annoying.
Use Fedora if you dislike snap. Canonical has made their stance clear and are hostile to users for a long time now on this matter.
2. Install the kernel from Backports.
I don't think of such a simple process as "fiddling", but to each his own I guess.
Even though I very much intenseley dislike the completely unintuitive idiosyncratic package management that Arch has. Which is further not helped by the fact that Cachy's default GUI for it isn't even integrated properly.
But my recent upgrade to Pop version 24.04 has been a bit of a step back in terms of desktop experience.
I suspect it's growing pains from (switching to Wayland) + (non-System76 hardware) + (laptop with nVidia dGPU + external monitor).
So with different hardware, and/or some more time to mature, this Pop release will probably be a very solid choice.
Because of business needs, if you're stuck with using Ubuntu (at least in some situations), an `apt(-get) purge snapd` helps. It's in all of our auto/post-install stuff.
"Don't use Snap", you say? I'll do you one better! Skip Ubuntu. 'Just' use anything else more suitable. Debian is an excellent replacement being upstream, but I hold no illusions over undeclared requirements.
It is an urban myth
At one time Ubuntu as the easiest distro to get certain hardware running with because of the inclusion of proprietary drivers & codecs (unlike its Debian parent, amongst others, at least at the time) and making them easy, near-automatic, to configure compared to others that did include them. The distinction is long gone, and Ubuntu is simply one of several (many) good ones in that regard, but the perception that others have not long since caught up persists.
Snap is preinstalled on all official Ubuntu graphical editions.
However, Xubuntu's _Minimal_ install does not include any snap packages at all, not even a browser. This means it's trivial to remove snapd:
sudo apt purge snapd
Then you can install the `extrepo` command, and use it to install Firefox ESR direct from Mozilla's repos, or Chrome from Google's repos.
Once it's online you can copy and paste a couple of commands to "pin" snapd and prevent it from being reinstalled. Then you can switch to current Firefox or anything else without snapd sneaking back in.
Xubuntu Minimal is also available as a separate ISO file, which is not true of any of the other flavours.
20 years ago your Linux installation might not include wifi drivers, bluetooth support, decent GPU drivers, fat32/ntfs drivers, or the widely used video/audio codecs of the era. And you had to be careful when shopping for things like wifi cards, as only certain chipsets could be made to work.
Much of which was kinda fair enough, because if you're a volunteer making an open source OS because of a strong belief on the open source ideal, you don't want to distribute closed-source driver blobs or patent-encumbered codecs. But it meant mean the initial installation process was not always easy. One of the things that contributed to the success of Ubuntu was a particularly easy initial setup process.
Today, things are a lot better - you'll still get unsupported hardware from time to time, but it'll be much less severe. If your laptop has a non-USB integrated camera you might have to download and install a kernel module. Your corporate laptop's built in fingerprint scanner might not work, but who cares?
When I was shopping Lenovo.com for my ThinkPad in 2018, there was a table with ThinkPads certified for Ubuntu Linux in one column, and certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in another column.
I chose the T580 as a RHEL-certified notebook, and it was fantastic. Lenovo.com let me configure each individual component exactly according to my needs and tastes, and it was custom-assembled and shipped from Shenzhen.
It did arrive with Windows 10 pre-installed (this was the least hassle and most popular OS option). I initially installed CentOS, but quickly realized that Fedora would be the sweet spot, and so it was a Fedora system for most of its lifetime. Near the end, I did revert to Windows 10, which also worked flawlessly.
The ThinkPad T580 literally never malfunctioned. It was still 100% working when I turned it in for recycling in 2025.
I've also run Ubuntu on my "daily driver" desktop system, which ran from 2006-2022. Yes, that's 16 years' worth of Ubuntu installs and upgrades. It was mostly a KDE Plasma (Kubuntu) system. I enjoyed every bit of that.
In 1999, I was avidly using OpenBSD on really old hardware (such as HP Apollo 425t workstations.) OpenBSD simply couldn't deal with the special graphics subsystem on those machines. I tried and tried to get something working, but there were obstacles, not only with the hardware and drivers, but also the monitor connection needed a particular type of cabling and a proprietary monitor, too.
However, OpenBSD did great for networking, security, Squid cache, proxies, all kinds of things. And even in 1999, though it was early, I ran Linux on a 386DX-40, because Linux supported the "ftape" floppy tape driver at that time, and I had some kind of QIC tape backup from Eagle that wouldn't be recognized by OpenBSD or NetBSD.
Meanwhile, in that same year, my "daily driver" desktop machine was a 486 with VLB, dual-booting Windows 98 and OpenBSD. The Windows 98 was set up with a Cygwin system and X11 server, so that I could run X11 clients on the OpenBSD machines, or the Linux machine, or whatever else was on the LAN.
Distro like Ubuntu are a fair compromise to get amd/nvidia GPU drivers, wifi, and brother laser printer/scanner networking installed. =3
edit: seriously, why down vote the guys karma if its a honest question. Try to be kind people.
I am sure a lot of this is fixable and will jsut take time to get used to, but honestly, at this point, I think I prefer ubuntu/linux to both Mac & Windows at this point.
I do love the hardware on the Mac and would probably try Asahi out if it wasn't a work machine.
Also worth pointing out that macOS is still better than Windows 11 at this point - MS should be ashamed at what they did to that OS.
1. Keyboard shortcuts are Emacs, Ctrl-A: start of line, E: end of line, K: kill selected or to end of line, Y to paste, etc. https://support.apple.com/en-au/102650#text
2. Karabiner elements (FOSS) fixes keyboard mappings outside of the Settings: https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/
3. I have the dock on the left hand side, not bottom and I have a 2 monitor (iMac 5K 27"+ Dell 4K 27") setup with the iMac flat in front of me and the curve/2nd to the right. Menu bar is then close to the main windows.
4. Menu bar widgets etc are fixable with thaw https://github.com/stonerl/Thaw
5. Window management via keyboard is fixable with rectangle https://rectangleapp.com/
6. Use Macports to add all the Linux/Unix utilities, works with MacOS properly (eg Python/Java frameworks). Ports can have variants, plus you can have multiple versions installed side-by-side with `port select`. https://www.macports.org/
Not sure about fonts, on a 5K iMac they're fine and the 4K Dell works too. You need to use a resolution that fits with Mac's ideas of resolution, so I've got the 5K and 4K both at 2560x1440, which is Mac's idea of 2x resolution.
I do like the energy consumption of MacOS and that sleep just works so well. Also the laptops feel really nice. I got a few things to make life easier (sketchybar, rectangle.app, see other posts here) but overall these days Linux is just a more polished experience. Never thought I'd say that. At least it's the least glitchy experience nowadays.
Disable font smoothing and restart/relogin.
defaults -currentHost write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 0It is - sucks that you have to though. For keyboard shortcuts use Karabiner Elements.
https://youtu.be/RuxNnfllxco?t=3894 - Neal Gompa on the Fedora 44 Release party stream,
If you want more detail, you should ask someone who still uses Gtk-based desktops, or try them yourself. I gave up on Gtk a couple years ago.
It was painful, with an endless laundry list of things to troubleshoot, tinker with, and add to my digital notebook in attempt to get anything resembling a personally ergonomic workflow.
I implore anyone to just go with Mint or anything else that takes care of ripping out snaps for you if you don't want snaps (but otherwise still like or are used to most things about Ubuntu). There were too many downstream and other issues, related and unrelated, for my sanity.
It doesn't. X was the only place I know of where that was a thing.
But hey! At least they are only flipping defaults, not removing the feature outright, like they did type-ahead search. [Insert angry rant here]
Because of scrolling on Thinkpad keyboards (using the middle click), I had to turn that feature of every time, especially while working on longer documents I would otherwise accidentally paste stuff at random places.
(It's not just macOS.)
Or in anything that's not X?
Speaking personally for me only, I don't think it's a great thing. The <however many> clipboards on Linux is... not really a great thing. I for one never know which of the buffers contain what. And this is compounded by the fact that selection may or may not overwrite what's in one of the buffers, and middle click may or may not paste whatever was in that buffer. Additionally compounded by how inconsistent the behavior is across apps.
As someone that habitually highlights what they are reading it was generally beyond useless for me. It was actively making me mad when I accidenatally pasted some non-sense because I just highlighted a paragraph before and accidentally inserted it into something.
About your first point, however, keep in mind that "middle click insert" has been the default behavior in X since the 1980s, long before Windows or current generation MacOS's were around. To me, this is such a basic functionality, I would compare it something as fundamental as CTRL-X/C/V for cut/copy/paste on Windows.
One option for the menus maybe is keyboard searching. Command-shift-/ aka Command-?then type the name and arrow navigate. (Key sequence might be wrong, it’s muscle memory at this point)
I wonder if Thaw could be modded to repeat the menu bar?
Dock can be hidden/revealed with a key sequence but I like the auto-hide with long delay to pop up idea, suggested elsewhere.
That doesn't work with a single monitor though.
To be quite fair, this is pretty much the only reason Ubuntu exists. It started off as "Debian for people who just want stuff to work", but these days Debian even ships non-free wifi drivers on the install media. I've personally used both extensively and apart from the "enterprise support" argument and the minor convenience of having ZFS pre-compiled, I see no reason to use Ubuntu.
The other things mentioned in that Wikipedia page are not open source.
(as far as I can tell)
Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Linux Lite, Pop OS, and several less famous distros are all based on Ubuntu. New versions of all of them will follow this new LTS release in time.
Mint forked GNOME 3 to make something more Windows-like.
Zorin customised upstream GNOME with a lot of extensions.
Pop removed it and replaced it with their own homegrown desktop, written in Rust. It's actually pretty good and works well.
I don't think this is a universal rule. Something can be old but still suck (see: openssl). On the flip side, though, I'd like to see literally any evidence that coreutils has a security problem before we go jumping off onto the shiny new replacement.
If you always keep praying to the same old bit of code to "reliably" chug along (which people clearly cannot actually ascertain, otherwise these reimplementations wouldn't be struggling), you're forever just rolling the dice that some Pandora's box will simply never open (which it absolutely does and keeps opening), while also giving up on modern capabilities. What you see as old reliable, I see as a buried lede. I'd imagine these folks see the same. [0]
It's frustrating to see the software world contend with the same pushback and counter-arguments the infra/ops world (my neck of the woods) has already figured out and went past long ago during the advent of IaC. Cattle > pets, easily, every time.
[0] It's also not a cost-benefit thing, but clearly a principled decision, so arguments that aim to contend the ROI of it all are off-base from the get-go. If ROI is the key thing for you, then all this philosophical nonsense shouldn't even be on the table. Calculate.
Rust is an absolute improvement over C/C++ in major ways. Once there, for ALL THAT DECADES all the developers and all the code written will be spared the problems of "crappier languages.
In the short term there are adaptation issues? fine. But that will be erased (way faster than is possible with C) and suddenly, never again worry about things.
I do agree that the second system effect is real, it’s just that the balance of benefits and drawbacks significantly shifted when it comes to “rewrite in Rust” (not limited to Rust though).
Isn't it a bit early to make predictions on the future of computer security and how we create good software based on something that's been out for 2 weeks?
Meanwhile the C version of coreutils has been in development for 36 years. There's no rush.
A packaging system should not break the basic abstractions of an OS.
I, for one, use the different clipboards concurrently all the time, with "highlight & middle-click" probably being the one I use most often. It's the most convenient for me most of the time:
- only two interactions (one drag & one click)
- completely mouse-based (no keyboard interaction necessary)
- hence only requires one hand (look, ma!)
Bo! Let's fight! And both get banned from HN :)
You cannot compare it to Android.
I was merely saying that you a couple commands you can uninstall snap and disable it from appearing ever again.
but linux is not as secure as an iphone, and linux users typically dont know how to set this up, so in practice you are right, it doesnt protect you
For me, a zero friction way to have decent security is worlds better than the normal state where homeservers are not encrypted at all.
Your threat model is the same as my use of a laptop: regular LUKS with a password is enough on its own. Add TPM if you want to know that you're entering your password in a secure boot environment (ie. protect against a fake LUKS screen that steals your password).
The attacker would just need to spoof the request to gain the key.
I still mostly use Xorg though, I only have wayland on a tablet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Plasma
https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/
Is this, like, a “GNU/Linux controversy” thing?
It's really only calling it "KDE" in isolation that is a bit off. On the GNOME side, such a reference makes sense because the desktop environment is named GNOME and it's run by the GNOME Project/GNOME Foundation. I.e. a bit reversed which word in the order refers to the org's vs DE's name.
Most of the time people will probably figure it out at the end of the day via context either way though.
Quote from the CVE description: "The dd utility in uutils coreutils suppresses errors during file truncation [...] This can lead to silent data corruption in backup or migration scripts, as the utility may report a successful operation even when the destination file contains old or garbage data."
That's terrifying. There's more to bugs than security bugs. You'd expect coreutils to be as bug-free as possible.
If you allow a completely untrusted user onto your system I think your chances of staying secure are low.
From where I sit I have 5 Thinkpads set up within reach, and I have a few more in other rooms. They are by far my preferred laptop.
Most run Ubuntu as their default OS, most have the trackpad disabled because I usually use the trackpoint for everything, and on all of them I use middle-click to paste extensively.
The accidental pasting definitely kept happening to me, likely due to my bad habit of highlighting sections while to focus on them.
I only use the touchpad, but knowing where it is I can avoid it and almost never trigger it accidentally. It can also be disabled without affecting two-finger and three-finger tap, which I do use.
(This applies to all laptops, not just Thinkpads)
Er, no. As I said:
Usually I leave the trackpad disabled. I don't like gestures and multi-finger taps much so I prefer to just turn it off.
(I use Super+side mouse buttons to move between workspaces, I hate the keyboard-centric workflow when one hand is always on the mouse)
With 24.04 at least, doing an 'apt purge snapd' seems to be quite useful. Is that not sufficient?
For the moment, later pulling a package that is redirected would undo that effort. As the peer points out, too, that would likely rip out stuff you're using without having already configured preference.
One could maintain a boundless list of configs pinning repository preferences... or they could use a distribution that doesn't have a predisposition towards Snap.
For servers, this may not be a problem for us. Currently on 24.04, so will have to see how things are ≥25.10.
Yes, the control to be able to tweak the system to my liking is one of the attractions or Linux, but not when I have to in order to avoid behaviours that I don't want being reasserted.
[not that I expect nor particularly want Ubuntu to change, I just accept that I'm not part of its target audience and I'll be better served elsewhere - choice is a great thing!]
----
[0] heading back there now as Windows11 is not happening on my home machines¹, I feel that I shouldn't have let Windows10 happen, looking back.
[1] aside from the laptop that came with it that I'll keep there for Office and DayJob compatibility for a while.
[2] Currently running Debian³ on the other laptop, main desktop will likely go that way if it isn't decommissioned completely, and I use a dock with the laptops instead.
[3] As that is what I use server-side more often than not.
I haven't tried it in a few LTS releases and I'm away from a computer. Still, I'd bet this release continues the pattern. Fat chance Canonical decided to go back to more build targets/backporting/testing.
Do you mean you just don't follow instructions?
I see the latest—580, 590, 595—available (scroll to bottom):
* https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=nvidia-dkms
Am I missing something?
They have been working on a custom Desktop Environment which sadly still isn't very stable yet. Promising development, but putting me off of using Pop for a while.
Ubuntu 24.04 currently comes with 590, which is the most recent working driver.
Anyway, the main issue with Debian, Ubuntu, and Nvidia is about licensing. GNU/Linux is free software, and Nvidia drivers are not. Loading a non-free driver is known as “Tainting the Kernel”.
https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
The information on their wiki may be a year out of date. But the principles still apply.
1. Rust is a much more pleasant language to work with.
2. You can improve the tools, adding new features, fixing UX paper cuts etc.
You're probably thinking "you can improve the GNU versions!" and in theory sure. But in practice these sorts of tools are controlled by naysayers who want everything to stay as it was in the 80s. The sorts of people that only accept patches via git send-email to a mailing list.
Hahaha I just looked up GNU Coreutils and not only do they blame poor UX on the user ("Often these perceived bugs are simply due to wrong program usage.") but they even maintain a list of rejected feature requests:
https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/rejected_requests.htm...
And to nobody's surprise, to contribute it is git send-email to a mailing list.
Regarding poor UX, it is difficult to dispute with that claim without a specific example. Note that a lot of the features we support are standardized by POSIX. Even if we dislike the behavior, it is better to comply with the standards so the programs don't behave differently than users expect. The sentence you quote isn't meant to put down users. These programs are often much more complex than meets the eye, and there are lots of common gotchas that people have run into (and will continue to do so) [1].
Of course we would love for these programs to be useful for everyone. However, feature requests are often incompatible with existing behavior, incompatible with other feature requests, or have existing functionality elsewhere. For those reasons we cannot accept every feature request.
1) more CVEs between two latest Ubuntu releases than coreutils has had over the last 30+ year
2) managed to break security updates
3) is neither fully compatible with POSIX nor coreutils
I'm not sure why I'd ever use it? Sadly, projects like uutils have made me suspicious of rust projects, so unless I know that the project is well maintained (for which there are numerous examples, ripgrep being the obvious example, but newsboat, the various tools from proxmox, servo/firefox, and the pgrx ecosystem are ones I use regularly), it's a negative marker against that project.
* https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=frr
in addition to a Snap:
* https://snapcraft.io/install/frr/ubuntu
Doing a quick test on 24.04: on a system without snapd installed, `apt install frr` installs packages and not any Snap stuff. Will have to see about 26.04 when I get a moment.
How about the inverse, purging? At one point, removing Snap would lose BGP announcements [through the loss of the 'frr' software/service it was managing].
Anyway, I'm willing to believe most of my install/dependency-resolution pain was inspired by [and limited to] 18.04 or whatever was immediately after. We had a fleet of systems inadvertently moved to Snap, only learned through a loss of announcements on removal.
edit: Tested on a 24.04 box I had laying around; removing Snap does indeed still rip out things one might want:
$ sudo apt purge snapd
[...]
Stopping snap.frr.ripngd.service
Stopping unit snap.frr.ripngd.service
[...]
Stopping snap.frr.zebra.service
I have put my parents on Ubuntu (gnome) in 2013 to replace windows XP. My mother is 88 now. I think it is the perfect fit for her (dad is dead years ago).
I use ubuntu gnome because tweaking my computer is not where I want to spend my time. YOLO. Using a "mainstream" desktop that can be explained to "non specialist" has its benefits. I accept to suffer some annoyances and there is always a way to fix the most annoying ones by sacrificing time.
It was true but times change.
Microsoft chose to kill off Windows 10, which it once promised would be the last desktop Windows ever. Its replacement is bigger, slower, stuffed with adverts and upselling attempts, and has an artificial demand for TPM 2.
That's driven thousands of people to check out Linux, and if you don't know anything about Linux, then Ubuntu is the number one best-known distro. Many techies dislike Snap (to the extent of spreading lies like "it's not FOSS"), but it makes version upgrades safer, which matters more to non-techies.
(I say thousands so the pedants don't shout at me, but I suspect the reality is at least hundreds of thousands, maybe millions.)
Linux Mint is friendlier, yes, and so is Zorin OS, but both are based on Ubuntu.
Valve has sold millions of Steam Decks, which demonstrate that it's now possible to run premier new Windows games on Linux with performance at least as good as on Windows. All Linux users know their hardware runs faster and cooler with Linux than Windows anyway.
Chromebooks (which are as cheap as laptops get) outsold Macs (which are expensive) by revenue in 2017 in the USA and within 3 years in the rest of the world. ChromeOS is a desktop Linux, based on Gentoo. It has hundreds of millions of users who have never heard the word "Linux".
Companies with cloud-based IT are deploying ChromeOS Flex as a response to ransomware attach. (E.g. Nordic Choice hotels.)
Many of us see Ubuntu's characteristic desktop in shops, bars, travel stations and things regularly now. I hear its startup sound on trains. I have totally non-techie friends running Ubuntu at home. I've given Mint to lots of mildly technophobic friends and they get on just fine.
It's not over, but the year of Linux on the Desktop came about a decade ago, and the penguin taleban were too busy in-fighting to notice.
Both Gnome and KDE support that. Actually Gnome a tad better as it gives you less knobs to turn an waste your time. Accept the defaults and if defaults are bad move somewhere else.
This is the exact problem of GNOME; they routinely drop a lot of useful functionality, often irreversibly. So [for power users] GNOME absolutely gets in the way of the user.
Because maybe not all people have the same preferences as you?
Distro: "The most used DE needs first class support, we should probably bend to it" → Distro: "We should probably make this DE the default since it's so widely used and supported" → User: "I choose the default" → Distro: "The most used DE…"
So yes, people have different preferences; but if your preference is GNOME today, it might not be GNOME tomorrow, and "I picked the default" isn't quite the neutral signal it looks like.
Since GNOME is the default Ubuntu DE, they have a certain responsibily to listen to the users/devs and leave the system open (to an extent). But their direction is the opposite:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210901171117/https://twitter.c...
They've been doing massive reduction in functionalities, really insane like limiting copy/past of terminals just to the current screen (which hurts any sysadmin), generally without any way to enable them back.
I haven't heard of any other OSS organization trying so hard to limit freedom of their users/devs, and this is an explicit goal - they don't want to weaken their brand.
GNOME is nothing short of the Oracle of open source.
On the other hand, I'm not a fan of people disparaging free open source software that they've never contributed anything to, either money or code.
edit: grammar, also Cinnamon fixes these issues thankfully.
But seriously why would they disabled the middle mouse copy paste buffer by default? Anyways, gnome tweaks to the rescue I guess
I wish Ubuntu would just give up with GNOME and switch to something more sensible.
Not really. Most normies seem to choose meme gaming distros based off Fedora like CachyOS or Bazzite. Many are waiting for official SteamOS release which is based on Arch.
This has been a problem I’ve dealt with on nearly every single Snap I’ve installed. If you’re a file editor, you must let me edit my damn files!
I've run every single version of Ubuntu ever released. Work machines stay on LTSes, testbeds run interim versions.
After the 22.04 release, I carefully de-snapped my work laptop, using `deb-get` to install native packages of everything. Worked a treat, took less disk space, things started a tiny bit faster.
Then I enabled Ubuntu Pro and it force-reinstalled snapd. It's fair enough to have it as a dependency: it's a standard component. I was very annoyed, though.
But when I upgraded to 24.04, a lot of things broke. I had to spend ages re-enabling repositories, getting new keys, changing version strings in stuff under `/etc/apt/sources.list.d` and so on. It's a PITA.
So I have performed a volte face. I removed all my `deb-get` packages, and reinstalled the snap versions. All my comms and messaging apps, music and media players, and so on.
It's much easier. No extra repos. I experimentally took one laptop from 24.04 to 24.10 to 25.04 to 25.10 and yesterday to 26.04. All my apps stay in place. Nothing broke. No custom repos. No changes needed to any config file. It just works.
I've been using Linux for 30 years, starting on Slackware and moving to Red Hat and Caldera and SUSE via lots of others. But I'm old and grumpy and I want stuff to work without fiddling. I want low maintenance. Snap is low maintenance. My messaging apps can download stuff into my Downloads folder, open attachments from Documents, and so on.
I run native packages of my own browsers (Waterfox and Chrome) and AppImages of Panwriter and Logseq, and I have none of these difficulties.
Life is easier if you don't fight the OS and the vendor.
And Ubuntu is still easier and less hassle than Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, or any of the other big names.
Are you implying that GNOME is the only thing that should be considered graphical? That everything else has to be an alternative? That GNOME, by virtue of existing has infinite reprieve to change the definition of user interfaces at their leisure; even if it means breaking muscle memory hundreds of thousands of times over decades.
I don’t follow the point of what you said.