No more Windows here, all Linux

[Sal1950]

And, the advantage of open code - anyone can examine and improve it,

That can also at times be it's greatest weakness. IME with desktop Linux apps and even the actual OS, everyone has a "better idea" and wants to reinvent that wheel. So we end up with over 465 different Linux OS's listed at Distrowatch alone. They mostly all have been forked off half a dozen different platforms by one or 5 folks who thought they could do it better. Then times that times Desktop Enviorments! Same issue can be found with the more popular apps like media players, text editors, etc, etc, etc. Developer egos can be the atomic bomb to the best of all worlds.
Imagine if all these individual folks could join minds and hands to build a few really STRONG projects.

 

[Sal1950]

The real issue is that most good coders / developers don't think like regular users and aren't as good at user interface design.

Can you say Kodi media player ? LOL

 

[pablolie]

I just installed Kubuntu 26.04 on a 20 (!) year old Lenovo X61s. Just has an old 64GB SSD and 4GB of RAM, but runs like a champ: I use it as a kitchen recipe computer, just there on the counter for inspiration, but occasional guests also use it to do quick online checks here and there. I love re-using stuff that still perfectly performs!

PS: I am sure I could have tried to speed up regular Ubuntu 24.04, but it really proved too heavyweight in standard form, so this was faster.

PS2: This computer was worth nearly $2k back in 2007, so cool to keep putting it to good use.

 

[Brian Hall]

I just installed the newest Ubuntu 26.04 with Linux kernel 7 on a mini pc that was sitting on a shelf doing nothing. 16gb of ram, 1tb nvme and an intel n97 cpu. It is faster than I expected. I saw some youtubers trashing this version because it fully switches to Wayland and doesn't have the old X server. That sounds like a good idea to me.

 

[pablolie]

I just installed the newest Ubuntu 26.04 with Linux kernel 7 on a mini pc that was sitting on a shelf doing nothing. 16gb of ram, 1tb nvme and an intel n97 cpu. It is faster than I expected. I saw some youtubers trashing this version because it fully switches to Wayland and doesn't have the old X server. That sounds like a good idea to me.

It runs Chrome perfectly... and that's all it's supposed to do in its golden years... It's been running different Linux version since it retired from as a Cisco employee PC back in 2008 or so... :-D

 

[Berwhale]

It runs Chrome perfectly... and that's all it's supposed to do in its golden years... It's been running different Linux version since it retired from as a Cisco employee PC back in 2008 or so... :-D

Maybe it's time you treated it to a new nipple!

 

[KSTR]

I saw some youtubers trashing this version because it fully switches to Wayland and doesn't have the old X server.

Wayland is broken by design and breaks many pro applications, like KiCad.

KiCad and Wayland Support

The KiCad development team frequently receives questions about our support for Wayland. Given that Fedora and Ubuntu are both planning to drop X11 support from their main desktop environments in the near future, we want to provide clear, transparent guidance to our users about the current state...

www.kicad.org

 

[terryforsythe]

I just installed the newest Ubuntu 26.04 with Linux kernel 7 on a mini pc that was sitting on a shelf doing nothing. 16gb of ram, 1tb nvme and an intel n97 cpu. It is faster than I expected. I saw some youtubers trashing this version because it fully switches to Wayland and doesn't have the old X server. That sounds like a good idea to me.

The issue I have seen recently discussed is Ubuntu replacing the old core utilities, written in C, to new core utilities all written in Rust. Not that there is a problem with Rust, but apparently they did not give themselves adequate time to develop the new code and rushed it to shipping in Ubuntu before the bugs and security issues were worked out. The Lunduke Journal discusses it in this video:

 

[whataboutmusic]

In time most distros will switch to wayland it is way more secure than X11

Wayland can be a pain in the ass especially with certain hardware I run pop os with wayland on an old cheap laptop with nvidia gpu and it runs smoothly....

and I also run pop os on a 2018 macbook pro with amd gpu and it is just a nightmare with apps not to mention that for some reason randomly it messes up the mouse cursor to the point it is not usable anymore...

But pop os (for example) use wayland by default on their new cosmic desktop....

 

[terryforsythe]

The Wayland vs X11 debate has been going on for years. Even Xorg, the group maintaining X11, itself is actively trying to put it to bed.

Whereas X11 is a program, Wayland is not. Wayland is display server protocol and a C library implementation of that prtocol. How well it works is up to the developers of the individual desktop environments, as well as maintainers of old applications originally developed for X11 that need to be updated for Wayland.

I mostly use Cinnamon, which still is X11, but have spent quite a bit of time using Wayland with KDE Plasma. I run a lot of different applications, and only two I use don't work under Wayland - Simple Screen Recorder and Yapstocks. Yapstocks no longer is maintained, though, and probably does not even work on X11 anymore given Yahoo's changes to their stock quote system API. Yahoo Finance Quotes still works in Cinnamon, though. Hopefully it gets updated to work with Wayland by the time Cinnamon makes the change.

 

[Brian Hall]

The issue I have seen recently discussed is Ubuntu replacing the old core utilities, written in C, to new core utilities all written in Rust. Not that there is a problem with Rust, but apparently they did not give themselves adequate time to develop the new code and rushed it to shipping in Ubuntu before the bugs and security issues were worked out. The Lunduke Journal discusses it in this video:

This extra pc I installed it on is not important. If there are issues with Ubuntu I'll switch it to something else. So far no issues. I always set the firewall to block anything from outside my network also.

 

[terryforsythe]

This extra pc I installed it on is not important. If there are issues with Ubuntu I'll switch it to something else. So far no issues. I always set the firewall to block anything from outside my network also.

With Linux, servers typically are the target. I think the risk to home users is fairly small. Also, Ubuntu will continue fixing bugs and security vulnerabilities, and release updates. My hunch is that they are making that a top priority.

 

[Brian Hall]

I've decided the new Ubuntu feels primitive compared to Linux Mint Cinnamon. I'm going to put this extra pc back on the storage shelf for a while.

 

[Berwhale]

I've decided the new Ubuntu feels primitive compared to Linux Mint Cinnamon. I'm going to put this extra pc back on the storage shelf for a while.

I can't get my Elan USB fingerprint reader to work reliably with Ubuntu, so i'm installing 22.3 Zena (Cinnamon) to have a play with the new fingerprint manager (fingwat).

*edit* Fingwat looks nice, but the fingerprint reader works no better than with Ubuntu. The Elan device is supported by fprintd (ID 04f3:0c28) and works perfectly with Windows 11.

 

[terryforsythe]

I can't get my Elan USB fingerprint reader to work reliably with Ubuntu, so i'm installing 22.3 Zena (Cinnamon) to have a play with the new fingerprint manager (fingwat).

*edit* Fingwat looks nice, but the fingerprint reader works no better than with Ubuntu. The Elan device is supported by fprintd (ID 04f3:0c28) and works perfectly with Windows 11.

You can Google your specific computer with the term "Linux fingerprint reader support". If there is a solution, it oftentimes finds it. ChatGPT also may help.

Nonetheless, you have found the Achilles' heel of Linux; sometimes hardware vendors make devices that don't work with native Linux drivers, and they don't make new Linux drivers for their devices because Linux doesn't have enough market share in the desktop world. Oftentimes a smart developer happens to acquire a machine with that device and creates a new open source driver to solve the issue, though.

I built my Linux computer 3-1/2 years ago. My motherboard has a WiFi module that was Intel's latest version at the time. Intel did make a Linux driver for it, but it was half-baked; it would randomly go into sleep mode and disconnect from my wireless LAN. I ended up installing an older WiFi PCIe card, and disabled the on-board WiFi. Eventually the open source community updated the drivers, and I disabled sleep mode on the problematic WiFi module. Now my motherboard's WiFi module works fine.

 

[Berwhale]

You can Google your specific computer with the term "Linux fingerprint reader support". If there is a solution, it oftentimes finds it. ChatGPT also may help.

Nonetheless, you have found the Achilles' heel of Linux; sometimes hardware vendors make devices that don't work with native Linux drivers, and they don't make new Linux drivers for their devices because Linux doesn't have enough market share in the desktop world. Oftentimes a smart developer happens to acquire a machine with that device and creates a new open source driver to solve the issue, though.

I built my Linux computer 3-1/2 years ago. My motherboard has a WiFi module that was Intel's latest version at the time. Intel did make a Linux driver for it, but it was half-baked; it would randomly go into sleep mode and disconnect from my wireless LAN. I ended up installing an older WiFi PCIe card, and disabled the on-board WiFi. Eventually the open source community updated the drivers, and I disabled sleep mode on the problematic WiFi module. Now my motherboard's WiFi module works fine.

I've done all the troubleshooting with the help of both Google and Claude. I have fingerprint authentication enabled for everything including the command line. I can register fingerprints until the cows come home, but they are never recognized when authenticating.

I went through the same steps with my Lenovo Yoga X390, which has a built-in fingerprint scanner, and that all works perfectly on Ubuntu.

My USB fingerprint reader is on the supported hardware list for libfprint and works perfectly with Windows 11. It's quite annoying!

 

[somebodyelse]

Whereas X11 is a program, Wayland is not. Wayland is display server protocol and a C library implementation of that prtocol. How well it works is up to the developers of the individual desktop environments, as well as maintainers of old applications originally developed for X11 that need to be updated for Wayland.

X11 is a specification not a program, just like Wayland is a specification. Xorg is an implementation of that specification - specifically release 6 of that specification IIRC. It also has a lot of optional extensions, much like Wayland. It's just that on linux Xorg became by far the dominant implementation, and most of the extensions were installed by default on most GUI distros, or could be pulled in as a dependency.

 

[somebodyelse]

Wayland is broken by design and breaks many pro applications, like KiCad.

KiCad and Wayland Support

The KiCad development team frequently receives questions about our support for Wayland. Given that Fedora and Ubuntu are both planning to drop X11 support from their main desktop environments in the near future, we want to provide clear, transparent guidance to our users about the current state...

www.kicad.org

It depends what your design goals were. Among other goals, Wayland was intended to fix X's absent-by-design security model - security wasn't much thought about when X was designed, but the computing world has changed. Unfortunately a bunch of things that some people found useful in X (sometimes in optional extensions) weren't possible once they started adding security. For things that enough people care about enough, they've been slowly adding Wayland extensions to handle securely, but it's been taking a long time. People forget that it took a long time for X to build up its extension set too, but it had decades of head start on Wayland. Some of the things KiCad devs are talking about do now have extensions to cover them, but it'll take a while for them to be adopted widely. I wish there was a best-of-both-worlds option, but for now there isn't, so we each get to pick whichever is least painful.

 

[Dialectic]

I haven't run anything but linux for at least 15 years.

How do you do your taxes?

 

[Berwhale]

How do you do your taxes?

We haven't had a Window Tax in the UK since 1851!