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You forgot "spend three days trying to get a Bluetooth keyboard to pair at boot every time". :-D I love Ubuntu and I use it with Cinnamon desktop on the daily

You forgot "spend three days trying to get a Bluetooth keyboard to pair at boot every time". :-D I love Ubuntu and I use it with Cinnamon desktop on the daily alongside my Mac, and I love the customizability, but I also like just being able to turn on my laptop and do stuff without having to fiddle with a terminal unless I want to, or install a new app by just downloading a thing and clicking on it and agreeing that, yes, I'm trying to do this thing. And that's just not quite there with Ubuntu yet. (Also, trying to do music stuff is mostly a nightmare of JACK and Alsa headaches. I can write generative music code in at least two languages, but I just wanna plug my guitar in and record things and use plug-ins without having to recompile shit.) There's places for both. Use whatever works for you.

q3k 4y ago
For realtime audio, Pipewire basically solves this problem on Linux. It appears as JACK, Pulse and ALSA to client programs and allows seamless interop between all of them. It's slowly landing in mainstream Linux distros as the default audio solution. This means that without any special setup, both real-time audio software (which uses JACK) and 'normal' software (Pulse, ALSA) can co-operate on a single system with a single digital patchbay between all of them and the system output devices (including Bluetooth audio devices).
as1mov 4y ago
I use a pair of BT headphones (paired to 2 devices) and a keyboard. Both have worked without a hitch since day one on Ubuntu Mate. Funny enough, it's the only device I own that will work with my prehistoric HP printer from 2005 without any hacks. Newer versions of Windows don't work with it (I probably need to fish out the CD with the drivers), MacOS never did.
- rbut 4y ago
  I can echo the HP printer comment, mines a printer/scanner. Every time I print or scan on Ubuntu I'm expecting it to not work, as that was my experience on macOS, but it works flawlessly. On macOS the driver was abandoned 6 OS versions back, and I had to do some pkg command line trickery running as root just to get the thing to install.
  - simonh 4y ago
    Sorry, I just want to get this straight. We're comparing Linux and MacOS, and having to do command line trickery to do something is a knock against MacOS? Really? I mean if that's a legitimate black mark, that's 1 ding against MacOS and we can bury Linux under a thick pile of back marks.
- vetinari 4y ago
  It does not have to be ancient printer; I present you Samsung SL-M2070W, which HP is still selling under some other designation. I can print in MacOS, but I cannot scan. It used to work, but color scanning was broken few years ago, and about two years ago b/w scanning was broken too - Preview or Image Capture will just produce something malformed. There used to be a workaround using Samsung scanning utility, but it doesn't work since Catalina, due to the utility being 32-bit app. So what I do? RDP into other machine that does not have such problems (either Linux or Windows) and then transfer the scanned file. So much for "just works".
smallerfish 4y ago
> Also, trying to do music stuff is mostly a nightmare of JACK and Alsa headaches. I can write generative music code in at least two languages, but I just wanna plug my guitar in and record things and use plug-ins without having to recompile shit This hasn't been a problem in a while. You definitely don't need Jack for recording your guitar into a DAW with a backing track (I have a studio full of synths that I record - 24 tracks in, 24 tracks out, via a class compliant USB audio interface). And as the sibling comment points out, Pipewire makes things better still; you can point your DAW at "ALSA" (really Pipewire under the hood) and also play Youtube vids in a browser at the same time - this was of course possible with Pulseaudio or Jack, but both of them had their own quirks. Pipewire is overall really nice and just works cleanly. I am really curious what you had to recompile.
andi999 4y ago
And after all the fiddling, then there is an upgrade and you need to fiddle again.
stackdatcamp 4y ago
Does pipewire solve your problems in recording? I'm planning to get into the music making rabbit hole and I wonder if my Pop_OS! laptop is up to the task.

q3k 4y ago

For realtime audio, Pipewire basically solves this problem on Linux. It appears as JACK, Pulse and ALSA to client programs and allows seamless interop between all of them. It's slowly landing in mainstream Linux distros as the default audio solution. This means that without any special setup, both real-time audio software (which uses JACK) and 'normal' software (Pulse, ALSA) can co-operate on a single system with a single digital patchbay between all of them and the system output devices (including Bluetooth audio devices).

as1mov 4y ago

I use a pair of BT headphones (paired to 2 devices) and a keyboard. Both have worked without a hitch since day one on Ubuntu Mate. Funny enough, it's the only device I own that will work with my prehistoric HP printer from 2005 without any hacks. Newer versions of Windows don't work with it (I probably need to fish out the CD with the drivers), MacOS never did.

rbut 4y ago
I can echo the HP printer comment, mines a printer/scanner. Every time I print or scan on Ubuntu I'm expecting it to not work, as that was my experience on macOS, but it works flawlessly. On macOS the driver was abandoned 6 OS versions back, and I had to do some pkg command line trickery running as root just to get the thing to install.
- simonh 4y ago
  Sorry, I just want to get this straight. We're comparing Linux and MacOS, and having to do command line trickery to do something is a knock against MacOS? Really? I mean if that's a legitimate black mark, that's 1 ding against MacOS and we can bury Linux under a thick pile of back marks.
vetinari 4y ago
It does not have to be ancient printer; I present you Samsung SL-M2070W, which HP is still selling under some other designation. I can print in MacOS, but I cannot scan. It used to work, but color scanning was broken few years ago, and about two years ago b/w scanning was broken too - Preview or Image Capture will just produce something malformed. There used to be a workaround using Samsung scanning utility, but it doesn't work since Catalina, due to the utility being 32-bit app. So what I do? RDP into other machine that does not have such problems (either Linux or Windows) and then transfer the scanned file. So much for "just works".

smallerfish 4y ago

> Also, trying to do music stuff is mostly a nightmare of JACK and Alsa headaches. I can write generative music code in at least two languages, but I just wanna plug my guitar in and record things and use plug-ins without having to recompile shit This hasn't been a problem in a while. You definitely don't need Jack for recording your guitar into a DAW with a backing track (I have a studio full of synths that I record - 24 tracks in, 24 tracks out, via a class compliant USB audio interface). And as the sibling comment points out, Pipewire makes things better still; you can point your DAW at "ALSA" (really Pipewire under the hood) and also play Youtube vids in a browser at the same time - this was of course possible with Pulseaudio or Jack, but both of them had their own quirks. Pipewire is overall really nice and just works cleanly. I am really curious what you had to recompile.

andi999 4y ago

And after all the fiddling, then there is an upgrade and you need to fiddle again.

stackdatcamp 4y ago

Does pipewire solve your problems in recording? I'm planning to get into the music making rabbit hole and I wonder if my Pop_OS! laptop is up to the task.