Questions about Linux Mint and this list

[Peter Flynn]

On 20/07/2022 13:01, Liam Proven wrote:
> 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?

Whatever you are invited to download when you Google for "Ubuntu 22.04 
download"

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

Yep, either will do.

>> The most glaring error came up in the first couple of minutes of boot:
>  From USB, or the installed system?

USB.

> For an installed OS: if you really care about pauses during startup,

No, once I have installed something I can deal with it.

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

Whatever came with the ISO, which I believe is Gnome.

>> 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.

OK. But as I wrote to Oliver this was my fault for not seeing the 
magnifying glass. I could claim age and eyesight but that's a cop-out.

> GNOME Software? Just start typing.

I think they call it Ubuntu Software.

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

In general I'd agree with simplification, but not to the point that it 
becomes unusable. What designers believe to be an affordance sometimes 
is not one, if it fails to attract the eye (perception, not cognition).

> 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.

I am hoping that Enlightenment will eventually fix their outstanding 
bugs in handling multiple monitor resolutions and a few other things, at 
which point I will go back to that.

>> E: Unable to locate package gnome-tweaks
> 
> apt search tweak
> 
> ... should give lots of results. It is in 22.04 for me.

It does. None of them is a utility to let you tweak things.

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

Yes, all from the USB. I'm not installing it until I know it will work.

> 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.

Takes far too long.

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

Which was one of the reasons I ditched Ubuntu in the first place :-)

> 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.

And so Ubuntu people complain that Mint is changing things without 
properly engaging with the upstream. Perhaps there is a learning curve 
here for Ubuntu: they are not omniscient and hold no monopoly on being 
right, any more than any other system does. But that's all part of why 
we use Linux — somewhere out there is the right setup for YOU, even if 
it means a day spent ripping out the rubbish and installing something 
sensible :-)

Peter