[kwlug-disc] Sault Ste Marie Linux?

Bob Jonkman bjonkman at sobac.com
Thu Aug 16 15:05:53 EDT 2018 

If the PPA desktop environment aren't working for you, then many of the
destop environments have their own distro spin. My go-to distro for
several years has been https://ubuntu-mate.org officially supported by
Canonical.

I used to have multiple desktops installed (I started with KDE for my
first non-experimental installation), but I find that Mate is the DE
that most closely works the way I do. There's hardly anything that gets
in the way of me getting things done. Auto-maximizing windows that touch
the top of the screen are the notable exception, but I've been too lazy
to find out how to make that stop.

I haven't upgraded to 18.04 yet, since 16.04.5 is working well enough
and still supported. I'm a little wary of the "Snap" packages that are
supposed to be pervasive on 18.04.

--Bob.


On 2018-08-16 11:56 AM, doug moen wrote:
> Some years ago, I tried installing Mate on Ubuntu from some PPA, but the
> result was not entirely satisfactory. No instability, but the help system
> wasn't ported, and there were other usability issues. I'm going to try Mate
> again now that I know there is a package for it in the Ubuntu Universe
> repository.
> 
> On Ubuntu, the Mate and xfce desktop environments are part of the Universe
> repository. The Universe repository is enabled by default on new Ubuntu
> installs. This repository isn't officially supported by Canonical, the way
> that Main and Restricted are, but I usually don't have a problem with
> software from Universe. Note that most of the software available by default
> in Ubuntu, including most of the software pulled from Debian, is in
> Universe.
> 
> I don't think that installing software packages from the Universe
> repository can be expected to cause instability, otherwise they wouldn't
> enable this repo by default. I've been running Ubuntu with multiple DEs
> installed for at least 10 years, haven't seen it to be a problem.
> 
> I guess that with a DE-centric distro like Mint, you are getting full
> support from the distro maintainers for the DE. However, note that there
> are official Ubuntu variant distros for different desktop environments like
> KDE, Mate and XFCE. I assume these distros are just varying the default set
> of packages used by the base install, so if I install the 'kubuntu-desktop'
> package, I'm getting the same KDE with the same level of support as if I
> installed the Kubuntu distro?
> 
> 
> On 16 August 2018 at 10:51, Ron Singh <ronsingh149 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Huh! I had no idea that ZFS was supported in native Ubuntu, I thought they
>> stopped at XFS. Good to know.
>>
>> Doug, any reservations about having multiple DTs on one Linux install? I
>> am fearful of dependencies stepping on each other and rendering an unstable
>> system.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Ron Singh
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 9:54 AM, doug moen <doug at moens.org> wrote:
>>
>>> The reason I stick with Ubuntu is that it has the largest software
>>> ecosystem.
>>> * For me, the ZFS support is a requirement. That's not available in any
>>> other distro.
>>> * For users of my open source project, the open source AMD GPU driver is
>>> too buggy, and the closed source driver, which works, is only supported on
>>> Ubuntu LTS, Red Hat and SUSE. (You can avoid this problem by getting an
>>> Nvidia GPU.)
>>> * This doesn't affect me right now, but if you want to run commercial
>>> proprietary software on Linux, you have the most choices if you stick with
>>> the big 3, which are: Ubuntu LTS, Red Hat and SUSE.
>>>
>>> I agree that you should choose the desktop environment that is right for
>>> you. However, I really hate the idea that I should install a different
>>> distro if I want to try out a different DE. Ideally, the choice of DE
>>> should be just be another package that you install.
>>>
>>> In Ubuntu 18.04, I can use
>>>   $ apt-get install mate-desktop-environment
>>> to install Mate, or
>>>   $ apt-get install xfce4
>>> Then I can have multiple desktop environments available, and choose one
>>> when I log in.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 15 August 2018 at 17:25, Ron Singh <ronsingh149 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> "I really appreciate their choice to adopt a lot of the basic window
>>>> management keyboard shortcuts/etc.This really takes away a lot of the
>>>> cognitive 'switching desktops' friction out for me... "
>>>>
>>>> Exactly! I really appreciated Mint's efforts to give great control to
>>>> the user on the types of updates to apply and their key bindings. After
>>>> almost 2 years of using GNU/Linux primarily with Xfce and Cinnamon DTs, I
>>>> have the following perspective --
>>>> - Xfce ---> Intuitive efficiency, the desktop does *not* get in the way,
>>>> the desktop to go fast and play hard, viscerally lean
>>>> - Mate --> Intuitive, albeit somewhat plodding as one maneuvers to the
>>>> command to execute
>>>> - Cinnamon --> Pure visual nom-noms that is still intuitive, easy to
>>>> negotiate, superb contextual video/audio switching, all at a reasonable hit
>>>> on RAM and CPU utilization
>>>> - Gnome3 --> WTF??? I have to fight though my rage as I try to do some
>>>> sort of a "system-level" query/command without invoking th terminal
>>>> - KDE(Plasma5) - Wow...Just way too busy for me with significant
>>>> CPU/Memory utilization which hurts a laptop battery life something fierce.
>>>>
>>>> I went exclusively laptop back in 2006, so I have no idea how these DTs
>>>> would play on juicier desktop/tower systems.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>> Ron Singh
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 1:31 PM, Stuart Seeley <stuart at lowlevel.ca>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I've suffered through a lot of broken distributions over the past 20
>>>>> odd years...  and I have to say I'm really impressed with Mint 18.2.
>>>>> For me, it truly is the first time I completed the installation and
>>>>> almost nothing was broken...
>>>>>
>>>>> Side note:As someone who has to work with Windows everyday, I really
>>>>> appreciate their choice to adopt a lot of the basic window management
>>>>> keyboard shortcuts/etc.
>>>>> This really takes away a lot of the cognitive 'switching desktops'
>>>>> friction out for me...
>>>>>
>>>>> Stuart
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 10:18 AM, Ron Singh <ronsingh149 at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Agreed -- back in November 2016 when I decided to try this Linux thing
>>>>>> my only visibility into Linux was a Live Ubuntu 10.04 cd that I booted,
>>>>>> stared uncomprehendingly at for a few minutes and went back to my Windows
>>>>>> XP. That was 8 years ago.  Flash forward to late 2016 where I tossed distro
>>>>>> after distro, at least 40 onto 3 low-cost laptops to see which one(s)
>>>>>> fitted my sensibilities. It was a HUGE learning opportunity for me, not
>>>>>> just from a for and fit standpoint, but something of the innards of the
>>>>>> Linux communities online.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I settled on Mint 18.2 where *nothing* is broken and OpenSUSE 42.3.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Not sure if it's me and my very limited knowledge, but I have a number
>>>>>> of frustrations with anything based off Ubuntu 18.04, seems like the early
>>>>>> point releases of Debian 9-based distros and distros built on Ubuntu
>>>>>> 16.04.1/.2/.3 have fared well for me. Fedora made me cry,  too many
>>>>>> barriers to entry for me,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So, as a 22-monto noob, I would highly recommended Mint 18.2
>>>>>> preferably with Xfce. Cinnamon is quite appealing too and would be an
>>>>>> excellent desktop if he has a laptop/desktop from a recent vintage.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ron Singh
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 10:53 PM, William Park via kwlug-disc <
>>>>>> kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I think the best way to start learning Ubuntu (and Linux) is by using
>>>>>>> it.  Pick a task he would do in Windows, and try doing that in Linux.
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> William Park <opengeometry at yahoo.ca>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 10:01:32PM -0400, Daniel Allen wrote:
>>>>>>>> Hi folks. I have a friend who is moving to Sault Ste Marie (to
>>>>>>> start at
>>>>>>>> Algoma) in a few weeks. He's also just now deciding he'd like to
>>>>>>> switch
>>>>>>>> from Windows to Ubuntu. There doesn't seem to be any LUG in the
>>>>>>> Sault. But
>>>>>>>> does anybody happen to know any LUG-type people up there?
>>>>>>>> I'm not sure what to advise him about starting with Ubuntu- he
>>>>>>> might be
>>>>>>>> able to get himself up and running ubuntu himself, but it'd be
>>>>>>> easier with
>>>>>>>> some community...
>>>>>>>> Thanks for any contacts I can pass along.
>>>>>>>> -Daniel
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>
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> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Bob Jonkman <bjonkman at sobac.com>          Phone: +1-519-635-9413
SOBAC Microcomputer Services             http://sobac.com/sobac/
Software   ---   Office & Business Automation   ---   Consulting
GnuPG Fngrprnt:04F7 742B 8F54 C40A E115 26C2 B912 89B0 D2CC E5EA




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