Error upgrading from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04

[Paul Smith]

I have been lured out of hiding by the posting of incorrect (at least
for me) facts rather than simply opinions :).


On Sun, 2020-06-28 at 17:42 +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
> > 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.

I know all about the GNOME Extensions site.  I just didn't know that's
what you meant by "connector".  I used it to search for, install, and
update all the extensions I have.  I've had an account there and have
been using it pretty much since it was available.

And yes, it works great for all my add-on extensions.

However, it DOES NOT WORK to disable the Ubuntu Dock through GNOME
Extensions.  Obviously that's the first thing I tried.  Yes, the dock
appears on the website, described as a "mock extension".  But switching
the "Ubuntu dock" to disabled via the website has zero impact on my
desktop (yes I restarted with F2 r after switching).

Just for giggles I tried it again just now: no dice.

Similarly, using Tweak Tool's Extensions panel can't control Ubuntu
Dock (I don't use Tweak Tool because of extensions: I use it to
customize other things, but it does support managing extensions).

Maybe it's something weird about my system and this works on everyone
else's system.  But, I've read 10 or so different blog posts on how to
do this, and none of them mentioned being able to disable it using the
GNOME Extensions site.

> 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.

That's one way of looking at it.  Another way is that they exported all
that customizability into an extension language: they provided a base
system with a simple, clean look and feel then said "hey, you don't
have to rely on us to rewrite a bunch of C/C++ code to get the
customizations you want: the desktop is easily programmed via
scripting... if you don't like what we have, feel free to change it!"

And people did.  Some even changed it to look just like GNOME2!  And
it's great.

> [2] That I find it odd that you are arguing _for_ GNOME by saying
> that you don't use most of it.

"Don't use most of" GNOME?!  Just because I don't use this one small
desktop aspect?  There's a LOT more to GNOME than dash/dock.  I use
Evolution for my mail, contact lists, and calendaring; I use GNOME
Online Accounts; I use GNOME Keyring / Seahorse; etc. etc.

This is also why I don't want to switch to Xfce etc.  I know that in
theory all the GNOME apps can still be used in other DEs but in reality
there's a never-ending stream of questions from people who can't get
this or that to work right because some dbus connector or something is
not set up correctly.  I don't have time to fool around with that mess
anymore; I want it to Just Work.  In any event, it is unlikely to save
much memory in the grand scheme of things, if I still need all those
GNOME apps.


Regarding horizontal vs vertical space: I'll just say one thing about
this then go back to work.  Yes, obviously it's true that modern
screens have much more horizontal space than vertical space.  Because
of that I have arranged my workflow so that I use much more horizontal
space than vertical space: I have multiple windows side-by-side. 
There's a certain minimum width I need these windows to have, so I need
all the horizontal space so I can reduce/eliminate overlap.  It's much
easier to make some windows a bit shorter vertically, if it's for a
good enough cause: yes it's annoying to lose ~1 line of text for
windows on that screen but it's worth it for what I get back.

I need to keep a close eye on multiple aspects of my system's resources
including network traffic, CPU, etc.  I watch the temperature of my
laptop.  I have a (text not analog) clock.  I don't want to have to
move my mouse to a specific place on the screen, or hit a key, or
whatever: these need to be always visible because I want to be able to
see them with a quick glance, say while I'm letting muscle-memory
finish typing some text or code.  Often I don't even notice I'm
checking these monitors, until something looks weird and forces me to
pay attention.

All these things take up much more horizontal space than vertical.  If
I tried to put them on the side of the screen, they would force that
panel to be quite wide and I'd end up losing much more usable amount of
the screen.

And since I am using that 30 pixel high vertical panel anyway for
things I can't do without, I add other handy things there (like panel-
favorites) which aren't critical but which make me a bit more efficient
or comfortable.