Haven't run a desktop distro since uni, but necessity calls. Just wondering if Ubuntu is still the go-to for a quick "plug and play" experience or if something has overtaken it. Don't care too much about DEs, as long as it's useable and things work across my three monitors.

I spend enough of my day configuring servers, so just looking for something I load up on a fresh SSD, boot into it and start installing my dev tools without spending half a day trying to get CUDA up and running.

Stability.What is it mean? What do we think then we say some distro is more stable than another? I use Arch Linux about 8 years for now. I never reinstall my Arch from day i began use it. And why i tell you all this story? I moved to Debian. It's more stable. Let me explain. Once day i sit toward my PC - it's a weekend,time to update. I update my system and it's bring me a brand new plasma 6.And all system broke down. Well i am Arch user with some experience,so half a day and all fixed. Had a nice time. Another update and Zoom start work with tearing.Fixed...another update,another,another...fix,fix,fix.Well then i realize - i need a work to do,and time to relax,but i have to spend my time for fix,tune or even just understand new cuttin edge software...

Stability it then you system same for long portion of time.Arch i great distro but it's terrible in production. I have Ubuntu as a second system on one of my computers about 10 years now,and it's simply works.I do upgrades to LTS versions and i don't have surprizes(at least i have a time to prepare).But Ubuntu is not my way :) So i moved to Debian. I don't say Arch is bad. But then we speak about stabilty - Arch not an option. This post just my thoughts and IMHO :).

Don't chase for something brand new,some time you just need a tool,for things to do.

The Problem

As you know, the keyboard shortcuts (e.g. copy, paste, but plenty others too) are not the same between the Mac and Linux. Mac uses Command-C (=Super-C) for copy, Linux follows the Windows convention (Ctrl-C).

I've recently started having to use Mac and work but of course still use Linux at home, and would like to have consistency of shortcuts. Searching around it seems this issue has come up plenty of times over the years, but as far as I tell there are no satisfactory solutions. I never thought I'd say this, but I think this is one thing Mac has got right - using Super for shortcuts avoids clashes with terminal control.

The lack of a solution to this is somewhat frustrating as Linux is supposed to be all about user preference and configurability.

A Possible Solution

The funny thing is that that it wouldn't be technically hard to solve this problem, the problem is a human one - it would need an agreed standard to be defined and then be widely adopted by linux desktops and other apps.

As an example of how such a standard could work, imagine you had a preference file, say .shortcut-prefs, that contained user preferences for common shortcuts, e.g.

Copy = Super-C
Cut = Super-X
Paste = Super-V

...with additional keywords representing other common commands that typically exist in software: New, Open, Next, Previous, Close, Quit, etc.

If such a standard were adopted, desktop and app devs could read this file on startup to know what what the default shortcuts should be for any matching functions available in that particular app. There could also be some general setting to indicate whether the user preferred Ctrl or Super as their primary command shortcut, which software devs would use to determine whether to configure a Windows-like or Mac-like shortcut experience by default.

Getting adoption is the big stumbling block and would be difficult initially - but even if only some software adopted this standard, those who wanted such configurability could choose their software accordingly.

Are there any existing ideas similar to this that we could get behind? What would be the best way for any such a proposal be advanced?

Asking in hope more than expectation.

tl;dr the proceedings of the last week make me realise widespread adoption of Linux distros is hampered by a range of set-up issues; and how hard it is to get that polished, works-out-the-box experience right

I love Linux and what it represents, and have been using it for the past two years or so, of which the past 18 months exclusively.

In those past 18 months, I have mainly been using Fedora.

Whilst I have been happy with it, I did find that it broke just a *little* too often for me. But it was a way to learn, and learn I did.

After a while, I got a bit tired of it, and wanted something a tad more stable. I had been toying around with Debian here and there, but found that it was so opinionated and purist about its implementation (i.e. nothing proprietary whatsoever and using very old kernels/presets) that that too caused problems and caused me to have to spend time setting stuff up out of the box (admittedly I didn't spend tonnes of time here).

So two weeks ago, my next move was to make the jump to an immutable distro: Fedora Kinoite. I wanted something KDE-centric and more stable. Installation went smoothly. However, using GPG didn't. I could not get rid of an alleged lock when using GPG no matter what I tried (see previous thread). It drove me insane. I spent an entire week troubleshooting the issue. After spending all this time setting up my system, I did not want to have to reinstall this early into setting up my system.

I got fed up and gave Debian another go after a lot of deliberation. Graphical installer glitches on me hard. Sigh. Off to bed, as it's already 1am.

Fed up the next morning, I think, 'Why not LMDE?' I insert the ISO. Graphical installer glitches hard, screen goes black.

I do not have an old PC. Yes, I checked the BIOS on both counts -- no CSM, no Secure Boot or anything like that. The PC I have is like a year or so old.

I will keep pottering, and I will keep learning. Openness has its price. But it definitely made me realise that when friends ask me why I use Linux and whether they should too, I think only those who had a genuine technical interest would persist with these problems. Trying several distros in a short space and running into major issues with all of them would have them running back to locked-down, but working-out-the-box distros.

Sorry for the rant.

Off to give POP!_OS a try now...

• Decided to explore Linux because was sick of Windows experience/resource usage on laptop/made my Surface Pro extremely overheat and non-performant.
• Because I probably have ADD/ADHD, hyperfixated on distrohopping for two weeks, was basically a crash course on Linux.
• Explored - Debian, Linux Mint, LDME, Fedora, openSuse, Pop OS. Avoided Arch stuff because seems like for more technical/advanced users.
• Weird, specific issues with different distros - Fedora screen flickering issue on 39 and 40 (Wayland/x11 interacting with my nvidia gpu probably), bluetooth issues on Linux Mint, screen flickering issue on Pop OS even though on x11 and nvidia drivers updated. Could be user error, or distro issues.
• Trust me - if your user experience requires your user to learn about what blueman, pulseaudio, pipewire, x11, wayland is and how to troubleshoot errors/compatibility with different DE's/kernel versions/work on the terminal too long, you are doing it WRONG as a distro if one of your goals is mainstream acceptance and it will never happen.
• Debian seemed stable and rock solid, but lacking the out of the box readiness and modern look I needed.
• Avoided Ubuntu because of things I read on reddit about Snap and such.
• Was going to call Pop OS the final choice, seems very stable, well built, loved the window tiling but something told me to give Ubuntu a try.
• Extremely surprised by how polished, ready to go, non-bloaty, "industrial grade" , and professional Ubuntu felt. Also felt very snappy, much more than Debian and other distros (subjective I know). Liked how it came with minimal applications/software pre-installed.
• Simply Works Out of the Box. Install was super fast. Reliable.
• Now using Ubuntu on home pc, Surface pro, and a Thinkpad.
• Good takeway: take what you read from reddit was a grain of salt. I should have just installed Ubuntu on day 1 instead of waste time distrohopping. Literal hours spent diagnosing and troubleshooting nitpicky stuff, going on YouTube and forums. Please don't do what I did, and just stick whatever works the best first, and focus on actually doing work instead of distrohopping.
• On Snaps: Literally don't use snaps or uninstall it, and I just use flathub for my applicatons. Problem (if you can call it that) done. These people complaining about it are nerds and over-exaggerating about an "issue" 99.99% of people who just want to get work done, while still supporting FOSS, don't really care about.
• Using Linux overall, not just Ubuntu, saved my machine. My SP9 was literally overheating to the point where it felt like it was melting and making engine noises on W11. NEVER experienced this on a Linux distro. All the W11 background and telemetry stuff was killing my machine and making it unpleasant to use.
• Now time to do actual stuff, and stop wasting time distrohopping.
• Thank you Ubuntu community and devs for making such a great and usable product for the average person!

Debate.

My example. Bought an air sensor kit. Opensource hardware and firmware. It arrived partly broken.

After a fairly helpful back and forth for a few days with support, after telling them the problem outright, I just ordered a replacement sensor myself, installed it and confirmed the product worked as advertised. Fixed.

They offered to reimburse me. Which was kind. However at this stage I didn't care. The fact I could take ownership of the device and it's firmware and fix the problem myself speaks VOLUMES to me.

Am I alone?

After years of using cinnamon, and then kde, i have finally switched over to window managers (hyprland specifically)... I cant stop. Desktop environments are unusable to me now. They feel clunky and bloated.

I have become addicted to customizing it more and more. For days now when im not at work and have any free time im making more changes to my setup.

Hello everyone!

I just discovered the link to the new Teams version today, and it even runs with Firefox!

Now I can confidently do without Edge!

The only thing that would be cool now would be if Firefox supported PWA.

https://teams.microsoft.com/v2/

Have fun

One of my standard "tricks" in server admin is to have a brand new VM show its ssh key fingerprint as a QR code in the VM console - then I can just paste it directly into the ssh client prompt, since it's "yes/no/fingerprint" now. That way, I don't have to manually compare a string when I'm connecting to it for the very first time (and have no way to securely connect to it yet).

In the VM, all you need is the 'qrencode' package, which often has no additional dependencies.

Then, you can show small blocks of text as QR codes, drawn via box characters on the text console, like this:

ssh-keygen -lf /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub | qrencode -t ansi

To read this on the host system, use any means you like of creating a screen shot, then feed the resulting image into any of several QR code reader utilities. qtqr is one such example that can take an image file as input.

I wrote a short Python script to combine all the steps - this takes a screen shot, tries to decode a QR code in it, then spits the resulting text out on stdout (but only if there are no characters in it that might mess up the terminal - note that this will fail if the input text contains a unicode BOM):

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import tempfile
from PIL import ImageGrab
from qrtools import QR
import re
import base64

with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(mode="wb",suffix=".png") as tmpimage:

	# obtain screen shot of entire screen, and save it to the temp file:
	screenshot = ImageGrab.grab()
	screenshot.save(fp=tmpimage)

	qr = QR()
	qr.decode(tmpimage.name)

	# only print the string if it does not contain any non-ascii characters:
	if not re.search('[^ -~\n\r\t]',qr.data):
		print(qr.data)

	# remove qrtools's auto-created temporary directory:
	qr.destroy()

Usually, installing any QR decoding app will give you the dependencies for this script; if not, search their names in your distro's package manager.

Bonus: What if the VM is Linux but the client or host system is Windows?

I recently realised that the stock Windows "Camera" app has a QR code reader in it. You can trick it into introspection by very analogue means: hold a mirror up to your webcam.

...but QR codes can't be read in mirror image (most phones can because they try flipping the image if they can't read it, but the Camera app apparently does not do this).

Note that flipping an image vertically is just as mirrored as flipping it horizontally, and Linux

...so with one very tiny change to my usual command in the VM, I can read the QR code in Windows by holding up a mirror to the camera:

ssh-keygen -lf /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub | qrencode -t ansi

becomes

ssh-keygen -lf /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub | qrencode -t ansi | tac

('tac' being the command available on every Linux-like system, whose purpose is to read lines and then print them to stdout in reverse order. Its name is 'cat' backwards; 'cat' being the thing that reads and prints whatever is given to it forwards.)

I was ignorant to try i3 window manager. I used KDE (still use it on my laptop) on my desktop, one day I just got curious that how it will be like to use i3. After all the ones who use it always go on how much better it is.

I finally installed it in my desktop, and oh boy do I love it.

I did very slight modifications to it, not so kuch that it will go in the “RICE” category but, I like it now.

And boy do I love it, I have almost ditched my mouse and I prefer it, I never thought I would say that but now going back to use the mouse feels kinda cumbersome to me lol.

It is just so damn convenient to be on the home row to do almost everything. It might not be a substantial amount of time saved but it just feels better somehow.

I recommend more people to try it. Also not to mention, with i3 my computer uses only 200MB of RAM on idle.

All in all I love it, would love to listen other people’s thoughts on i3.

I so often see people hoping for linux to beat windows marketshare but do we actually want that? It would bring lot of resources to linux but it would also bring lot of toxicity im afraid. Like many not so good people would try to insert themselves and their scummy stuff into linux, infiltrating it with its bullshit, slowly poisoning it. Or maybe someone big might try to privatize it or something to overtake it. Like i cant imagine what would have happened if instead steam some other company did what they did. Or this isnt really a threat?

Sorry if this is common topic or if its not well written, i just got my daily dose of migraine..

Edit: I would like to add that I know you can just hop on next distro but what if the big company makes us dependent on them somehow? I had one more point for the big companies stuff but i forgot what it was..

Edit2: Also I dont mean just linux kernel but even the apps and stuff

Just a small tiny post to appreciate how good of an experience printing on Linux(Kubuntu 23.10) is. For context, I started using Linux fulltime about 2 years ago but I had never printed anything using it until today. I had to print some govt-related document on our office printer. I am pretty much the only one with Linux on my personal computer in this office for software-dev purposes which is my department.

I had to ask a colleague how to use the printer and he had no experience with anything Linux. He simply told me, go to your laptop, connect to the same wifi as the printer and click print and it should work.

I was a bit skeptical about the experience I was about to have since I have seen a lot of doom post about printers especially on Linux but also on Windows.

I followed his instructions and in under 2 minutes I had printed all four documents I wanted. In full color, no configs, no tweaking, no messing around with weird settings. It just worked. I was amazed and I wished most of the Linux-related spaces like gaming and editing was this easy.

​

I upgraded to the development release of Ubuntu 24.04 today. The upgrade solved all the outstanding issues that I have been dealing with for years. I am so happy and impressed that I am going to post about it.

I have been patiently waiting for Blender to support my AMD GPU out of the box. After the upgrade, it does.

I have been working around a nasty bug in Gimp for years, as well. Rounding the corners of a rectangle would cause a panic crash. I think it was caused by Wayland because it didn't seem to happen under X. After the upgrade, it appears the bug is fixed.

The only hiccup that I had was needing to uninstall libapache2-mod-php8.2. Since Ubuntu 24.04 ships with php8.3. But that was very very minor. I'm not saying that I am not going to find a major pitfall tomorrow. But I don't expect that I will.

Note: The new improved renderer (vo_gpu_next) is being worked on and not the default yet.

Complete changelog: Release v0.38.0 · mpv-player/mpv · GitHub