Error upgrading from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04

[Liam Proven]

On Sat, 27 Jun 2020 at 21:04, Paul Smith <paul at mad-scientist.net> wrote:
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "the plugin and connector".

This is what I mean when I urged you to explore and learn the way that
the GNOME Shell extensions system works. If you actually like the
shell, as you say you do, and you want to customise it, as you do,
then you should know how.

> The thing I
> was missing and needed was the gnome-extensions tool, which is an
> executable (not a GNOME extension).

No, you don't. I mean, that is one way to do it, and if all you want
to do is _remove_ extensions, then fine. But it is not the primary
interface.

The primary interface to GNOME Shell Extensions is a website. It is:

https://extensions.gnome.org/

To use this, you need a browser add-on. The site will prompt you to install it.

Then you need a package on your distro for the browser add-on to talk
to. You install it with

$ sudo apt-get install chrome-gnome-shell

The package is available in Universe repositories.

The name is deceptive -- it is nothing to do with Chrome the browser
and it works fine with Firefox.

> 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.

Because, perhaps, *it is not the primary mechanism*. It's a
supplementary one,  which mainly lets you configure or disable
extensions. That's why it's in an extra package.

> 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.

Because with GNOME 3, the team decided to remove most of the
customisability from GNOME 2 and give the desktop a standardised look
and feel, consistent across machines. With GNOME 2 you can
reconfigure, move, remove or even add extra panels, move things from
one to another, as you wish.

The default is a modified Windows 95 look, splitting Explorer's 1
panel into 2: 2 panels, top and bottom; top one has app and settings
menus, some launcher shortcuts, and the tray. The bottom panel
contains the app switcher and some shortcuts for logging out and so
on.

Mint, in those days, combined this into 1 panel, like Win9x: it has
all the same functionality, but in half the space. A big win in my
book.

But it meant everyone's GNOME 2 desktop looked different. You couldn't
easily use a friend's computer. It was hard for end-users to
customise.

So they got rid of all that. In GNOME 3 there is a top panel, 90%
wasted and empty. And a Dash, the icon bar at the left. This only
appears in the Overview, summoned by hitting the Windows key, which
also puts a 2nd virtual desktops toolbar on the right, tiled window
thumbnails, and an icon-based app browser in the middle.

This is core GNOME 3 functionality. Of course you don't have to use it
if you don't want it, but if you don't, there are far lighter desktops
that take less RAM and disk space, run faster, are more stable, have
fewer bugs, are updated less often, etc.

> > 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.

Jeez, man, you are making this very difficult.

The GNOME 3 desktop, by default, comes with an app switcher called the
dash on the left edge of the screen in Overview mode.

There's a GNOME extension called "dash to dock." It moves the dash out
of overview and makes it permanently visible (with autohide and
intellihide settings if you want). It adds Unity-like LED lights to
the dash so you can see if an app is running (like MacOS has) and
multiple LEDs if you have multiple windows open (unlike macOS but like
Unity). It adds the ability to open new windows with middle-click,
like Unity. It adds keyboard shortcuts for opening the  1st 10 pinned
apps, like Unity but borrowed from Win XP's Quick Launch toolbar. It
adds options to move the dash around.

It turns the very limited GNOME 3 dash into a full desktop panel, like macOS.

Ubuntu took this, forked it, and installed it by default on their
version of GNOME 3, to make it a little more like Unity.

This GNOME extension is installed by default on Ubuntu. It is not on
any other GNOME distro.

You don't like it, so you are adding an extra tool and using that tool
to disable Ubuntu's extension, causing GNOME to revert back to the
built-in GNOME dash, which you then ignore.

That's fine.

All I am trying to tell you is:

[1] A better way to customise extensions, including a way to browse
existing ones, add them, change their settings and customise your
desktop further without needing a separate additional app.

[2] That I find it odd that you are arguing _for_ GNOME by saying that
you don't use most of it. If you don't, there are much lighter
desktops you could use. At work I use XFCE which could do all that you
say you want, without any addons, extensions, plugins, or anything,
and it will make your computer run a bit faster into the bargain.

There's no particular reason to switch if you're happy, of course, but
you may find that the next time you update to a new release of Ubunut,
your desktop will break. In my experience this happens a lot. It
doesn't with Xfce because it's very stable and doesn't change much.

> 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.

No, not really.

If you need every pixel, then there are more efficient layouts than yours.

If you like yours, fine, good. I am happy for you. But don't try to
argue for it on the basis of reasons which are why other people don't
use it. It will annoy them. It is annoying me.

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

Me too, at work. I use a vertical taskbar on 1 screen. I get a _lot_
more functionality than you do, in less %age of my pixels. I am
_trying to help_ by offering you alternatives here. I am not trying to
force you to do anything. I am saying that there are easier ways to do
what you claim to want.

> 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.

:Face in hands:

OMG. I have rarely ever faced such determination to misinterpret me.

I did not say it was Unity-like. I am not saying it is. I am saying
that I found this when _I_ was trying to make _my_ Ubuntu setup more
like my _old_ Ubuntu setup. The reason _why_ I was trying to do this
is totally irrelevant, yet this is the one thing that you have seized
upon. It is a red herring. It is irrelevant.

> 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.

Good for you. I go back just as long myself. I started professionally
sysadminning Unix boxes in 1989.


> 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.

Then you did not understand the post.

The point here is that we are discussing having a single visible panel
and keeping as much desktop space available as possible.

Unity did this efficiently by putting the menus in the top panel,
together with some indicators. It borrowed this design from Mac OS X
which adapted it from its predecessor Classic MacOS, which got the
global menu bar from Lisa OS.

If you don't like Macs, fine. But my point is here that this is a
functional tool, it is a piece of design that was created for a
specific purpose in about 1982 in an effort to improve on the design
of the Smalltalk 80 design from Xerox PARC.

Whether you like it or not, or want it or not, is not relevant to
this. The point is, it has a history and a specific function. Other
functions were later added to this, such as a system menu in one
corner, a clock in the other corner, then some status icons next to
that clock, and so on.

And one of the many reasons that GNOME 3 annoys me is that apparently
they don't know this, because they have kept the _ancillary_ extra
functions -- the system menu, now a full-screen thing with the
irrelevant word "activities" or a keystroke that is not shown anywhere
on screen and which is unrelated to the original purpose of that key
-- and a limited set of status icons and the clock -- but they have
removed the primary function for which it is there. The menu bar.

I am not arguing for the menu bar. If you don't want it, fine.  I am
saying that *I* know what that panel is for, and why it's where it is
and works the way it does, and the GNOME design loses that function.

It is exactly as if one bought a self-driving car and found a big
steering wheel sitting there. When you ask why, they explain that it's
for the horn, the airbag, the indicators and headlight controls. It
doesn't turn or anything.

It is a vestige of functional design that no longer serves its primary
purpose and that really annoys me.

If it does not annoy you, fine.

But if, say, you ran Xfce, you could in a quarter of the memory have a
tiny top panel with a bunch of app launchers in it, a clock, a system
monitor, and it would float _on top_ of your windows allowing you to
mazimise them to a centimetre or so taller, getting you an extra 48
pixels of vertical screen space, and you would not need to fiddle with
extensions and so on to do it.

> 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.

I am trying to show you better ways of achieving what you say you
want, based on my own extensive experience. You are not only refusing
to listen, you are actively telling me I am wrong when you do not
understand my suggestions.

> 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".

That is the wrong way to do it. There are simpler, better ways.

> I hope that helps someone else!

I hope nobody wastes their time trying to follow your inefficient
misguided advice, based on your lack of knowledge of the underlying
technology  and how to manipulate it.

-- 
Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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