WingNews

sneak|5 years ago

I recently hit the wall with Ubuntu too. I'll still run -server in the cloud, but each time over the last 5-7 years I did point-samples of "is Linux viable as a desktop other than ChromeOS", it was always Ubuntu/Gnome. It turns out that that was my problem all along!

I tossed Gentoo and KDE (this is not a Gentoo endorsement, it was just a "hey I wonder what Gentoo's been up to in the last dozen years since I last used it") on a spare laptop. It turns out that KDE is amazing now. It's seriously the best DE I've ever used, and I'm a Mac user! (Half of the utilities I install out of the box on a fresh macOS are built in, and the annoying stuff that used to be editing arcane files is now easy preference settings. It's actually great.)

What the hell are Ubuntu doing shipping Gnome (with the ugliest custom theme known to man, to boot)? Admittedly it was my own ignorance, for which they are not responsible, but their mindshare and bad choice tainted my whole view of the state of the art for a long time.

useragent86|5 years ago

> Half of the utilities I install out of the box on a fresh macOS are built in, and the annoying stuff that used to be editing arcane files is now easy preference settings

That's been the case with KDE for 15-20 years now. KDE 3.5 was a great environment (and Trinity (TDE) is a modernized fork of it).

Note that, this year, KDE added telemetry to their Plasma desktop environment. Of course, it's opt-in, so it must be acceptable, right? Well, of course, users who objected to the telemetry found bugs that caused data to be recorded even when disabled.

KDE's response was to ban said users from reddit.com/r/kde and call them "paranoid schizos." (The mods there are KDE members wearing "KDE developer" flair, not random Redditors.)

So, despite using and recommending KDE for almost 2 decades, it's hard for me to do so any longer. I wholeheartedly recommend checking out TDE instead.

snazz|5 years ago

It's interesting how underrepresented KDE is in the "big distros". While it makes sense that Fedora and Ubuntu ship GNOME, and there are "spins" of each that include different desktops out of the box, it still surprises me.

m463|5 years ago

I put arch/gnome on a system right next to an ubuntu box.

It was like a different gnome - quickly reaching the desktop and lots of nice differences (like the privacy menu wasn't crafted by marketing and legal)

robocat|5 years ago

> and they just can't execute

That’s a bit rich: are they not the #1 consumer distro, which hardly implies they are failing to execute. A successful product has missteps, so what.

> I don't want to run that garbage on my desktop.

So don’t. Why complain that others do? I use Ubuntu because it works and I can mostly find information about how to do what I want. There are major aspects of Ubuntu I don’t like (Gnome, Snap) but selecting a distro is all about choosing your compromises. I have tried Debian and other distros, but I tend to go back to Ubuntu because it works best for me.

cassiet|5 years ago

Most of HN is shitting on popular things with a hot take and a smug condescending tone, usually erroneously. If Conical hadn’t tried new projects and failed, the poster would complain that they never innovate.

People complain like this because they have no real control of their own lives. It makes them feel smart, if only they were in control, then things would be better. It would be so easy, the people in charge must be stupid. It comes from a lack of experience and the inability to understand the challenges in those positions.

kevin_thibedeau|5 years ago

> That’s a bit rich: are they not the #1 consumer distro, which hardly implies they are failing to execute

All the hard work to make it a viable OS is done by Debian. Canonical just adds some polish and then wrecks it all with poor design decisions over and over again.

Koshkin|5 years ago

> I don’t like (Gnome, Snap)

Snaps may be a pain sometimes, but Gnome seems to be working like a charm...

coleifer|5 years ago

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eeZah7Ux|5 years ago

>> and they just can't execute

> That’s a bit rich: are they not the #1 consumer distro, which hardly implies they are failing to execute.

No, that's Debian doing almost all the work.

90% of the packages in Ubuntu are simply taken from Debian without significant modification.

hvis|5 years ago

Unity was very good in a lot of respects. Both its UI elements and its performance. Unfortunately, Unity 7 depended on Compiz somewhat heavily, and when it came to writing a replacement of the full stack, Canonical didn't manage to execute.

But have you been following last year's improvements to GNOME's performance and responsiveness? A lot of it is Canonical's devs bringing their experience from Unity.

bgorman|5 years ago

Gnome 3 runs like an absolute dog on my Skylake notebook using Ubuntu 19.10. I don't know what metrics you have been looking at, but as a regular user I "feel" that the UI is constantly lagging during regular use. I didn't think it was this bad when I was using Fedora in the past, but that was a wayland based installation.

5-|5 years ago

it's not a fair comparison, but for many years i have been running i3wm+dmenu+xterm as my desktop environment (and dwm instead of i3wm before that), and not even once i had given as much as a thought about performance of that. it just responds to my commands... instantaneously?

there is no need for latency-hiding animations and subsequently trying to make them run smoothly on the gpu if there's no perceptible latency.

eitland|5 years ago

> Unity was very good in a lot of respects. Both its UI elements and its performance.

I hear a lot of praise for Unity and I'm the kind of person who enjoy trying out new stuff and Linux Desktops is no exception.

For me, Unity was broken because of alt-tab (behavior and lack of configurability).

It might work for everyone else but when I want to switch back to the last or second last thing I worked with I want that done now.

I don't want to look at the tab switcher to ponder what to do next, just alt-tab, done.

This has worked consistently in every Windows since at least 3.1 (the first my family owned), and in every Linux desktop environment I've used except Unity and Gnome 3. And in Gnome 3 it was at least configurable.

This might seem trivial to a lot of you but to keep focus I keep one application maximized most of the time. I don't use them side by side. Then when I need to reference something (Jira, vendor documentation etc) I alt-tab. Same goes for slack.

Wowfunhappy|5 years ago

I recommend Debian too, but potential switchers should be aware that it has a very particular update model. You get (non-security!) software updates once every two years, and that is the version you will be on for the next two years. There are sometimes workarounds (namely backports), but they're less well tested and sometimes break.

I think this model is underrated, for all that it can sometimes be annoying. Consistency is valuable. Constant change is not good, even when the changes themselves are positive. But it does mean you'll sometimes be left with out-of-date software.

Edit: Oh, I should mention that you can also use Debian testing to get frequent updates. Primary issue here there is Debian Testing actually gets security updates later than Debian Stable.

Andrew_nenakhov|5 years ago

Unity had a rough start, but grew to be a pretty nice DE. I actually remember it warmly every time I see how Gnome3 eats 3 horizontal bars of screen space, placing a freaking WATCH on the center of the top bar.

Seriously, a whole bar for a WATCH? How come good old Gnome2 did it better 15 years ago, and had a terrific hierarchical menu, to add?

mixmastamyk|5 years ago

Do you mean the clock? I don’t like it it there either. Used to looking in the corner.

unethical_ban|5 years ago

Unity was a good DE, and I have come to appreciate their design, which even today differentiates from standard GNOME. Also recall that it was made to be one DE for all: Phone, tablet, desktop. The idea was that you would have an Ubuntu phone, dock it, and use it as your PC!

And that is doable now, considering Thunderbolt. Hell, Oneplus should try to push OxygenOS to be tablet-like and this would set them apart from everyone.

Upstart was started alongside or even before systemd, if I recall correctly.

dingo_bat|5 years ago

[deleted]

waltpad|5 years ago

> I strongly recommend anyone similarly frustrated to check out debian, which is a fantastic distro.

It is true that the Debian people are doing a great job.

> [...] if you're using Ubuntu and disabling snap, you're fighting against the current and I have to imagine it's going to be increasingly difficult with subsequent releases.

Actually, snap was harder to remove in the previous release: you had to rebuild certain packages (actually, just pulseaudio, so it only matters for desktops) to get rid of the dependency, but it seems now that it's just a couple of apt commands, so you have to give Canonical credits for making it easier.

waltpad|5 years ago

Now, this is embarassing, here the list of reverse dependencies on snapd:

  python3-ubuntu-image
  xubuntu-desktop
  xubuntu-core
  vanilla-gnome-desktop
  ubuntustudio-desktop-core
  ubuntustudio-desktop
  ubuntukylin-desktop
  ubuntu-unity-desktop
  ubuntu-snappy-cli
  ubuntu-snappy
  ubuntu-mate-desktop
  ubuntu-mate-core
  ubuntu-core-launcher
  ubuntu-budgie-desktop
  snapd-xdg-open
  snapcraft
  snap-confine
  qml-module-snapd
  plasma-discover-backend-snap
  lxd
  lubuntu-desktop
  libsnapd-qt1
  kubuntu-desktop
  ember
  cyphesis-cpp
  chromium-browser
  ubuntu-server
  ubuntu-desktop-minimal
  ubuntu-desktop
  ubuntu-core-snapd-units
  livecd-rootfs
  maas
  apparmor
  libsnapd-glib1
  gnome-software-plugin-snap
  command-not-found

Any of these packages is going to pull snapd in if installed. Soon after writing the above comment, I decided to install chromium, and ... snapd got installed as well as a result. I guess I should double check each claim I am about to make, BEFORE making it.

sigh...

Edit: Please note that many of these are "leaf" packages, by which I mean that no other packages depend on them.

RMPR|5 years ago

Give them credits to fix what they have broken?

amaccuish|5 years ago

The one I'm currently fighting server-side is netplan. I want to use systemd-networkd directly, since it exposes a lot more features than netplan, but getting netplan to stop intervening is a ballache. Like, it's not a systemd service, it has to be disabled on the kernel command line?!

jschwartzi|5 years ago

Yeah I was trying to get systemd-networkd to handle hotplugging, and I spent about a day trying to figure out how to describe a computer with one Ethernet port to netplan before giving up and removing the whole package. At which point systemd-networkd started working beautifully as-expected. For a system administration tool netplan is wonderful at making the simple things needlessly complicated.

nightfly|5 years ago

I've found that if you delete /etc/netplan (just making sure this is at least empty seems to be the most important part) and /var/run/systemd/network netplan doesn't really seem to do anything. My org has been using systemd-networkd directly after doing that for about a year and it's working fine for us.

viraptor|5 years ago

> upstart [...] failed shit they've come out with?

upstart was pretty good. It just lost the popularity contest with systemd. I'm not sure if there's really anything serious to complain here about.

vbernat|5 years ago

There were some serious complains around upstart. Notably, jobs may get stuck in a bad state, difficult to recover. This was never fixed. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/96420..., https://bugs.launchpad.net/upstart/+bug/406397 and http://www.markhneedham.com/blog/2012/09/29/upstart-job-gett....

cerberusss|5 years ago

> I don't want to run that garbage on my desktop

Please read the HN guidelines: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work". Link at the bottom-left.

op03|5 years ago

It's not that bad. Linux threads attract the biggest drama queens in the galaxy.

simion314|5 years ago

>upstart

Do you know Red Hat and google were using upstart? This companies must be hyper incompetent if they run garbage.

james_s_tayler|5 years ago

I agree. The last Ubuntu release I actually liked was 12.04? After Unity I've been fighting Ubuntu ever since.

I'm seriously considering not taking the 20.04 LTS release and either using 18.04 until it's untenable or switching to something else.

yummypaint|5 years ago

Yep this hits the nail on the head. There was some kind of fundamental shift around that time. Running other GUIs has been a bandaid, but the underlying thought processes that led to unity are still clearly at work. Im going to stop even trying out new ubuntu releases anymore.

I think this is ok though. If ubuntu were better thought out, the linux ecosystem might be less vibrant than it is. I would like to think other distros are learning from these failures. Personally ive had excellent luck with scientific linux (CentOs based).

urlwolf|5 years ago

Mint is also a possibility. They don't use snaps but flatpaks.

alexfromapex|5 years ago

Netplan is another fail... although I love Ubuntu otherwise

gerdesj|5 years ago

Numpty. Minimal. End of.

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