Is Ubuntu still bad? (21-08-02)

Ok, let's do this!

Recently I kinda felt guilty of being too unfair about Ubuntu as I've been bashing on it for years and disliking it while I just stopped using it and had no experience with it for a long time.

So I thought, I should actually use it again and see if anything changed or is it still the same thing.

Well, I installed the latest ubuntu version, and here's what it boiled down to:

The good:
Compared to what I knew about ubuntu before, the system updates and programs installation FLIES!! I was impressed by how fast it felt!

The installation process has evolved and became more pleasant.

The color pallet is alright, something I can live with it.

The mix of meh and bad:
It was odd that when I launch sudo apt update it says it's all up to date, but the software update program does find updates!

Although the Snap store did help in terms of software availability, AUR is still unbeatable, but that's known.

I had to use a ton of extensions to make Gnome kinda livable, but lots of extensions just gave me the "ERROR" message even being 'compatible' with the new versions of Gnome. After all, the experience is still lacking.

Now the ugly:
That darn GNOME !!! WHY!
In conclusion: the OS's core is really good, but it's vanilla ubuntu. The desktop Environment is always a no-go for me, same with fedora.

Addressing ubuntu's issues, with an ubuntu-based OS (21-08-21)
Hello everyone,

I'm back after a while to update you on my testing.

For a Ubuntu Gnome alternative, I went with Ubuntu MATE. Why? I wanted to test what It's still Gnome but a better gnome and keeping the same base.

I kept the OS for longer than I anticipated as I had a little trip for 5 days at my parents'.
Results.

The Good:

Ubuntu MATE's Software boutique is an elegant and excellent software collection. ( Keep in mind, It's a software collection, not a package manager). For package management, you either use APT or install Gnome Software or Synaptic. Of course, It's ubuntu so you can add the snap store which was handy for installing alacritty for example.
The DE is so fast, but for modern machines, we use these days, or even older ones with an SSD, It doesn't make much difference. If you still running on spinning rust though, you'll notice it more.

Layout customization is already available out of the box, I was able to customize that as close to my liking as possible fairly fast.

Updating the system is still fast like on vanilla Ubuntu, but did work on the first try from the terminal unlike on ubuntu Gnome.

The Bad:

It happened again, yes, the Wi-Fi stopped working suddenly for once. And took a bit of time to work a second time without a reboot. I couldn't trace what it was in the logs no matter what. At some times the function keys were not working as they should, like; Airplane mode kept only showing Airplane mode activated every time I clicked it, but do not revert back to the airplane deactivated. And again, just started working normally
Although most of the things to customize the DE were available in-house, the final look of the panel isn't that great compared to what I achieved with Gome3 and extensions (this is completely subjective btw). I still think the extensions approach on Gnome3 needs to be drastically improved, It's clunky, messy, and inconsistent.
I found an excellent theme on mate-look.org, It is an outstanding source, but the Pling thing didn't work to give that ease of use and setup, so I had to git clone stuff and set up things manually.

The end result is a pleasant theme and DE, but the experience is kinda ruined by the inconsistency of Wi-Fi and some little other stuff, like when I selected alacrity as my default terminal, CTRL + ALT + T stopped working. Again, I found myself in need to restart my laptop many times to get it working properly

Conclusion: Ubuntu base still has some annoying issues that surprisingly didn't change. Still, it has improved in some other areas. And still, not my cup of tea.

For a better Gnome stack-based DE that's aimed for modern design and performance, budgie still holds up pretty high IMO (Again, might be very subjective).

Moving on to the next thing, I'm thinking of giving something new a test drive, Like CutefishDE. I'll check if it's usable enough to be given a proper test or if it's still too beta-ish and unreliable.

See you in the next one, Peace ✌
🐧

Is Zorin the better ubuntu? (21-09-10)
Hello there,

Well, It took me some weeks to get back and write my updates about distros I'm testing as I was in the hospital due to the nasty Delta variant. Again, stay safe folks, and keep your distance.

As I said in my last post, I tried CutefishDE on Manjaro, It certainly does looks shiny, so macOS Monterey-isk. Nothing wrong with that though, It boils down to taste. But It still got a lot of brought edges and is not yet ready to be even properly tested.

Back to testing one more time an Ubuntu-based distro, this time I went with ZorinOS 16 core as I heard lots of good things about it. So here's how it went:

The Good:

> Zorin Looks really nice and the preconfigured layouts are a great start.
The software center got you covered with main repos, Snap, Flatpak, and an additional Zorin repo for their own apps and some drivers.
For a bit more tweaking, I added Tweaks from the software center and downloaded some themes and that was really straightforward.
Zorin connect is a nice touch. Yes, there is KDE connect and GSconnect If I remember the name correctly, but It's nice to have it right there preinstalled for you and customized for the distro.
I also love that they have Zorin Lite, a lightweight version for old hardware.

The bad:

> Again, with the ubuntu base, issues with wifi disconnecting. But, once the system was updated to the latest kernel available from Zorin (5.11.0-34-generic) and a restart, It stopped disconnecting every now and then. (no WiFi issues for 48 hours).
The updates and software installation through the Software app is disappointingly slow in my experience (That said, It seems slow for Snaps and Flatpacks installations because there is no visualization of processes before downloading the app itself and installing it).
Snaps isolation caused me issues with some of the programs I use. My browser of choice is Brave and I use KeppassXC for my passwords and Syncthing for syncing my passwords database. Syncthing GTK is available as a Flatpak, no issues there as it doesn't necessarily need integration with something else. However, Brave is available as a snap while Keepassxc is available both as a snap and flatpack. I got the snap package installed for me and failed to communicate with Brave's KeePass extension. I found a script on KeePassxc's website to help with that but It didn't work. So I used the better solution; I followed the instructions on Brave's website to add their repo and install brave from that, then I downloaded KeePassxc's AppImage. Honestly, AppImages always work, there was no need for snaps or flatpaks from the beginning IMO.
One more thing, Flatpaks do not show in dark mode even after it is activated in the app's preferences as you can see in the screenshot. There might be a solution requiring the installation of some theme for flatpaks but I didn't find any in the Software app.

Overall ZorinOS is really nice looking and stable enough to be a good OS for beginners and even veteran Linux users, especially with all the goodies you get with ZorinOS Pro for 39 USD. But the snaps and flatpaks mess should be addressed. And, back to the WiFi thing, ZorinOS was my best experience so far on the ubuntu-base.

I hope this was informative and see you in the next one. Thanks for reading.

eljondy’s Notebook

A catch-up article (The Ubuntu dilema)