Questions about Linux Mint and this list

[Liam Proven]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2022 at 00:35, Peter Flynn <peter at silmaril.ie> wrote:

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

Which version? The GNOME one?

Contra-indicated IMHO. Try the Xfce or MATE remixes.

> The most glaring error came up in the first couple of minutes of boot:

>From USB, or the installed system?

For an installed OS: if you really care about pauses during startup,
remove "quiet splash" from the kernel command line. Then  you can see
all the startup messages.

I used to do this, but TBH I decided a long time ago that I didn't
care much and now I ignore it.

> 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.

Which desktop? Got any examples? (Just curious; don't mean to be challenging!)

> Second major blunder: the Software Center or whatever the fancy GUI
> interface to apt

Small point of order: it's not a front-end to Apt. It's _also_ one to
Snap and/or Flatpak. That is one of its primary raisons d'être:
searching multiple sources in one app.

> is called HAS NO SEARCH!

GNOME Software? Just start typing.

No, I don't like it either. I think there's a tiny magnifying glass
icon: that's the GUI search control.

The GNOME team are aggressively trying to simplify the UI. No, I don't
like that, either. But it is what it is.

Canonical found that even if you give people a better Windows than
Windows, most they don't care. (ChromeBooks did a better job in the
end.) And there's no money in it. So, it's switched focus to servers,
where a company can earn a living.

If you want a more conventional UI without switching to one of the
remixes, try Ubuntu Kylin. It works fully in English if you want.

> 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

apt search tweak

... should give lots of results. It is in 22.04 for me.

> Maybe apt works when you install
> the system to disk: but that prevents me from testing it from USB

Oh! This is all on the live USB? No, lots of things don't work there.

If you want to install stuff and customise stuff, just install it in a
VM. VirtualBox is great, it's free and it's in the repos.

> Bluetooth did recognise my existing headset the first time, and played
> music through the earphones.

Ahh, but not for hardware drivers and things, no...

> 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.

It's not Ubuntu's fault, really. Ubuntu had its own great desktop,
which I am using right now.

But Dustin Kirkland asked HackerNews, and they wanted all that stuff binned.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821

I may of course be misattributing blame here, but that was the pivot
point I saw. What Canonical did is exactly what HN asked in summary.

It was tragic. I don't agree with everything Ubuntu does, but GNOME
3/40 is a disaster and going back to it was a disaster.

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