Every so often i start believing all the posts about how Linux really made a lot of progress, and the desktop experience is so much better now, and everything is supported, and i give it another try.
I’ve got a small intel 13th gen NUC i use as a small server, and for playing movies from. It runs windows 11, but as i want to run some docker containers on it, i thought, why not give Linux a try again, how bad can it be. (after all, i’ve got multiple raspberry pi’s running, and a synology diskstation, and i’m no stranger to ssh’ing into them to manage some stuff)
Downloaded the latest Ubuntu Desktop (23.10), since it’s still a highly recommended distro, and started my journey.
First obvious task: connect to my SMB shares on my synology to get access to any media. Tough luck, whatever tool Ubuntu uses for that always tries SMBv1 protocol first, which is disabled on my synology due to security reasons. If i enable it on my synology i get a nice warning that SMBv1 is vulnurable and has been used to perform ransomware attacks, so maybe i’d rather leave it disabled (although i assume that’s mostly the case if the port were accessible from the internet, but still). Then i thought “it’s probably some setting somewhere to change this”, but after further googling, i found an issue that whatever ubuntu is using for SMB needs a patch to not default to SMBv1 to get a list of shares… Yeah, great start for the oh so secure linux, i’d need to enable a protocol that got used in ransomware attacks over 6 years ago to get everything to work properly… (yeah, i ended up finding how to mount things manually, and then added it to my fstab as a workaround, but wtf)
Then, i installed Kodi, tried to play some content. Noticed that even though i enabled that setting on Kodi, it’s not switching to the refreshrate of the video i’m playing. Googling further on that just felt like walking through a tarpit. From the dedicated librelec distro that runs just kodi that has special patches to resolve this, to discussions about X not supporting switching refreshrates, and Kodi having a standalone mode that doesn’t use a window manager that should solve it but doesn’t, and also finding people with similar woes about HDR. I guess the future of the desktop user is watching stuttering videos with bad color rendition? I’d give more details about what i found if there were any. Try googling it yourself, you’ll find so little yet contradictory things…
Not being entirely defeated yet, i thought “i’ve got this nice GUI on my synology for managing docker containers & images, let’s see if i can find something nice on ubuntu”, and found dockstation as something i could try. Downloaded the .deb file (since ubuntu is a debian variant it seems), double clicked the file and … “no app installed for this file”… google around a bit, after some misleading results regarding older ubuntu versions, i found the issue: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/10/install-deb-ubuntu-23-10-no-app-error
Of course Ubuntu just threw out the old installer for debian files, and didn’t replace it yet. Wouldn’t want a user to just be able to easily install files! what is this, windows?
For real, i see all the Linux love here, and for the headless servers i have here (the raspberries & the synology), i get it. But goddamn this desktop experience is so ridiculous, there has to be better than this right? I’m missing something, or doing something completely wrong, or… right?
As others have said, I think this is an Ubuntu problem, not a Linux problem. I’ve used Linux Mint Cinnamon and Manjaro KDE on the desktop with literally zero problems. However, I installed Ubuntu on a server because I figured that Ubuntu’s (former) popularity would mean there would be a much larger online knowledge pool to help with problems. Also, an IT friend recommended it. Unfortunately, I’m regretting installing Ubunbtu. Canonical’s use of snaps at a deep level has caused me a bunch of random problems. Sure, problems can be fixed or worked around, but it is definitely the least friendly distro I’ve used. I should have heeded the warnings and stayed away from Ubuntu.
so to summary your first steps were:
- accessing a inhouse NAS
- setting up kodi and trying to switch refresh-rates & HDR
- running some docker UI
i have 2 question - if you want to run rather advanced stuff
- why not invest some time to check how its done in linux?
- why did you chose a beginner distro focusing on the 80% needs of a home user
all of your described usecases are possible - no exceptions, but after you obviously spent decades of time in other desktops, you might move out of your comfort zone to make the next step. ubuntu is pretty easy for the easy stuff, linux as it is makes a fantastic system if you want to do some advanced stuff, but it lets you do the decisions (which means you(!) have to gain the skill to do the decisions)
we’re here - the community is here to help … but not here to do pre-sales for someone … my tipp:
- check what you want to do
- check how its done
- do it
- you face a problem - provide a description and ask for a solution, but do your part
long story short - i think 90% of users would be happy with windows, mac os and linux just the way all of them come out of the box. most of the time they spend in a browser, checking photos or consume some media … all of before mentioned OSs can do that pretty much without any hickups
if you go into the advanced stuff its a different story. macOS will do lots of decisions for you (but they might not be in your interest). windows has such a big user base that you have a great chance to get some ready to use description because somebody faced the exact same problem years ago. linux - advanced stuff - but no willingnes to learn - yeah man, that won’t be a good match
It’s not you.
Out of innocent ignorance and bad suggestions you just chose one of the worst distributions (anything from Canonical) with the worst UI (Gnome).
Learn and just try again, that’s totally okay.
If you want to stay in the deb ecosystem I’d suggest Debian with KDE Plasma. Don’t let people tell you Debian is outdated or old or something, they are just uninformed. Plasma is also very advanced with VRR and HDR in the process of being finalized or already done.
Most distributions offer a live image so you can try them out in a virtual machine without going through installing every one on your hardware.
This is a case of YMMV. I hate nearly everything about Windows, but there are people who swear by it. After nearly 15 years on it, there are many things I find natural on linux that are rendered difficult for no pissing reason on Windows.
To this day I don’t understand what the difference is between the networks one can choose “Home network”, “Public Network”, etc. . Also, sporadically dying DHCP was so much fun to fix. There were some WiFi networks that worked fine on other computers, but mine just refused to get IP, subnet, and gateway, so I had to copy paste them from others.
Setting up a developer environment was incredibly annoying the last time I tried it on windows 7 because every flipping thing has to go through a GUI that you have to find first. The PATH variable is in some setting somewhere that took me ages to find and it didn’t work. Ended up configuring the IDE’s environment variable individually, but it didn’t have a console in it (very early days), so opening cmd.exe meant trying to find the right env vars to set.
I remember installing a firewall and window deciding that “no, windows firewall has to be activated now”, activating itself and conflicting with the installed firewall.
Dunno if it’s still necessary, but reg cleaners and defragging were absolutely essential back then to have a fast system for more than a year. Recently had a friend with a slow system and her boyfriend just reinstalled windows for her because he didn’t want to deal with whatever it was that was slowing down the system.
Semi-related: hardware stiff was no fun either. Printers were always a nightmare. “Install this Epson driver that installs a bunch of bloatware for free!” and you find out that the installed version doesn’t work for some reason, so you have to hunt down why it doesn’t work on your particular laptop only to stumble upon drivers for that printer by the damn laptop manufacturer.
Or laptop and desktop manufacturers that packaged their own graphics drivers and were constantly a few months behind the official drivers - and the official drivers wouldn’t work on your hardware because the manufacturer had to do something special and your were stuck waiting for updates from the manufacturer. Of course manufacturers had their own updaters that barely functioned, so all you could do was check periodically yourself or wait for a bug to appear, hunt down the reason, find out it’s an outdated driver and download it from the manufacturer.
I could go on. The trauma is deep. And don’t get me started on those goddamn rainboots (Mac). That system is even worse than windows.
Anyway, all I’m saying is you had a shitty experience with “absolutely basic stuff” on linux desktop, big deal, it’s a computer. Computers and software are buggy. Nothing’s perfect. No-one claims Linux is perfect, it’s just better for whatever they are doing and they are willing to put up linux specific stuff (like the totally valid stuff you pointed out) instead of putting up with windows/mac specific stuff. Linux desktop doesn’t rub you the right way, fine. Windows nor Mac rub me the right way. That’s the way of the world. We all decide how much stuff we can put up with. Maybe this is the end of the road for you with linux desktop, but it sure ain’t for many other people.
If you need VRR on a Wayland environment, you might want to try Kubuntu or the Fedora KDE spin (as examples). There’s also Sway, but a tiling WM may not be what you’re looking for.
VRR isn’t currently implemented on GNOMEs mutter (though it is actively being worked on).
You can patch mutter with the VRR work yourself (using a copr on Fedora, and perhaps a PPA on Ubuntu), though I wouldn’t recommend it.
Thanks for the suggestions :). I think in about 50 replies you’re the first that’s like “hey, maybe there is some way to get VRR working on linux”, and not be like “why would you want that? just ignore the stuff that doesn’t work on linux”.
I’m probably going to stick with windows a bit longer for now, and i’ll give it another try when i read that wayland is a bit further along since it sounds like what i need, but is still in its infancy.
That’s fair enough. I don’t know if I could wholeheartedly recommend the Linux desktop to just anybody, but I really have been enjoying fedora for a good few years now.
I work in parallel to the gaming industry (IHV) and VRR on Linux (under wayland) is something I’ve been pretty excited about. It’s been functional under KDE Plasma for some time now (and for Sway even longer). I’ve tested the previously mentioned mutter patch on fedora 38 and it worked surprisingly well, but I believe they’re still mulling over the UX (I.e. how this feature should be exposed to end users in the settings UI). Community driven UX design & consensus is hard.
As for the maturity of Wayland, you may find differences in implementation depending on the desktop environment. I believe KDE plasma’s inplementation is a bit further ahead than gnomes, and your experience with Wayland under such an environment should be fairly comprehensive, though I don’t expect you to have to test individual DEs, so don’t take my word for it.
I personally prefer gnome with a couple of shell extensions so I’ll have to wait for it to catch up, though in typical use, it seems to do pretty well.