Error upgrading from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04

[Paul Smith]

On Thu, 2020-06-25 at 13:28 +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
> Ubuntu have tried to avoid modifying the vanilla GNOME 3 desktop too
> much, while trying to keep something of their old distinctive look
> and feel since they abandoned Unity 7, killed Unity 8 and switched
> back to mainline GNOME.
> 
> IMHO they did this too soon –
> https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/61859.html – but hey, I loved
> Unity and hate GNOME 3.

I didn't like Unity and have always stayed with GNOME, first 2 then 3. 
I think GNOME 3 is great and have no desire to go back to GNOME 2 or a
lookalike.  When Ubuntu moved to Unity I switched to using the Ubuntu
GNOME spin and stayed with it until Ubuntu went back to GNOME.

> > Er, OK. You can also do this by visiting extensions.gnome.org,
> installing the plugin and connector.  If you dislike the default
> extensions so much, I suggest that it would repay you to learn your
> way around the GNOME extensions system a little more...? 

I'm not sure what you mean by "the plugin and connector".  The thing I
was missing and needed was the gnome-extensions tool, which is an
executable (not a GNOME extension).  It is provided by the Ubuntu
package gnome-shell-extensions, the description of which says only that
it installs more extensions and makes no mention whatsoever that it
also contains this very useful utility.

I wish that tool were in a separate package, and that was installed by
default on Ubuntu; I see no reason it shouldn't be.

> So now you just have the GNOME "dash" which only appears in the
> overview? Well if that's what you want. I personally dislike is
> strongly.

I recommend you don't use it.  Not everything is right for everyone.

> You're not disabling the dock. You're reverting from Ubuntu's "dock"
> to GNOME's one

It's odd that the way I did it was identical to how I disable every
other extension (click the little slide bar to "disable").  But I don't
care enough to argue semantics.  Whatever switching that slider to
"disabled" did, it's what I wanted.

> > Nope.  I need every single pixel of both horizontal and vertical
> > space, and auto-hide is not good enough.  Any panel, no matter how
> > small, is too much for me.  I live with the top bar because it
> > provides sufficient value, but I push everything into that same
> > bar.

> These 2 statements seem profoundly mutually contradictory to me.

Maybe re-read the part where I said that I live with the top bar
because it provides sufficient value (to be worth the space).  That
might help the confusion.

> If you want every pixel, then move to a minimalist desktop such as i3
> or AwesomeWM or Ratpoison or something.

I don't want to.

> For me, as someone who dislikes GNOME 3 but sometimes has to use it,
> I object strenuously to the egregious waste of space of GNOME's top
> panel and that's the one I want to get rid of the most. So I merge it
> with the less-offensive side panel with Dash-to-Panel.

I'm glad you found something that works for you.

> I have widescreen monitors. I bet you do, too. 4:3 screens are almost
> extinct now. As such, we both have _lots_ more horizontal pixels than
> vertical ones. In the extreme case of a 16:9 monitor, nearly 2x as
> many horizontal as vertical. If I have to lose some of either, I
> would rather lose some cheaper horizontal ones than precious vertical
> ones.

In fact I have 3 widescreen monitors.  I prefer my setup.

> > I use the Frippery panel-favorites Gnome shell extension to add
> > launchers for my favorite'd apps to the top panel

> Then why not skip them completely and just use the launcher that
> appears when you hit the Windows key?

Because I don't want to hit a key to bring up a launcher.

> > I also add a system-monitor extension so I can see some system
> > metrics there which adds to its usefulness.

> Me too, when I was experimenting with making it more Unity-like.

There's nothing especially "Unity-like" about system monitor info in
the top bar.  Window managers have had things like that long before
Unity was around.

I've been working on/writing code for UNIX and X systems since I was in
college, which was before Linus decided to try his hand at writing
operating systems.  I even helped maintain a window manager (FVWM) for
a while.  After many years and _many_ different desktops, I know what I
like and what I want.

I took a brief look at your posts:

> Ubuntu Unity worked very well as a Mac OS X-like desktop, with actual
> improvements over Mac OS X (which I use daily.)

Oh.  Maybe now I can see why we appear to have such different taste. 
For me if something is "MacOS-like" it means I will definitely hate it
and I certainly don't want to change my system to be MORE like that.

Anyway, I am hard-pressed to think of a less useful discussion to have
than whether someone's opinions on how they set up their own desktop
are "right" or "wrong" or "good" or "bad", so I'll stop posting to this
thread now.

For those that want to customize the default extensions, the answer is
"install the gnome-shell-extensions package and run the included
gnome-extensions program, either on the command line or via the GUI".

I hope that helps someone else!