Questions about Linux Mint and this list

[Peter Flynn]

On 19/07/2022 21:39, Ian Bruntlett wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, 19 Jul 2022 at 00:55, Dave Stevens via ubuntu-users 
> <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com <mailto:ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>> 
> wrote:
> 
>     On Tue, 19 Jul 2022 00:02:59 +0100
>     Peter Flynn <peter at silmaril.ie <mailto:peter at silmaril.ie>> wrote:
> 
>      > so I'm going to try 22.04 this week.
> 
>     please let us know how it works out, I'm thinking of the same thing.

I just fired it up from USB on my Dell XPS laptop.

The most glaring error came up in the first couple of minutes of boot: 
the rotating spinner just vanishes from the screen, so the user has no 
idea if the system has hung or if it's running something behind the 
scenes so critical that it even has to usurp the cycles given to the 
spinner.

<rant>
This is a classic piece of lack of testing. THE CURSOR OR SPINNER MUST 
NEVER, EVER RANDOMLY DISAPPEAR. I don't care what background process the 
developers deem so important that it robs the interface of its sole 
means of communication without notification: they are wrong, wrong, 
wrong. It takes very few cycles to service a pointer or spinner and it 
is a Really Bad Idea™ to assume that the user can be left sitting for a 
few minutes without any communication. I also don't care how essential 
that database rebuild or the package load from the USB stick is, a 
handful of cycles MUST be retained to service the interface.
</rant>

OK, I don't expect that ever to be fixed: it's been a problem for a 
couple of decades, and no-one seems to think it's important. I've seen 
new users literally get up and walk away permanently from Linux installs 
because the cursor or spinner or whatever that was signalling "I'm 
working" disappeared and left no information.

Once it booted, it looks fairly traditional. Lots of fancy apps I shall 
never need or use, and hardly any that I do, but that's to be expected, 
and that's why I have a large configuration script.

Second major blunder: the Software Center or whatever the fancy GUI 
interface to apt is called HAS NO SEARCH! The first thing I always want 
is to set focus to follow mouse, and to move the windows toolbar icons 
to the left-hand side. There are NO WINDOW SETTINGS in the Settings 
entry, so I wanted to install gnome-tweaks or whatever it's called 
today, but there is nowhere to do this in the app, and trying to do it 
from the terminal generates an error:
E: Unable to locate package gnome-tweaks
Unwilling to believe this, I ran sudo apt update and tried again with 
the same result. I then tried to install emacs and it claims that too 
doesn't exist. So I can't test anything because it can't install 
anything, and the GUI app it provides to do the job has no search. The 
GUI app *does* have Emacs listed, when you finally thrash your way 
through their categories window by window, and it *does* install it. But 
not from the command line, apparently. Maybe apt works when you install 
the system to disk: but that prevents me from testing it from USB

Bluetooth did recognise my existing headset the first time, and played 
music through the earphones. I didn't get a chance to test the 
microphone though, and when I rebooted the system for a third try, 
Bluetooth just sat there and said it was searching for devices (without 
a spinner, so it wasn't telling the truth) and never listed any. So 
basically Bluetooth is as broken as ever, which is a pity, and their 
interface to it provides no controls whatsoever.

This is basically a heavily dumbed-down interface, and I don't blame 
Ubuntu for that, as they believe this is the way of the future, and it 
may well be. If I get to install it for the benefit of the underlying 
ecosystem, it will either be a headless server, or I will try to find a 
way to replace this interface by something that provides proper control. 
Right now I'm afraid it goes into the "nice but must try harder" box.

Peter