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?
I’m not going to say using a different distro will fix all your problems but yeah, your experience is not normal. A lot of this is because Ubuntu is not highly recommended. It’s just popular, but there are a bunch of terrible decisions it makes that barely anybody recommends it.
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!
Checks out. Ubuntu is also one of the only modern distros that doesn’t come with Flatpak, which is a massive store of applications that’s quite easy to use and has a huge store of applications.
May I recommend something like PopOS instead? It’s based on Ubuntu so everything from there will work on it, including .deb files. It’s basically Ubuntu but with way, WAY saner defaults and a better beginner experience. I think your experience will be a lot better on a nicer distro.
Downloaded the latest Ubuntu Desktop
Theres your problem.
Came here to say this immediately after reading this.
I get wanting a “homey” os, but you can accomplish this in many ways (plain ol debian is great!)
For someone that isn’t up-to-date on what’s popular and hip (and why), Ubu is still the defacto ‘starting point’ as it was recommended for yeaaaaars, and so bashing on someone because they went with what was very highly recommended and ‘just install Ubuntu, dumbass’-like comments from the last decade+ ago, isn’t helping anyone.
There are a shitfuckton of distros. How is an inexperienced (or fuck, experienced) user supposed to know that, the differences between them all, or what works best for their use case? The community is so fragmented as they throw shit at each other (Arch! Pop_OS! Fedora! Debian! “anything with a gui is a loser!”; I’ve seen it all over the last like 15+ years) that someone asking a question (like this) gets shit on (like this) because ‘new users should have immediate experience!’ (‘entry level job as a jr dev in Go; minimum 20 years experience’ comes to mind), ‘they are stupid for trying [distro], [my choice of niche distro] would have been way better]’, etc… and it just drives people away.
This isn’t pointed directly at you/above comment, but it’s the mentality, the whole ‘what a dumbass for trying X’ that hurts what is otherwise (from what I’ve seen over the years) a pretty helpful and kind community. But fuck me, someone needs to throw a site of like, top 10 starter/simple distros, with bullet points for/against each, and the community needs to embrace it and vote for replacements when one falls out of favor. Expecting new users to know about this or that or if they compiled that one themselves they’d be able to get the features they expect, is just so cringe. An echo chamber, and those that seek help get shit on.
I think your troubles might come from the assumptions you’re making of other people based off the assumptions you’ve gleamed from other people in your experience.
My comment, to me, read “that’s your problem right there, hahaha. (Laughing about the commonality of the problem not at anyone) Try out Debian, Ubuntu is bloatware”
It’s more the combination of negative post votes + comments
Thanks for the reply, i didn’t really want to make this post, but i thought “it’s 2023, how bad could it be switching to linux”, and then this stuff happened. And of course it’s downvoted because… the harsh truth isn’t popular…
And the even worse issue is that i’m a developer, i’m very technical, i don’t mind looking up solutions, i don’t mind using the command line, and i’ve got some headless linux servers here (and yeah, synology/raspberry pi is the ‘easy’ linux headless servers, but i know how to use them and have done things beyond beginner stuff on them).
But these 3 issues right from the beginning were just… wow… a protocol that got breached 7 years ago being the default you can’t change. The installer for a package type that many applications use to get installed on your OS suddenly going missing on the current “stable” version. And while i can right click on my desktop and change the refreshrate of my display via the display manager, having an app do the same probably requires some arcane knowledge even an experienced developer can’t google. And HDR is another layer of hell that requires specific software, because why support a nice feature that has been introduced (googles it)… 20 years ago… be supported by default by linux…
I get multiple replies “you’re expecting it to work like windows”. If expecting a stable version to be stable, 7 year old vulnerabilities being closed, and 20 year old features working is expecting the windows experience… then yeah, the linux experience isn’t for me. But if that’s honestly what you guys are saying… i really don’t think the issue is me…
i don’t get your problem with smbv1 and your complaints about it tbh … its deprecated in ubuntu since 20.04 - samba v1 is not the only way to access via ubuntu - and its by far not recommended. you might have configured it because out of the box its not the supported version
your downvotes and the reactions you get is because of your atitude man … there are plenty of people who would help … but coming to a linux thread complaining how bad your experience is and complaining about how bad the comments are without doing your part is just a bad style
i read a couple of followups - i do not see a single log output, just complaints
the whole linux world is about configuring your system the way you(!) want it to have - thats the difference to windows, thats the difference to mac … but if you don’t want to do the config stuff, you go with a ready to use one … ubuntu might be one of them
you face samba issues - write an issue so somebody can help … what have you already changed (because smbv1 is NOT the default version of ubuntu), what did you try to make it use smbv2/3 - what errors did you get? there are thousands of tutorials available for ubuntu - which one did you follow, did you do the config in the file manager (the default one or did you install a different one) … etc
your kodi issue about framerates is a kodi issue and a short search shows that this issue also happens on mac for example - which i somehow understand because changing framerates has affects to the change of the window server so someone must decide either take what kodi is saying to take or what is configured for the output device, so there might be a trickery in kodi to do it and that might be the issue. but it could also happen becuase of multiple displays - with differrent framerates - who knows … and how shall we know to support you if you just spend your time complaining
your docker issue with a downloaded deb package from the net … wtf - first of all why not use something from the repositories … getting out of just downloading something from someone and installing it should be prio 1 when changing to linux … but how hard could it be to do a
sudo apt install ./filename.debdo not tell me you spend 5min on the investigation … you want to have an out of the box solution which you can complain about - that’s not linux
you want a os which lets you do whatever you like - thats linux … you don’t know how its done and you’re not willing to learn but still want to do some crazy shit - that’s not linux
Linux Mint is often suggested as a good transition distro for Windows users. They’ve got a Debian edition now, although I haven’t actually tried it out.
Nice! I’ve heard good things about mint as well. Tan it on an old desktop a while back for a bit but just ended up switching to something even more bare bones/less graphically intensive.
It’s a tough balance getting performance and visual usability to play nice without walking over each other
“Plain ol debian” is the kind of distro that will ship SMBv1 without SMBv2, because “stability” (to be clear, i dont know if they do, but its the kind of thing they would do)
Debian loves to ship out of date garbage, because “out of date, but unchanging” is better than just shipping up to date stuff
debian stable isn’t a good desktop distro, it’s super stable cause it’s meant for servers that have to stay up all the time
“Stable” here means “unchanging” and not “crash proof” unfortunately. Shipping software that is already 1-2 years out of date for a server that I intend to stay up all the time means that by the time I get a chance to run updates, the software is even more out of date.
The OP’s SMB issue is exactly the kind of thing that would be WORSE on debian. “We’re going to stick with SMBv1 by default, because not changing it is more ‘stable’ even though it’s incredibly out of date”
And now you are stuck with this decision because you can’t afford downtime on your server to resolve it. Shipping drastically out of date software isn’t always a good thing either. Refusing to ship SMBv2 (again, I don’t know what version of SMB Debian ships, using this purely as an example of the type of thing they do) in the name of “stability” even though it solves a ton of problems with SMBv1 is not a good experience.
They try to backport security fixes, but there are times where those get missed, and it also means that they aren’t backporting bugfixes that they don’t find “critical” enough.
So yes, Debian is only good for the scenario where you would prefer to have the same bugs for a year on end because “unchanging” is more important than “up to date, and patched”
Yeah, it’s not as if memes like this are still all over here on the fediverse: https://lemmy.gockandgum.party/post/https%3A%2F%2Flemmy.gockandgum.party/4488?thread=0.16856.18063
and everyone upvoting it and people getting the impression that starting on ubuntu is still a good idea.
i’ve probably got nearly as many distro recommendations as i’ve got replies here, because as if you guys know which distro would support a whole 3 complicated usecases i gave (not use a vulnurable protocol, have an installer, and supporting some slightly advanced feature for applications to use).
I gave ubuntu a try because i’ve seen regular posts here about ubuntu vs mint, and people being pretty balanced about both, maybe i missed all the posts that said “using ubuntu will cause you hours of pain avoiding vulnurabilities that are almost a decade old by now, with unstable ‘stable’ version etc…”, but i do remember plenty of posts here being like “just start with ubuntu or mint, it’ll be fine”.
It’s because old advice dies hard. Ubuntu had a good like 15 years of being the default choice, but now Canonical wants to IPO and they’re going to wring as much revenue as they can from anything they can get their hands on. That inevitably leads to enshittification, and Ubuntu is going through that process right now.
once again … UBUNTU DOES NOT USE SMBv1 as default !
i don’t and will never use UBUNTU … but you’re complaining about something you might have configured yourself!!!
your problems are for sure real - but don’t tell ppl its because ubuntu is using a vulnarable protocol
Yeah, someone else totally didn’t link the ticket (open since 2019) here about whatever ubuntu uses for its SMB share discovery defaulting to SMB1 and giving the exact error message i got when trying to see the SMB shares list of the server it discovered.
So yeah, not all of ubuntu defaults to it, but discovery sure does, and it’s embarrasing. I made this issue knowing full well that the things i complained about are 100% accurate.
You can continue to live in your imaginary world where Ubuntu is better, but it simply isn’t.
my whole point is, that your time spent on complaining would be better invested if you just write some questions which could be answered by the community rather than being sarcastically questioning the sanity of an operation system, just because you fail to use it
Suggestions:
- could somebody help me to install a deb file on ubuntu which i downloaded - the deb installer is not existing anymore
would maybe lead to:
- check out deb installer XYZ which you can find in the software center
- install via the terminal using sudo apt install ./XYZ.deb
Suggestion2:
- the network discovery doesn’t find my NAS, I’m using ubuntu XX.YY with the default filemanager (or something else) … what could be the issue
would maybe lead to:
- try mounting it directly to a folder using:
sudo mount -t cifs //[NAS_IP]/[Share_Name] [Mount_Point] -o username=[Your_Username],password=[Your_Password] - if it fails do
dmesg | grep -i cifsand let me know the outcome
we are pretty friendly usually … but if you don’t do your part - I for my part am not … you sound a bit to lazy to me (in my imaginary world)
I figured out all the issues myself, as repeated here, i’m a professional developer with some headless raspberry pi’s & synologies i know how to manage.
This is a rant on the abysmal state of the linux desktop (stable OS just losing random crucial features, relying on a vulnurable protocol for basic functionality, supporting nice to have features such as HDR & variable refreshrate (which are both decades old) being an absolute nightmare).
Hence the title being a complaint about the linux desktop being an absolute nightmare and total crap, and not “help me, i’m stuck”. I was not stuck, i can figure out the workarounds, but i was appalled at what i saw, i expected issues & struggling, but this was way beyond & below what i could even imagine.
Also evidenced by the dozen of distros i’ve had recommended so far, and conflicting advice (i absolutely do, and do not need wayland for variable refreshrates, depending on who you ask).
This is just a nightmare ecosystem to participate in, and that’s what i wanted to get across, and i think i succeeded pretty well :).
so if that’s the grande finale of yours, trying to leave your comfort zone - and you consider that as satisfying … well - i wish you all the best for your future endeavours
there are plenty of options in linux - you just gave up because your desired usecase wasn’t working out of the box … and instead of risking to learn something you decided to spread negativity and even worse, you spread incorrect information to others … hope you had your fun with that
quote: “but this was way beyond & below what i could even imagine.” - mate, you complained about not having a GUI for doing
apt install XYZ.debthe whole eco system would be so much nicer, if people would resist to spread negativity and instead become a part of the solution rather than the problem … you say, your an dev - you found some workarounds … great, what blocks you of writing some guides to some of the issues you ran into - or even do some PRs to get rid of the problems you faced
its so easy to expect that this wonderfull opensource world is doing everything what multi billion $ comanies are doing and then complain about whats not working (perfectly on first try) instead of apreciating the thousands and thousands of hours ppl are investing to get things going and having a chance of getting out of the walled gardens of windows/macOS - and if it comes to my experience - they did not only come close - they 100% replaced windows
Not really sure what to think when I see posts like this. Maybe there’s some people it’s just not for. I don’t want to be negative, but I think some folks just might not be open to it.
I’ve been using exclusively Linux for all my computing for over 3 years now. My high-end gaming PC, my work laptop that I service multiple IT clients with, my Steam Deck, my entire home lab, even my phone runs GrapheneOS. And I love all of it.
I use a bunch of different distros, Manjaro, Nobara, Ubuntu, Alma, Fedora, Mint, Lubuntu, with different desktop environments, apps, services like SMB, NFS, DHCP, Apache, TrueNAS, Jellyfin, various gaming servers for Minecraft, Arma 3, Valhiem, etc.
I play scores of different games, online Mutiplayer, single player, indie, AAA, retro titles. I do all my email, ticketing, business accounting, invoicing, banking, Discord, matrix, social media, personal email, browsing, printing, scanning, streaming and editing on Linux. There’s literally nothing I do in my personal or business computing that runs on Windows, not even in a VM.
I just don’t really know what to tell folks that claim that Linux just doesn’t work for desktop use. My systems are more stable than Windows, more customizable, easier to update, configure, and troubleshoot. They run faster, and are quicker to install.
I just switched my parents to Linux Mint this holiday season and they’ve had no problems, all their basic computing needs Linux handles perfectly and runs better on their super old hardware than Windows ever did.
My friends and I love our Steam Decks, use them all the time, both in gaming and in desktop mode, all Linux there too.
Idk, it has been amazing for me to be 100% free of Windows forever. I don’t miss it an all, I just wish I had converted sooner. And I’m not some Linux god who lives in the terminal all the time either, but the documentation and help from the community is endless and has helped me solve any issues I’ve had.
It’s not that i don’t believe you, but i just typed out the nice surprises i encountered while just trying some (imo basic) things on a fresh install.
the SMB thing, seriously… this is a vulnurability from 2017, and ubuntu not only defaults to this protocol, but doesn’t even have a way to disable it??
the refresh rate thingy, maybe a bit specific, but in windows it’s just a setting you enable in any app, and it works.
and the installer being “oops, we forgot to replace it”… if the ubuntu version was marked as “this is bleeding edge unstable”, i would have just taken the LTS version. but from all i can tell 23.10 is just the latest stable, that seems to be anything but stable?
This is not about “being open to it”, this is just 5 hours of googling, trying things, realizing that things that i expected to be pretty basic are just working sooo badly. and i know switching from windows would take some effort, but hours of struggling to have to end up working around a vulnurable protocol that i can’t disable, having to struggle with just getting some package installed (defeating the entire point of why these packages would be easier), and for now giving up on a nice playback feature.
And of course in this thread i’ve already had at least 3 different distros recommended with noone really knowing if the kodi usecase is supported by them because even people who use linux for everything have no way of figuring out which distro, if any, supports refreshrate switching…
you can be all “you have to be open to it”, as i’ve got multiple headless linux machines and even got some complicated stuff running on it requiring me to do some more advanced stuff via ssh and actually understanding some parts of linux. It’s not that i don’t want to learn, i wouldn’t even know how. Read the replies yourself, people are already “do you really need refresh rate switching?” (aka, we also don’t know how to figure out how to get this feature that just works in other OS’es to work in any linux distro).
I’m not expecting everything to just work, and don’t mind googling. but these were literally the 3 first things i tried on this linux, and each of them was hell… and googling for solutions was also hell with a lot of outdated advice, and regarding the refreshrates… not really much advice at all, even though htpc on linux is relatively popular & this is something that can be a known benefit to the playback quality.
And of course i’m getting downvoted for this post because posting the reality of trying desktop linux (as an experienced IT guy) is something that’s rather not seen?..
Everything I can find online for SMB version usage in Ubuntu’s file explorer seems to indicate that for the last several years mounting SMB shares defaults to version 2.0 and up already.
Idk if that’s true, I haven’t looked at the version of Samba for my own SMB shares, nothing is exposed to the web so not a huge concern for me. Regardless, sounds like a bug? Idk, you also could have tried installing a different file explorer to see if that was the issue I suppose.
I don’t understand the Kodi refresh rate issue. I’m not familiar with Kodi at all, is it supposed to set your monitor’s refresh rate to match the framerate of the video that is currently playing in Kodi?
Not sure about the installer problem you were having either. I just tested downloading the .deb package for DockerStation on my Ubuntu VM and it seems to work perfectly. Right clicked the .deb package > Open with other application > Open with the Ubuntu software install center app > Then click “install.” It installed just like any other repo package for me in about 60 seconds and it launched totally fine too.
Granted my VM is the LTS Jammy Jelly 22.04 version, but that shouldn’t matter. If it doesn’t work on the newer stable version of Ubuntu, then I would submit it as a bug report. Also, DockerStation has an AppImage package too, why didn’t you try running that if you had issues with the .deb package?
I think people are downvoting you largely because you’re using your personal experience to claim that the Linux desktop experience as a whole is terrible, which just isn’t true. At least that’s how I think it came across to many people. That’s why I listed my own personal experience, they aren’t objective data, whether good or bad.
It would have been better for you to either create a thread asking for help with those specific issues, or at least taken a more tempered approach.
Ultimately, I’m sorry your experience has been bad. I think Linux desktop just isn’t for some people, for various reasons, and that’s fine. If you’re still wanting to try it, I would suggest creating a live USB of a few other distros and testing out the same kinds of things. My personal favs are Linux Mint Cinnamon edition and Fedora KDE Plasma edition.
I wasn’t on the ubuntu machine anymore, so i couldn’t quickly find the link to the SMB issue, but you’re in luck, someone else in this thread already did (he linked it with (in capitals) WHAT THE HECK as link title): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/samba/+bug/1697817
And he understood my frustration that such a bug would be open for about 5 years now across multiple major versions. :) . Now i’ve manually mounted some of the shares, the file manager suddenly also uses a better version of SMB to fetch the shared folders and it suddenly works. But this should take googling & terminal work to just explore a network share from a desktop environment.
Right clicked the .deb package > Open with other application > Open with the Ubuntu software install center app
That’s because you’re so lucky to not be on a clean 23.10 install, since as i showed in the link i posted, it’s not there in a clean 23.10 install for some reason :). I found tons of links saying i should right click, and open it with an application that for some mysterious reason was missing on my ubuntu install :).
Known Ubuntu bug looks like for the SMB problem.
I was able to replicate the .deb issue on a fresh 23.10 install VM a little while ago. Looks like it is a confirmed issue in 23.10 also.
The Appimage file for DockerStation worked fine though. I just had to install Fuse with apt and DockerStation opened right up without issue. Any reason you didn’t use that version?
You didn’t really respond to my other comments, so I don’t really know where that leaves things. Like I said, I’m sorry your experience with Ubuntu has been bad, if you still want to give Linux a try on desktop, use Fedora KDE version or Linux Mint Cinnamon, both I’ve had great results with.
If not, then thanks for trying out desktop Linux.
If you’re getting downvoted it’s probably because you sound a bit condescending.
Anyway, most of your issues are Ubuntu issues, not Linux issues. And as you may have learned, most Linux users don’t really go with Ubuntu anymore as a recommendation. Personally, I use Fedora with as many flatpaks as possible and have a great experience.
Clicking on a deb (or .rpm) to install something is a last resort imo. Install from the package manager first, flatpak or snap next.
Variable refresh rates aren’t something I care about so I don’t know 🤷🏻♂️ but sounds very firmware/hardware dependent. HDR is just not implemented fully yet, but being heavily worked on. Linux is in the middle of the final push to switch X to Wayland which will likely fix these kinds of issues once fully adopted.
I use Podman Desktop if I need a docker ui (flatpak) btw. Also available in other ways and OS.
Yes, it’s just you.
To be honest it seems like it’s a specific problem to you. I use Linux desktop for many years and for 3 years exclusively and it’s a much better experience for me than Windows (in every aspect).
I think it’s just a lack of experience on your side. You are comparing your years of experience on Windows with a OS you barely know.
Just because you are a “power user” on Windows doesn’t mean you can handle Linux the same way.
I can tell you i don’t need any windows experience to browse a discovered network share, enable a setting in an application and have it just work, and click an .msi file and expect windows to not have removed the handler for that file type.
I get it, you like linux, but blanket statements like this are just so unproductive. “and it’s a much better experience for me than Windows (in every aspect).”. Sorry, i just don’t believe you. I’m sure you’re happier with linux for many good reasons, but there have to be things that windows did better.
Just because you are a “power user” on Windows doesn’t mean you can handle Linux the same way.
I’m not expecting that, i just wrote this after 5 hours of frustration when trying to get imo pretty basic things to work. This is not just “i clicked or installed something and it didn’t work”. I’m a developer, i’ve got many docker packages running on my NAS, i know my way around a linux terminal. This is “they didn’t work, so i started googling, then 2 hours of frustration later i settled on not being able to just browse to my network share in the file manager and mount them somewhere via some fstab editing in the terminal”. and "ffs, i just wanted to try a docker gui, how hard could it be to install a deb package which the ubuntu site itself says “deb packages are the heart of ubuntu” (ubuntu must be stone dead if that’s the heart). And the refreshrate & HDR is nice to have i guess. But yeah, i want nice things, they don’t seem such unreasonable features to request. And i wouldn’t mind if i had to follow some complicated guide to get there. It’s just after hours of googling, i’m no closer then where i started.
What exactly would be the linux way? It’s a nice thing to repeat, but how would you describe the linux way in this context? I’m a new linux user, i want kodi to switch my display to the correct refreshrate when i play a movie. I want to follow the linux way, what is that way?
I think I’ve already informed you in another thread that .deb is not equivalent to .msi .
The former is a package of one component with its version and information about dependencies. The latter is an installer of something which is supposed to work right away.
I know it’s not literally the same, but it’s the exact same principle, ubuntu breaking installing deb packages would be equivalent to microsoft breaking installing msi packages. You do understand analogies i hope and realize that it’s often impossible to find 100% exact matches when you want to make a comparison.
I’m not talking about software present in default installation of any specific distribution, that’s their decision. I’m talking about “some error” after that.
No, it’s not an equivalent culturally.
You can put into a .deb or an .rpm package same kind of things you’d put into an .msi package, proprietary software from late 90-s and early 00-s for Linux would do that often, installing those things under ‘/opt’ . But usually it’s a usual package requiring specified versions of other usual packages, otherwise it won’t work.
I am talking about a specific distribution, the one i was posting here about, so then we can stop this thread here i guess :).
Not all analogies are helpful. Yours is actively preventing your understanding.
That’s just not true. If you give your 90yo grandma a Windows computer she is gonna struggle hard.
You are a Windows user for now. You need to learn Linux as you learned Windows years ago.
Yeah, but unlike me she isn’t a professional developer that has some experience with headless linux systems.
And please, don’t avoid the real question: What exactly would be the linux way? It’s a nice thing to repeat, but how would you describe the linux way in this context? I’m a new linux user, i want kodi to switch my display to the correct refreshrate when i play a movie. I want to follow the linux way, what is that way?
I use Linux Mint on several NUC-style computers. I even use it for servers even though it is a Desktop. Based on Ubuntu but it does fewer stupid things. I run many docker containers. Run Plex in docker. Can’t speak to the refresh rate in X. Wayland is coming, but it will be a while.
Mint is here to fix the bullshit that Canonical is too corporate trash to fix themselves. Ubuntu is just popular out of leftover reputation from 10 years ago that came along a strong marketing campaign. Today Ubuntu is garbage even for server applications.
Same, switched to Mint years ago and never looked back. Ubuntu is only a bit less annoying than windows these days.
From my current experience, Ubuntu seems a lot more annoying. Ok, it spies less on you but at least windows mostly works :p
Because comparing Windows and Ubuntu is comparing a 3 decades old pile of trash with a 10 year old pile of trash. But they’re still two piles of trash.
Use arch, EndeavorOS, Debian, pop!OS, fedora and you’ll see the immediate difference. How Canonical is more kin with MS and Oracle than with the FOSS movement.
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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.exemeant 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.
and then added it to my fstab as a workaround
Use of
/etc/fstabis not a workaround. It’s the standard place where you add things to mount.Your problem is that you use googling, watching pictures and clicking through stuff, just like in Windows, thinking that this skill makes you an advanced user.
Instead of googling you can just read the error message, it usually sufficiently explains what the problem is.
Installing software should not change settings like file type associations, I think that’s normal. You may think differently. Somebody has made a choice which in this case is closer to my opinion, in other cases that may be different.
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?
This is incomprehensible.
Ubuntu does still have a GUI to install software from .deb packages, I think.
But you shouldn’t try to install packages for another distribution using .deb packages (like Debian itself), or packages for another Ubuntu version.
Unlike some software installer in Windows, a package on most Linux distributions doesn’t include dependencies, only information about them and the software itself. Say, in Windows you can have the same DLL in a 100 copies and versions if it’s not a system one. In Linux you usually have the same library installed and even loaded once.
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?
Yes, you are getting something completely wrong, and it’s the culture and not some technical difference.
Though I agree that outside of repositories maybe software should be distributed not in the same packages, but like something to be put into
/opt, like in olden Linux days and more similar to your Windows experience ; GOG games’ installers do that, only use~/GOG\ Gamesor whatever you choose.EDIT: And also Ubuntu as a distribution has some downsides. Try Mageia, it’s not widely used, but pleasant. Or Fedora, everyone and their dog is using it. Or OpenSUSE, it’s kinda spiritually corporate and they have worrying plans for the following major versions, but as of now it’s pleasant.
EDIT2: Also why did you google for software in the first place? You couldn’t find what you wanted in the repositories or just wasn’t aware how it’s done here?
Ahh the favourite pasttime of the linux community: blaming the user.
See, i install ubuntu. It has this files application to brows your files in a gui. I click other sources, it detects my SMB shares, i click on one of those, and i get some vague error, i no longer have the exact error text but it was something like “item not found in list”. You feel that on a fresh desktop install clicking the files tab, and then clicking the discovered network share, and expect it being able to handle a protocol that got exploited in 2017 being disabled, and then throwing an error “item not found in list” is me just randomly clicking around expecting a windows experience and me not being able to read error messages? You’re so far off the mark that it’s not even funny anymore. Yeah, i’ve got a dozen containers on my synology with proper permission management and shared users between those containers, properly exposing some to the internet, and having set up watchtower to automatically update everything to keep it secure since i’m such a windows user that doesn’t know anything else…
Ubuntu does still have a GUI to install software from .deb packages, I think.
dude, CLICK THE LINK I GAVE, IT DOESN’T. and what do you mean install a package for another distribution. https://dockstation.io, see the link “download for ubuntu/debian”. I’m just doing what the first application i thought of trying tells me. Or do the developers of linux apps themselves have no clue how to support the most popular distro? According to you that may be the case, but that’s not my fault then.
And why did i google software? i entered “docker” in the package manager but didn’t find much, so i thought i’d give google a try. also to get some reviews/experience of people trying the applications, i could blindly try packages, but reading some user experiences makes the choice easier.
Ahh the favourite pasttime of the linux community: blaming the user.
“The Linux community” in general understands that you are not “just dumb” or a “noob”, but you are unfamiliar with the way things are done in Linux, your Windows experience is useless for that, and you should be informed of that.
Now some Windows-savvy people thinking that not being able to navigate their junkyard is being a “noob” seem worse for me.
click on one of those, and i get some vague error, i no longer have the exact error text but it was something like
Unlike on Windows, errors here are usually informative, and “something like …” is useless. We can’t trust you to determine if it’s vague or not.
dude, CLICK THE LINK I GAVE, IT DOESN’T.
The article advises you to install GDebi from repositories (with a nice GUI) to do that. Have you done that?
and what do you mean install a package for another distribution.
You should install a package for Ubuntu on Ubuntu and a package for Debian on Debian. The package filename extension being .deb and its format being .deb doesn’t mean it’ll work on any system using .deb . Yes, it may.
Or do the developers of linux apps themselves have no clue how to support the most popular distro?
Developers usually care most about the distribution they themselves use.
And if something isn’t in the repositories of the most popular ones, it means the developer of the application doesn’t care to maintain it there and nobody else cares.
According to you that may be the case, but that’s not my fault then.
Your fault is treating it wrong. If others don’t need it and you need it, why cry that desktop Linux sucks? Maybe it sucks for you, well, sorry.
Unlike on Windows, errors here are usually informative, and “something like …” is useless. We can’t trust you to determine if it’s vague or not.
Yeah, i’m a developer, the error i got was about as helpful as “nullreference exception”. I found the issue was the SMBv1 default by googling the exact error. Here it is for you “Failed to retrieve share list invalid argument”. Really helpful message :).
The article advises you to install GDebi from repositories (with a nice GUI) to do that. Have you done that?
Yes, and then got stuck since that tool failed to find something called gconf2 that is a dependency. Then i followed command line install instructions that also gave errors. Which the instructions found perfectly normal and expected, they said to then run an apt command to fix it, but then apt would just uninstall the application again (which i guess ‘fixes’ a botched installation).
But you find it normal that the application normally handling .deb files on linux just disappears on a popular beginner distro, and to install something i have to start googling and avoid all the links telling me to use the built in application that suddenly disappeared, to then find that one link that tells me “yeah, ubuntu made a huge mistake here, here’s how you fix it”.
Sorry, but this is just abysmal user experience. And yeah, i’m a developer, i can find my way around command line tools, but for something this basic? for real?
Your fault is treating it wrong. If others don’t need it and you need it, why cry that desktop Linux sucks? Maybe it sucks for you, well, sorry.
So i should expect every little thing to be a minor or major struggle, with the rich ecosystem of linux apps be so fragmented to mostly just work on the distro the developer uses, which you have to guess since they might still mention your distro on their website, even if they don’t really properly support it.
If treating it wrong means not making linux my hobby, and just wanting to use it like i can with my headless servers, then it’s indeed not for me. And yeah, i’ve head my moments of frustration with my synology/raspberries. But most of the things i want to do on them do work from the first try, and if a gui is offered, it just works. If that’s too high of an expectation, then you just come across as delusional for me. I don’t expect everything to be perfect, but for it to be this bad in 2023 just seems ridiculous. And maybe i just happened to land in a perfect storm of things that don’t work on ubuntu being the first things i try. But then being like “maybe linux isn’t for you”. I’m a professional developer running multiple headless linux machines and a dozen docker containers for various things. If it isn’t for me, who is it for O_O…
and to install something i have to start googling
To install something you have to install it from the repository, and not download something from some webpage.
If you do the latter and encounter problems which you don’t know how to solve, that’s not someone else’s fault.
Most likely there was some version conflict or your system wasn’t multilib (didn’t have 32-bit Intel compatibility repositories enabled and certain packages installed from there), while the thing you downloaded was for 32-bit Intel.
i’m a developer, i can find my way around command line tools
That doesn’t really require one to be a developer, it’s like saying “I can find my way around 3-button mouse”, but OK.
So i should expect every little thing to be a minor or major struggle, with the rich ecosystem of linux apps be so fragmented to mostly just work on the distro the developer uses, which you have to guess since they might still mention your distro on their website, even if they don’t really properly support it.
Not “every little thing”, just every little thing with such a developer.
And maybe i just happened to land in a perfect storm of things that don’t work on ubuntu being the first things i try. But then being like “maybe linux isn’t for you”. I’m a professional developer running multiple headless linux machines and a dozen docker containers for various things. If it isn’t for me, who is it for O_O…
The issue is you resist others trying to point out your mistakes. And that “I’m a professional developer” attitude invokes suspicions really.
And note that I’m not saying a particular distribution is fine. I actually use Void, in some sense because of the issues with some more “user-friendly” or smart things.
Maybe you should try that or Gentoo (which recently got official precompiled binary packages on its mirrors, so you don’t have to compile everything) or Arch. May actually be easier.
Or NixOS, it’s a more “modern” thing with declarative configuration etc, I haven’t used it, so can’t give advice, but maybe with the way you seem to use lots of devops tools it will feel ideologically familiar.
To install something you have to install it from the repository, and not download something from some webpage.
Ah yes, i should have known better than to rely on the documentation of the website of an application i should install. Do you guys really consider this a sane ecosystem? I google what kind of apps there are for what i want. I find the site of one i want to try, it says “here is a deb package for ubuntu”, and then hell ensues. And when i share this experience your reaction is “you should have known better” O_o… yeah no. This is just insanity. If according to you even the developers of applications fail to send their users in the right direction on how to get their application installed, there is probably little hope for a mere user like me.
Well, go blame the developer of that application for failing to do things right.
Why would consequences of their actions somehow affect the sanity of the “ecosystem”?
That the ecosystem seems so complex that even developers don’t know how they should recommend their users should install an application. Haven’t encountered that yet on windows. And i’ve had plenty of people here tell me “yes, you CAN install deb packages, and many apps will GIVE you deb packages, and the ubuntu page says Debian packages is the very HEART of ubuntu. But you’d be insane to install something like that”. Does that sound like a good ecosystem, where people aknowledge that the best way to do stuff is ignore everything app developers & the makers of one of the largest distros say, and do the opposite and ignore apps that you can’t install in the way that i should magically know is the best way.
I stand by my words man, but you’re free to try to convince me :).
Booooo op Boooooooo
Edit:get off the stage
Linux just isn’t for you. Stick with what you know and never consider that you might just not be as savvy as you think outside of Windows. No shame in that.
You need Fedora in your life. Problem solved.
(yeah, i ended up finding how to mount things manually, and then added it to my fstab as a workaround, but wtf)
I think you’re expecting Ubuntu to behave exactly like Windows. There are tasks which any Linux machine is going to be better-equipped for than Windows, and it’d be silly to say that Windows “is a terrible development experience” because it doesn’t run valgrind or strace or whatever. Contrawise, there are things which will definitely be easier or more intuitive to set up on Windows as opposed to any Linux distro you find, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad desktop; just that it has a different set of strengths and weaknesses. For me, adding to fstab would be more of a normal thing to do than to use the Ubuntu GUI by quite a lot.
It kind of sounds like you’re not interested in a lot of the benefits of having a Linux installation, just interested in something that works exactly like Windows and is good at exactly the same things. In which case, and I’m not trying to sound sarcastic, Windows might be more what you’re interested in.
(Or, actually, a Mac may be more specifically what you’re looking for – similar “it just works” ness like Windows but works better for most things, outside a handful of specific tasks Windows still does better)
(Also - if Ubuntu really is refusing to talk to an SMB v2 machine I’d be very surprised by that. Which tool were you using? The built in Ubuntu desktop SMB browser I assume? What did you do to verify that it was the lack of XMB v1 that was the problem (e.g. enabling SMB1 temporarily and seeing if the tool started working)? As you noted, SMB v1 is terrible and if it’s forcing the use of it, that’s a for-real problem.)
Noticed that even though i enabled that setting on Kodi, it’s not switching to the refreshrate of the video i’m playing.
I have literally never in my life had my monitor’s refresh rate switch to match the framerate of the video I’m watching. What refresh rate was it, and what’s the framerate that you wanted it to match? I’m trying to wrap my head around what it is that you’re watching that just letting the screen refresh at 60Hz or whatever speed it was going at won’t cut it.
The HDR is a fair point. That’s a legit example of something where I could easily see Windows working better than Linux, which is why I wouldn’t try to use one as a drop-in replacement for the other. This exact type of thing – some niche feature which genuinely is pretty useful but requires a bunch of different softwares to play nice with each other when Windows just sort of works out-of-the-box – is something where Linux tends to lag behind.
Downloaded the .deb file (since ubuntu is a debian variant it seems), double clicked the file and … “no app installed for this file”…
This just isn’t the way to do it – installing Debian .debs on Ubuntu definitely won’t work reliably, and downloading and installing random .debs from the internet is rarely the way to do it even if the distros do match (flavor and exact version). Does Rancher fit your needs? Looking over this it looks like that’s the first thing I would try if I wanted “something like Dockstation that works well on Ubuntu.”
I think overall – just realize that Linux was created for very different reasons than “I want exactly the same thing as Windows, just to do all the work to create Windows over again and give it away for free.” It was created for people who wanted a very specific type of development-friendly and Unix-friendly environment, and since the majority of it is still being made by those people for those people, it’s gonna be constructed according to those parameters.
I have literally never in my life had my monitor’s refresh rate switch to match the framerate of the video I’m watching. What refresh rate was it, and what’s the framerate that you wanted it to match? I’m trying to wrap my head around what it is that you’re watching that just letting the screen refresh at 60Hz or whatever speed it was going at won’t cut it.
was also heavily wondering this. Most TVs don’t change their refresh rate to their content. they just output 1080p 60hz (or whatever) and only do the updates every 24hz and will just double up frames. Expecting to change your output based on the content feels real weird.
if this person has stuttery video, its something else or they have a very niche use case.
Yeah. That’s why I asked for some details. That said I think the underlying root of the complaint (“I did cool stuff on Windows, now I’m trying Linux and it can’t do my cool stuff, WTF I hate this”) is probably pretty valid. I think the solution is, either learn about the cool stuff Linux can do that Windows can’t, and start there instead of trying to duplicate your Windows setup, or just stick with what you’re already happy with.
If “cool stuff on windows” is going to your file manager and browsing to a network share, and that working, and not having the stable version of the OS suddenly lose its installer for a specific kind of files… Then yeah, i should probably stick to windows. I can kind of get the refreshrate thingy, although it’s still pretty pathetic after all these years. And reading up on HDR (which is 20 years old by now), feels equally pathetic. Yes, i’d like to be able to use my linux desktop to be able to play video files as intended: with the monitor/projector switching to the correct refresh rate (so you don’t see a slight stutter whenever the camera pans), and with HDR if applicable.
I made this thread about 5 hours after i installed ubuntu, you guys seem to be avoiding actually knowledging that these are some huge glaring issues that completely ruin the user experience, and be like “but look at the cool stuff linux can do”. I know the cool stuff linux can do, i’ve got a dozen docker containers running on my synology doing home automation/downloading/servers of all kinds/… I just hoped the linux desktop experience would be… at least tolerable and not 5 hours of frustrated googling trying ‘advanced things’ like… browsing to a network share, installing a package i get when i click on ubuntu/debian on the site of a linux application (and i didn’t post the whole ordeal, then installed a tool to install the package, that failed due to some dependency, then installed it via the command line, that then also gave all kinds of errors, which the instructions found perfectly normal), or playing a video file the way it’s supposed to be played.
If you really think those 3 above usecases are “cool windows stuff” and “it’s unrealistic to expect these from linux”, can you please say that explicitly? Browsing to a network share, installing a .deb package supported on a debian based OS, and playing a HDR video file in HDR and at the correct framerate with your display are “unrealistic expectations”. The last one you might be able to make a tiny bit of a case for, but the other 2… for real??
If your screen is at 60hz and your source is at 24hz, some frames will last 2 frames, some will last 3 frames, it’s a subtle stutter you see when for example the image is panning (and linux defaulted to 30hz on my monitor, so 24fps on 30hz refreshrate the effect is even more noticable), so i prefer the system to just switch to the proper refresh rate. The monitor/projector support switching to exactly 24fps, in the infinite power of linux, how hard could this be, for real. I get this is “advanced” and “a nice windows feature”. But ffs, it’s switching your display output. I can right click on my linux desktop, go to the display settings, and select 24fps refresh rate, and it switches. How hard could it be to provide an api to let an application do the same…
If the community is like this on every nice to have feature that shouldn’t be that hard to support, linux probably also isn’t for me.
(reminds me of another subtle issue i noticed in Kodi. on the windows version i can use the back button on my mouse to go back to the previous screen, on the linux version that didn’t work. found an issue about it, where the replies were “we can’t map every specific input system you have by default” (but the windows version can). And even better “wtf is a back button on a mouse” (that guy apparently missed the last decade of computer mouse development). And even after multiple users mentioning “we just want the linux version to behave like the windows version”, but that question was just ignored in favor of “configure it yourself in the settings (even though the config didn’t allow to map that button”, and the ignorance of what even a back button on a mouse would be.
I understand that 24/60 doesn’t divide evenly. My point is just that televisions don’t have this feature either. When I watch movies, even if the source is 24hz, my TV stays at 60hz.
Either way, there certainly is “an API” to do it. With
xrandryou can justxrandr --refresh 24and it would work. It’s something that is absolutely doable. Whatever xrandr is doing clearly the X server is exposing ways to change it. So anyone saying “X can’t do that” is probably wrong.I don’t know much about Ubuntu other than everyone recommends it because it’s overly simple and then inevitably things go wrong with it and it’s impossible to fix because its overly simple. If I had to guess, this is something specific about Ubuntu and it using wayland by default. Wayland is the X replacement, so any fixes for Xorg refresh rate changing definitely don’t apply.
Potential solution : if you log out, on the log in screen it should give you an option of which desktop environment to log into (a gear in the bottom right corner with an option for “Ubuntu on Xorg”)…
It’s possible that Ubuntu has removed this option recently. Wayland is the future, but it is different from X and not all software is ready for that change. My guess is that the checkbox in Kodi uses the Xorg APIs to change refresh rate, and Wayland doesn’t use those APIs, so it just doesn’t work. Wayland is in awkward teenage years where it’s trying to pretend like it’s ready to take on the world, but it’s got a lot of rough edges still.
I would say that refresh rate changing doesn’t really reflect on “linux on desktop” (a normal desktop use case doesn’t have refresh rates changing regularly), but rather “linux as a HTPC/media center”. And furthermore, most of your complaints are specific about Ubuntu. The biggest “Linux has issues” problem is that people are still using Ubuntu and picking a distro is way too much work, and the wayland transition is breaking some functionality of some software that hasn’t updated yet.
I would like to point out that you have come into a Linux community and lead off with “this is a terrible experience” and then described quite a few issues that either “Ubuntu” (not “Linux”) issues or otherwise somewhat non-standard uses. So if you’re getting a weird mix of “defensive,” “agreement that Ubuntu sucks, use something else,” and “utter confusion about the use case” … its probably the way the conversation started.
Also, this wouldn’t be the first thread where someone shows up and complains purely on the basis of “linux isn’t windows” so the community is already primed to be agitated about threads like this. Kneejerk reactions aren’t the best, but I’m sure you weren’t trying to come in here and coming across as aggressive either.
but I’m sure you weren’t trying to come in here and coming across as aggressive either.
I knew i wouldn’t come across too well XD. I might as well have posted this on the “off my chest” community. This was written in frustration so will be negative & harsh, but i’m technical enough to also know that at least 2 of the issues i mention are pretty unforgivable. But just browsing to an SMB share that is discover relying on a protocol that is deprecated and was exploited over 6 years ago by ransomware… Gotta love linux security focus. And that installer suddenly disappearing from ubuntu… nice way to ruin your user experience and make anything they google obsolete and unhelpful and make it hard to figure out how to install stuff when it’s not in the default app manager.
And i love how the refreshrate issue is like a magnet for people here to be like “yeah, but do you really need that” (and while they’re at it ignore the other 2 issues, since they’re inconvient to address). But our eyes are really god at detecting disturbances in smooth motion. I can at least easily spot it, try it next time you watch something on your tv, whenever the camera pans, if the refreshrate & framerate don’t perfectly divide, it’s visible. It can not bother you, good for you, it does bother me. It’s like if i say “you’re now on manual breathing mode”, and for the next 5 minutes you’ll be very aware you’re breathing. If the camera makes a nice large panning movement, and i point out how you can see the framerate not matching the refreshrate, you’ll probably keep seeing it whenever the camera pans…
Refreshrate is the magnet probably because it feels like the only one that isn’t covered by “yeah, ubuntu is shit. I agree.” And I understand fully how much refresh matters. I use 144 and 240hz monitors because low refresh bothers me. It was intended as less of a “this shouldn’t bother you” and more of a “this is an edge case feature that not even my blu ray player handles, and that’s built for the specific purpose of watching videos.” It’s purely a use case I had never heard of before, so declaring Linux not ready for desktop over a completely niche feature feels unfair. (But again, I would check for Xorg vs Wayland)
Ubuntu has been moving more and more of their software away from deb packaging and towards “snaps” which are their own thing. And snaps are terrible. imo, Canonical is basically trying to figure out how to turn Ubuntu into a walled garden like Microsoft and Apple have.
So Ubuntu handling it’s packaging poorly and having out of date software with poor configurations doesn’t surprise me at all. I can’t counter your argument there because I agree with you that Ubuntu isn’t good for desktop. I’m not ignoring those issues, I’m agreeing (just about Ubuntu, and not necessarily Linux as a whole, which has a separate set of issues, like driving you towards Ubuntu in the first place)
I’m currently typing this on a Mac. I literally went into the settings and couldn’t immediately figure out how to change my refresh rate at all, let alone how to make my video player change the refresh rate automatically to match the fps of each video file it was playing. Does that mean MacOS isn’t ready for the desktop?
I’m actually trying to substantively address what I think is the actual root of your complaints, which I actually think is pretty valid. But this specific detail is a bonkers thing to seize on as something holding back Linux from desktop adoption.
How hard could it be to provide an api to let an application do the same…
Great question. Are you interested in a substantive answer?
I’m a developer, go for it :).
Haha sure. So one of the biggest weaknesses of Linux is that it’s a big patchwork of stuff that was all put together by some particular person to solve some particular problem at some particular time. On Windows, it really is as simple as what you’re saying: Make an API, these are the functions, done. It might not be simple under the hood but it’s all at least under one entity’s control, and it’s clearly a nice thing to have, so they have the organizational will to make it happen.
On Linux, you might have three or four pieces of software all which have to interact, some of which were designed decades ago. The video player is maybe using Qt or SDL or something like that. It needs to call library functions in whatever it’s using. Those functions need to exist (and the video player’s developers have to know which one to call, and make the changes). In order for those to actually work, the library API needs to make calls to Wayland. Oh wait, are you using Wayland? Or Xorg? Depends on your distro. Once it makes it to Wayland/Xorg, it’s probably good. But there are already three different APIs that need to have the calls added to them, and the people involved have to all agree on getting it done, and if at any point something changes, it all falls down.
(That’s also the explanation for your back-mouse-button sadness. It honestly gets worse than that; I had some toolkit the other day which couldn’t understand mouse scrolling which really should be a solved problem at this point. Actually, that was a python / matplotlib problem now that I think about it – this type of problem impacts pretty much anything that comes from the free software side of the fence.)
If your software is centrally organized, and the people putting it together are profit-motivated, you don’t have issues like that, because no sane person would centrally organize it that way, and as you pointed out, end users tend to hate it. On the other hand, if your software is put together by people who want to be able to use it every day, you can say “install me a web server” “now put Wordpress on it” “now install GIMP so I can edit photos” and each of those is a single
aptcommand which takes a few seconds, which is way better than the installation process on Windows. You don’t have to hunt around on different web sites, and it all keeps up with security updates automatically. But the down side is that sometimes simple things turn into a big pain in the ass if they happen to cross over multiple boundaries of where different entities’ softwares intersect. And as you’ve discovered, they genuinely don’t care at all if you want your back button to work right; they’re happy with how their machine works and consider it your problem if yours doesn’t. Some people in the corporate-Linux space have been trying for a very long time now to make it “beginner friendly” but in my mind that’s always going to be a pretty extreme half-measure just because it’s not designed to be so.Does that help?
I guess it kind of helps, but that means that the linux desktop will always be a shit experience, and i should just stick to my headless linux servers and find something else if i want a GUI… which is kind of sad…
And the strength you see in linux… ok, WSL in windows is probably a bit less efficient, but for most usages all those windows downsides are now moot with WSL & docker. if i want to install a web server and wordpress, it’s just as easy as any linux server. And installing programs like image editors, can’t say i’ve ever encountered issues doing that on windows.
Of course i know the main advantage of linux is no spyware crap, but it’s kind of sad if after all these years that’s pretty much still the only advantage. And i do use many open source apps in spite of free(mium) or cheap commercial/cloud alternatives existing that are more user friendly, if it gets the stuff i want done done, it’s good enough. But it seems i’m still not ready for the linux desktop experience, no matter how often it’s repeated on the fediverse here how good it is now…
I mean, I don’t think it’s a shit experience at all. It’s different. If you’re not aware of the strengths, then weaknesses like this are going to turn you off a lot. For me, I would never try to run Windows as my main desktop unless some weird situation came up that really required it, but some of the stuff you’re picking out as issues are real issues, yes.
And the strength you see in linux… ok, WSL in windows is probably a bit less efficient, but for most usages all those windows downsides are now moot with WSL & docker. if i want to install a web server and wordpress, it’s just as easy as any linux server.
I’m such a dickhead that I literally just spun up a totally fresh Debian server just so I could type
time apt install apache2 wordpressand can report that it took 46.314 seconds including me starting blankly at package lists for a little bit before hitting enter. Go install a web server and Wordpress on a fresh-installed Windows machine and come back and tell me how long it took and how many steps. The point is not that one literal example – it’s that once you learn how to use it, you’ll be able to work faster and more happily on it than you will on a Windows machine. If you need something in the domain where Linux shines, networking or development, it’ll be as far ahead of Windows as Windows is on things like consumer-hardware support and end-user experience. If you don’t need that, then it’s not relevant to you and its weaknesses will piss you off and of course you won’t like it.Of course i know the main advantage of linux is no spyware crap, but it’s kind of sad if after all these years that’s pretty much still the only advantage.
This is a very strange statement.
But it seems i’m still not ready for the linux desktop experience, no matter how often it’s repeated on the fediverse here how good it is now…
I mean… maybe those are the same people telling you to download Google Chrome .debs so I’m not sure I would put much stock in their statements. I’ve been hearing for over 20 years that Linux is obviously ready for the desktop, and I’m honestly not really convinced (with experiences like yours as pretty good examples of why).
So expecting the stable version of ubuntu to not just have thrown away its installer for one of the main ways of installing things on it, and for it to have disabled a protocol that was used in ransomware attacks almost a decade ago is… “i’m expecting ubuntu to behave like windows”.
I’m sorry, but you’re just ridiculous.
Regarding the refreshrate: this also connects to a projector, and i don’t think it’s able to wait for frames, it’ll just push out x frames per second, and if it doesn’t match your video source, you’ll see smooth motion isn’t quite that smooth. It may be an “advanced” usecase, but if supporting something like this is “expecting ubuntu to work like windows”, then yeah, maybe i better stick to windows… I had expected linux to also be good for htpc usage, but maybe not then.
But for real, i’ve got multiple headless linux machines here, i ssh in to them, got docker containers on them with some complicated usecases too, i know what to expect from linux and i don’t expect it to be like windows. But for the very first 3 things i try on a popular “beginners distro” to be this awful. This is not expecting “this works like windows”, this is me expecting a vulnurability of 2017 having been addressed, them not fucking up something as major as a package installer in a “stable” version, and the refreshrate is maybe a tiny bit specific, i can kind of forgive it that (but it would make linux bad for my usecase sadly, but for a modern desktop OS, i don’t see why it wouldn’t be supported).
Regarding the deb files not being the way to do it. I’m sure that’s why plenty of sites have install instructions for ubuntu be like “here, install this deb file”. You say this is not the way to do it, SO MANY APPS say it is. can this community please make up its mind??
expecting the stable version of ubuntu to not just have thrown away its installer for one of the main ways of installing things on it
Not at all what I said. Distros are generally made as coherent wholes; the stuff that comes through
apt installgenerally works great, and you never interact directly with a .deb. The whole model of “I found this thing on a web site and I want to download and run it on my system” is going to be a little more difficult on Linux. Since that’s the only way on Windows, since Windows doesn’t come prepackaged with thousands of different packages you can install through package management, it’ll seem to a Windows person like that’s “the way,” and when it’s not easy on Linux, it’ll seem to you like a deficiency in Linux.and for it to have disabled a protocol that was used in ransomware attacks almost a decade ago is
You didn’t answer my question. What steps did you do that led you to conclude that SMB v1 was the issue? I actually agree with you that that’s pretty bad and needs to be fixed in Ubuntu if it’s true, but I’m not convinced based on your description that that was what was making it not work. It sounds like maybe it didn’t work, and when it wasn’t working you decided it was trying to speak SMB v1 and didn’t test your conclusion. No?
Regarding the refreshrate: this also connects to a projector, and i don’t think it’s able to wait for frames, it’ll just push out x frames per second, and if it doesn’t match your video source, you’ll see smooth motion isn’t quite that smooth. It may be an “advanced” usecase, but if supporting something like this is “expecting ubuntu to work like windows”, then yeah, maybe i better stick to windows… I had expected linux to also be good for htpc usage, but maybe not then.
Like I say, I’m not trying to tell you not to have that as a feature if you want it or that you’re wrong for wanting this to work. I’m just saying that this seems like getting pretty far into the weeds of weedy things to raise as criticisms.
Was the video quality noticeably off in any way? It might have been that there was a genuine issue, unrelated to the frame rate. Given the history of interlaced video and vsync in video games, I’d be pretty surprised if the average human could even tell the difference between 24Hz and 24Hz-sampled-at-60Hz even paying close attention.
But for real, i’ve got multiple headless linux machines here, i ssh in to them, got docker containers on them with some complicated usecases too, i know what to expect from linux and i don’t expect it to be like windows. But for the very first 3 things i try on a popular “beginners distro” to be this awful.
I’m gonna be a little harsh. Having several Linux machines doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing. You say stuff like:
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?
not fucking up something as major as a package installer in a “stable” version
Regarding the deb files not being the way to do it. I’m sure that’s why plenty of sites have install instructions for ubuntu be like “here, install this deb file”. You say this is not the way to do it, SO MANY APPS say it is. can this community please make up its mind??
You, just like the person who wrote this thing you linked to, seem to be under the impression that Ubuntu is supposed to install .debs you downloaded when you click on them, and that not doing that means they “removed” it. That’s wrong. I have no idea why Ubuntu removed that behavior, but I suspect that it’s because installing some .deb you downloaded from the internet is almost never the right thing to do. The underlying package management can definitely still do it. If you know enough for it to be a safe thing to do, you’ll be able to do it without the GUI, and understand the messages you might get back and be capable enough to get it done to the point that the .deb you downloaded might actually work. If you just want to download and double-click and don’t know how to use the relevant tools, then it’s extremely unlikely that what you were doing was ever going to get your software to install and run in the first place.
I know this is kind of gonna be offensive me saying this, or unhelpful, or “see this is why it’s not ready for the desktop!” But I’m honestly just trying to communicate, this is how it works. Linux is designed as more of an integrated whole; in a lot of respects, that’s a really good thing. It sure is a pain in the ass when you want to install certain types of third party software though, yes, definitely. Windows (of necessity) has pretty good support for installing third party apps as self-contained entities. Again, on Windows the whole model of how you install software is to download something from some random internet site, so it’s even a little hard to process the concept of doing it some other way, or why that way wouldn’t be simple.
If you want to say “this is a big problem, we need Flatpak and Docker to improve in X Y and Z way so they can be viable replacements for drop-in installation of third party software like on Windows,” that sounds great. But – again, I apologize about this for being a little harsh – if your whole model for solving this problem is that Ubuntu should install .debs when you double-click on them, I don’t think you know enough about it to say what needs to happen to make it better.
What steps did you do that led you to conclude that SMB v1 was the issue?
I typed in the exact error message i got in google, and found the issue is that it tries to use SMBv1 to get the list of shares, and if it’s disabled on the server, you’re out of luck.
Was the video quality noticeably off in any way
It was running 24fps video on 30hz refreshrate. It’s subtle for sure, but easily noticable. It means every 5th frame last twice as long as the others. If the camera pans, you just see it isn’t perfectly smooth. It isn’t a complete disaster, but is it really that hard of a feature? I can kind of get the “you don’t need it” in some cases, but i’ve spend all this time & money on a nice projector & sound system to watch movies. I don’t want to see some slight stutter whenever a camera pans since my OS can’t match my refresh rate to the video it’s playing. Even though i can manuallly switch to that exact refresh rate if i wanted to.
seem to be under the impression that Ubuntu is supposed to install .debs you downloaded when you click on them
Dude, it is. Google it yourself. Pretty much every single link you find when googling why clicking on deb files gives an error that the application for such files is not founds shows you how to assign the default installer in ubuntu to those files so it works. You’re really gaslighting me here. this is expected behavior, everything you can google indicates it is expected behavior, i gave you the link about someone helping with alternatives now they suddenly broke it, but that link also says they expect it to soon be fixed again in ubuntu. But now i complain about it being broken and you’re all like “that’s totally not expected behavior”.
Look, i get it, you like linux and are happy with it. But you can’t just wipe any negative experience under the carpet with gaslighting like this. That’s just ridiculous. It is expected behavior for a distro like ubuntu, and pretending it is not is just ridiculous.
I typed in the exact error message i got in google, and found the issue is that it tries to use SMBv1 to get the list of shares, and if it’s disabled on the server, you’re out of luck.
What was the error message? I want to investigate this a little bit.
It was running 24fps video on 30hz refreshrate. It’s subtle for sure, but easily noticable. It means every 5th frame last twice as long as the others. If the camera pans, you just see it isn’t perfectly smooth.
Hm, yeah, I could see that, actually. I just didn’t expect it to be running at 30Hz is part of where I was coming from, I assumed minimum 60Hz.
Yeah, I mean, all I can really tell you is what I said before – this is a down side, yes. A lot of the people who build the technology aren’t too invested in solving this type of problem, and in general there’s no one with money at the center of it trying to ensure a good end-user experience, so you may have to just set 60Hz and hope for the best.
seem to be under the impression that Ubuntu is supposed to install .debs you downloaded when you click on them
Dude, it is. Google it yourself.
Hm, I was just indicating my personal opinion on it. I don’t think recommending to anyone who doesn’t have the knowledge to muck around with the command line to mess around with .debs they found on the internet is going to end well. I see some people on the internet (this is a good example) saying they recommend it for stuff like Google Chrome, but I just think that’s a recipe for trouble.
For me, I would tell them to install Chromium through apt and explain that it’s the same without some Google crap. I think people’s natural tendency is going to be to try to install software on Linux by finding it on a web site, downloading it, and clicking it, and I think if you’re teaching someone Linux, part of your job should be to educate them out of thinking that way. I get why the Ubuntu people would want to emphasize that in service of a good end user experience I guess, but I would not do it that way.
You’re really gaslighting me here.
But now i complain about it being broken and you’re all like “that’s totally not expected behavior”.
Not true. What I said was “I have no idea why Ubuntu removed that behavior, but I suspect that…” IDK, maybe you’re right that they want users to be able to do that, and they just managed to cock it up in one particular version of Ubuntu. In which case, I actually fully agree with your assessment that that’s a bad thing about Ubuntu (on top of me already thinking that it’s a bad thing if they want users to be able to do that). All I really take away from that is “Oh no, maybe the people telling you Ubuntu isn’t the right ‘easy mode’ distribution to use” are maybe onto something.
Look, i get it, you like linux and are happy with it. But you can’t just wipe any negative experience under the carpet with gaslighting like this.
Let me use an analogy. Someone always eats at an Italian restaurant. Then, they go to a Mexican restaurant one day. They look at the menu and try to look for their chicken piccata. Then they ask where is the bread for the table. Someone says, well we can get chips if you want to start with chips, but they’re not really bread. They say, no I want bread. You can see where the analogy is going. It’s just a different restaurant.
Someone could say, well, you’re just trying to gaslight me into saying that bread wasn’t terrible. It was hard and stale and thin and there was no butter. It was salty and horrible, I barely wanted to eat it. I’m trying, right now, to get you to eat the salsa. I’m actually happy to talk with you about all kinds of bad things about Linux and the reasons behind them, but you have to understand why things are the way they are and the upsides before. Or, I mean, you can do whatever you want, but it’ll lead you to a better experience (whether or not you keep it on the desktop, it’ll probably help you with the headless servers in some regard).
What was the error message? I want to investigate this a little bit.
failed to retrieve share list from server invalid argument
I’m starting to agree with you on assessment of Ubuntu. I don’t think “the desktop experience” is really a priority for a lot of the people who actually get the work done to make Linux, so this is likely to remain an issue to some degree with whatever distro you decided to choose, but I agree, this is pretty poor. The fact that it was persisting across multiple major versions would irritate me as well as it does the people in the bug reporting.
I mean, the main developers don’t “work for you” in the same sense that people at Microsoft kind of do “work for you” in your position as the consumer. I think it may be that Ubuntu doesn’t make much money and can’t really fund the development to make their software meet the goals they set out (end user friendliness), and most of the core developers elsewhere who do real work don’t care about it all that much.
Ah, i see you found the same ticket i did.
Sorry for not posting that link, but i’m now not on the ubuntu machine (for maybe obvious reasons), so i didn’t have easy access to the exact error message & ticket ^^'…
I’ve been on Fedora for a few years now, and been using some kind of Linux as primary for over 15 years. Your experience sounds like something from a few years ago.
If you haven’t tried Fedora yet, I’d highly recommend it over Ubuntu, which is likely one of the bigger cause of your issues.
I made the same jump about 4 months ago. I had a long history of running servers and trying Linux desktop here and there and finding it lacking. I installed Ubuntu because that was the popular distro for the past 15-20 years. I gave it a month. It blew. Bugs and general broken shit that I had to constantly repair. I finally gave up and figured if I was going to spend time tinkering with every goddamn thing, I may as well be using Arch. Installed Arch and I’m having a much better time. I still have to troubleshoot and fix the odd broken thing, especially after package updates, but it’s less tinkering than I’ve had to do with either Windows or Ubuntu. I’m not saying Arch is your answer, but I bet it’s “not Ubuntu”.
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.
Gnome is fantastic, KDE is buggy as hell.
