Ubuntu

Earlier today I posted a poll on Mastodon.

As I write this, there are fifteen hours left on the poll, and it looks like this with around a hundred votes:

Most people seems to think I should wait for a month. That result may change overnight, of course, but I can’t wait! I’ve got a blog post to write, and time on my hands!

So let’s upgrade now!

Canonical is planning an ‘All Snap’ desktop next year. It will likely be available side-by-side with the traditional deb-based installation we’ve been used to since 2004.

If the “All Snap” or “immutable” platform is to be a success, Canonical needs to get a grip on the broken, uninstallable, insecure, and outdated snaps provided in the snap store.

This is a long post, so feel free to skip to the ‘Solutions’ section for my positive thoughts.

Back in December 2020 I wrote up my personal Must-Have GNOME extensions. It’s been nearly three years, two job changes, and a few Ubuntu upgrades, so I thought I’d take another look.

tl;dr:

What changed

Out

I no longer have these installed.

Sound Switcher Indicator

This used to crash a lot for me, to the point I’d go and look for it in the panel and it was missing. I figured if I don’t realise it’s gone, I probably don’t need it that much. Also, GNOME shell volume control has changed a bit over the last few years. It’s pretty easy to switch device now in the menu.

Back in July, Martin introduced us to ZeroTier on the Linux Matters podcast, episode 8. He detailed why he’s using the tool and how. Worth a listen.

Per their website, ZeroTier “lets you build modern, secure multi-point virtualized networks of almost any type. From robust peer-to-peer networking to multi-cloud mesh infrastructure, we enable global connectivity with the simplicity of a local network.”

Interesting marketing, but do I need this though?

Computing setup

I have three main computers, and some other devices I use regularly. By ‘regularly’ I mean ‘at least once a week, maybe more’.

Yesterday, I wrote a little about the applications I’ve seen crash on my Ubuntu Linux laptop over the last six months.

Some people questioned why I use Microsoft Edge as my primary web browser on Ubuntu. I thought I’d write up why, and how a couple of the built-in features are appealing to me.

tl;dr it’s multiple profiles, stability, speed, tab sleep, and vertical tabs.

Multiple personality disorder

I have tried to keep work and personal browser profiles separate for some years now. There are two main reasons I do this. Firstly, my work-related search history, recent tabs and other activities are confined to one browser personality. My personal stuff like shopping, email, social media and other fun stuff is sectioned off from work. Secondly, by having work in its own profile, I can just close that profile at the end of the day.

tl;dr: I downloaded the application crash data for my work Laptop. To probably nobody’s surprise, Zoom is the most crashy thing in the last six months on my laptop.

New laptop

When I joined Axiom at the end of 2022, I was given some budget to buy a work laptop. My friend and co-presenter of Linux Matters Podcast, Martin Wimpress was looking for a new company laptop around the same time. He wrote up his thoughts on why he chose a ThinkPad Z13, and we discussed it on episode 1 of the podcast, back in April.

(yet)

tl;dr In a recent thread on Mastodon, it was revealed that Ubuntu 23.04 users can’t install the Steam deb package from the Ubuntu archive without jumping through some technical hoops. It turns out this was a mistake, a bug was filed, and future builds shouldn’t have this problem.

It’s not immediately apparent whether the (currently ‘broken’) ISO images for Ubuntu 23.04 will be rebuilt (unlikely) or if this will stay broken in 23.04, and users will need to ‘cope’.

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m cooking the family dinner, so I’m also listening to a podcast. I just listened to the latest episode of Linux Downtime. In it, Amolith, Gary and Joe discuss why they use the Linux distributions they do. While the food cooks, I thought I’d take 20 minutes to bang out a blog post mulling why I (still) use Ubuntu.

However, this turned more into a bit of a trip down memory lane and certainly didn’t get banged out in 20 mins. Sorry about that. Probably scroll to the bottom for the actual answers.

This morning I attempted to start work on my desktop PC and couldn’t. The screen is black, it doesn’t want to wake up the displays. I used the old REISUB trick to restart, and it boots, but there’s no output on the display. I did some investigation and this post is mainly to capture my notes and so others can see the problem and perhaps debug and fix it.

The setup is an Intel Skull Canyon NUC connected to an external GPU enclosure which contains an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060. I’ve previously blogged about this weird machine, get more details there. I have since upgraded the GPU since that post, however.

Over the weekend I participated in FOSS Talk Live. Before The Event this would have been an in-person shindig at a pub in London. A bunch of (mostly) UK-based podcasters get together and record live versions of their shows in front of a “studio audience”. It’s mostly an opportunity for a bunch of us middle-aged farts who speak into microphones to get together, have a few beers and chat.

Due to The Event, this year it was a virtual affair, done online via YouTube. Joe Ressington typically organised the in-person events, but with a lack of skills in video streaming, Martin Wimpress and Marius Quabeck stepped in to run the show behind-the-scenes.