6 ms·

Ubuntu's settings won't open after setting CPU to 'performance'

88 points by mikece 4y ago

noobermin 4y ago
I seriously stopped recommending ubuntu to new users of linux. Some ubuntu based ones are ok (like elementary) but ubuntu itself for years has had myriad issues in stability for a long time. The only real benefit is since ubuntu is more popular, you're more likely to find getting help for it online, more readme's will have ubuntu specific install directions or packaged binaries, googling for errors and such will be easier, etc.
- bodge5000 4y ago
  Also concerns around privacy and similar things which first started to be treated more seriously when it came prepackaged with an Amazon app. To my knowledge right now they are just that, concerns, no absolute proof, but why risk it when there are so many other distros where those concerns don't exist? Also theres the whole snap controversy, yeh sadly Ubuntu's issues go beyond stability
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  I don't see that at all, but OTOH I run i3 so maybe it's more an issue with their gnome setup?
- codegeek 4y ago
  Thr benefit of being able to find help online is a huge one. I use Ubuntu because ut just works for my use cases (VPS) and I can easily find issues/commands online if needed. Other distros, I m a bit wary. This doesn't apply if you are a Linux expert but most of us are just devs using Linux for hosting, deployments etc.
  - LoveMortuus 4y ago
    >The benefit of being able to find help online is a huge one. Very very true, I'd say that's one of the biggest reasons why Raspberry Pi and Arduino are much more popular then STM32 or other, equality or more capable at an equal or even better price, microcontroller.
  - 4oo4 4y ago
    I initially had this same concern too about migrating from Ubuntu as well, but for any Debian based distro those same commands are going to be almost exactly the same, and really the main differences are what comes default and package versions. How Debian feeds into downstream distros is something that Linux novices might not know, but I think that the differences aren't as intimidating as they might seem. It's called The Universal OS for a reason, and I think if people give themselves enough credit for using Linux in the first place they would be surprised at how capable in using other distros and they can be and how much the skills transfer over. I think part of that is because if you're used to using Windows you get a sense of learned helplessness because you're taught you're not worthy of learning how the OS works, so if the first distro people use is Ubuntu that same feeling will carry over, and you tell yourself "this is the only Linux I'm capable of using". Also when you've only ever used one distro having dozens of different options makes it seem like every one is radically different, despite having similar conventions and using the same code within distro families. So never be afraid to "fuck around and find out" and see what else is out there, if you can use Ubuntu you're capable of using many other distros. Ubuntu is geared for enterprise deployments and cloud VMs nowadays, instead of regular people just dipping their toes into Linux like it used to be. So its status as the default user friendliest distro isn't valid anymore. You can also get the "just works" experience from other distros, and in fact maybe more so because of all the issues with snap based applications that Canonical forces on you that add complexity, makes troubleshooting more difficult and creates a much worse overall user experience.
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  What do you recommend instead?
  - noobermin 4y ago
    So I should have specified, I'm mainly talking about linux for users, not as a dev tool like the first reply. As I hinted to, I do recommend elementary because it uses ubuntu under the hood so most terminal tutorials online will work with it but it's much more polished. I feel like the elementary folks put a lot of effort into the OS.
tgiba 4y ago
Are Ubuntu GUI bugs Hacker News worthy really?
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Oh boy, let me tell you the story of the GNOME file picker thumbnails.
- forgotpwd16 4y ago
  It's a seemingly ridiculous bug that can impact usability on the most popular Linux distro.
  - wmil 4y ago
    It's pretty par for the course for the Gnome team. Gnome 3 had a major impact usability on every single distro, and there were many more problems following that. The Ubuntu team probably doesn't feel safe updating the Settings app without extensive regression testing.
- geerlingguy 4y ago
  I posted this blog entry mostly for my own reference (I use my blog as a searchable index of all my findings, since Google is easier to use than any note taking app), and it always surprises me what makes it into HN vs what doesn't... I think in this case it may have unintentionally riled up the "Ubuntu isn't what it used to be" sensibility that's prevalent among Linux users, but I see it more as an annoying little bug that will hopefully be fixed in stable releases soon... but until then, here's the workaround.
readingnews 4y ago
I am not going to bash one distro or another, but I have been using Linux since (literally) 1992, so I have some history with slackware, gentoo, redhat (since the early TSX-11 archive days), ubuntu, mint, MXlinux, SuSE, Debian, and Fedora. I was a real RedHat user for many years, and some of those I listed I was intimately familiar with. I echo some other comments... I think perhaps 10-12 years ago, I would strongly recommend Ubuntu to new users. I find now I actively try to get people to stop using it. Here at the uni professors blindly ask for it since it is so popular, but it causes more trouble than it is worth. I used to be a very large Mint proponent, but even now I find it harder to recommend that distro. In an odd twist, my most stable builds are gentoo boxes, which are by no means built for any kind of novice, or heck, even some real linux users have issues with it. I installed and used MX a few times, and perhaps will migrate most to that distro. Other than moving to Debian, I wonder what is a truly stable desktop distro these days, which someone could recommend for a new user? Might have to break down and start trying some cherry picked ones from the distrowatch list again...
- morjom 4y ago
  Pretty confident in Fedora, even for new users.
  - i_am_proteus 4y ago
    Fedora is my "Just Works" distribution of choice as of 36. I haven't upgraded to 37 (which just came out).
    - leodriesch 4y ago
      GPU drivers for NVIDIA graphics card have been a bit of a hassle for me, I'd love to see a version with (proprietary) NVIDIA drivers included, like Pop!_OS provides.
      - bravetraveler 4y ago
        Unlikely first party, truly unencumbered software is one of the tenets
peter_retief 4y ago
Ubuntu has some serious issues. I have moved to Fedora, tried Debian for awhile but the rpm based Fedora makes a great workstation. My recommendation.
roody15 4y ago
I have also found issues with Ubuntu 22.04. From my perspective the Distro was released a bit early and still seems like beta. I find Ubuntu 20 way more stable and still a better fit for most users at this point.
- longwave 4y ago
  I agree. There is mouse lag during high CPU load in Wayland that I never had in X11, but if I switch back to the X11 desktop then mouseover/hover cursor changes are broken in Firefox. I can't find solutions to either of these issues, so I'm seemingly stuck with one or the other, unless I reinstall and downgrade to 20.04.
  - remram 4y ago
    To be honest I have mouse lag in Ubuntu 22.04 with X11 and KDE, for example every time I start a Java application (even a command-line one).
the__alchemist 4y ago
I've tried Linux (usually Ubuntu) every other year for ~15 years. Weird stuff like this is the norm. You can sometimes fix these things by searching SO + forums, and C+P terminal commands.
loudmax 4y ago
It's unfortunate the GNOME is still the default desktop environment for most Linux distributions. People give Linux a try, then give up because it's unstable and difficult to troubleshoot. Linux itself is stable (given the right hardware drivers), and provides a solid foundation for a well designed desktop environment. It's GNOME that's a mess. One of the core strengths of Linux is its modularity, with parts being easily swapped so distro managers or end users can customize what they need. GNOME goes against this by taking on hardware management tasks that are well outside the scope of a desktop environment and munging it all into a giant ball of complexity so everything depends on everything else. If the GNOME project had the resources to hire a massive QA team to catch issues like this, it wouldn't be such a problem. But they don't, so GNOME's shortcomings and poor design choices give desktop Linux a bad reputation.
- bluedino 4y ago
  The bad thing is that it's what people are used to (thanks, Ubuntu. But it's Fedoras default as well)), our KDE systems were met with a lot of resistance and ended up needing to change to GNOME
- okamiueru 4y ago
  Could you give examples as to what is messy? I used gnome on a daily basis, as well as Windows 10/11, and occasionally MacOS. My experience is that gnome is consistent, consolidated and intuitive. While windows is all over the place, with at least two separate UIs with slightly different overlap in functionality.
  - betaby 4y ago
    Nagging update messages which won't disappear after clicking. Random window switch unresponsiveness/delay. Those are in Gnome, I have no such problem in KDE, I have a different set of issues.
  - w4rh4wk5 4y ago
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/file-roller/-/issues/4 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/file-roller/-/issues/4
rr888 4y ago
After having trouble with battery life in Linux I just went back to Windows. Everything works as designed and does what I want. Only problem is some Python libraries dont work so well, but I dont need that much. Most of my time is using IDEs, browser and shells which any OS does pretty well now.
plaguepilled 4y ago
Gonna be a contrarian here but, well, so what? This is a bug. Upstream (vanilla GNOME) fixed it. It hasn't been patched to downstream (Ubuntu GNOME). Exposure to bugs can be reduced by choosing well maintained software projects, but they are sadly the norm past a certain level of complexity for many desktop environments. I could point to analogously silly bugs in my favourite DE (KDE), or even much more minimal projects like Sway and DWM. At this stage, users have 4 choices (wow!): 1. Just wait for Ubuntu to port the patch (easiest) 2. Install vanilla gnome on Ubuntu (or use another distrowith vanilla gnome) 3. Install KDE or Sway or whatever you want on Ubuntu and learn that (or, again, use a different distro that has a new DE) 4. Become The Cool Terminal Dude (the custom keyboard layout community would like to talk to you about the word of the holy lord, staggered column layouts) Personally I like option 2 and 3 because then I get to shill all the nice alternatives out there like Fedora and Gentoo, but you do you.
- tokai 4y ago
  You forgot option 5. Write rants about everything GNOME being bad. If you are high level you might even sneak in some systemd hate. It's important not to do anything constructive though. What would be the point of that?
- prewett 4y ago
  The so what depends on your perspective. If you think of Linux as a hobbyist's operating system, and you get to join the party and tinker around, well, sure, this is just people's spare-time project, sure it's going to have bugs. I've come to the conclusion that this is the most correct view (as in, matches what the reality _is_). But don't complain about the year of Linux on the Desktop never arriving, because this kind of bug is not acceptable for a production operating system. In every commercial app I've been a part of developing, a crash is a showstopper bug--we don't ship until it is fixed. In a settings app, it's even worse, because now you've got to research how to do all this stuff on the command line. But my experience is that there is always some major bug like this with the GUI. Obviously the command line is the real interface and the GUI is just to paint the pig. Why is it never the Year of Linux on the Desktop? Because (among other things) the real interface is the command line. Ok, fine, just don't ship hobby-grade system software and expect to be taken seriously, just man up and say "the developers of this OS don't have time to write a real GUI, so it is command-line only, expect a high learning curve."
Ologn 4y ago
Most operating systems I work with have issues. I just got a new MBP from work yesterday. The time zone was off so I went to settings to change it, but I need administrator access to change the time zone (although inexplicably if I turn off my wired connection and turn on wifi the system will switch to my current location). I have a jerry-rigged thing hanging over the camera, since Microsoft Teams randomly decides to turn my camera on during meetings, particularly very large meetings (although once in a while I do need the camera on). I find the new MBP M1 power dongle which plugs into the MBP more bulky than the one on the previous MBP. On my personal MBP, I've also encountered some Intel/ARM headaches with the MBP chip changeover, but that is another story. I worked for a company three years ago which assigned me a Windows laptop. That had even more issues. I have had so many issues with Windows over the years I don't even need to go into them. Have not had many problems with Ubuntu in recent times. Last minor problem I had was getting all the nvidia libraries in so I could do Stable Diffusion Dreambooth training. So every time I make the decision to upgrade the system software and kernel stuff comes in, I have to do a little extra work or Nvidia will go away (and the screen will go to 800x600 or something). Much due to Nvidia not playing ball with Linux over the years. I can't think of any system which would be easier to do Automatic1111 Dreambooth training on though along with the rest of the system I'm setting up. Also there's the X11/Wayland thing. When I resize my terminal in X11 a tooltip shows me what the new size is, not in Wayland. There are some other things I need X11 for, can't even remember them all offhand. So I still use X11 and not wayland, but that's not a big deal currently (although when I upgrade I sometimes forget to switch to X11 initially and get confused why some things break for me). Also, if you want stability, like in many things in software, it doesn't make much sense to upgrade on the day a new Ubuntu release drops. It usually takes about 2-3 months to shake out some larger bugs. When I had more time in the past I used to fire up a KVM, download the beta, test it out and file bugs if I found anything (or even send in patches sometimes). Ubuntu has its problems, but it has been the best of all of them for the past years. Forget Windows. MacOS is OK - with MacOS there is a stability/limiting tradeoff - it might be a little more stable, but it is more limiting sometimes. I prefer the limits off, I prefer to be able to dive down into the GTK libraries or even kernel if need be. Also with MacOS I could conceivably get stuck with something, with Ubuntu I'm not going to get stuck with anything because if I want to enough I can always just go down and change the code. Ubuntu can have issues, but I don't know of anything better for my needs. It can depend on needs - Gentoo in some ways is even less limiting, but seems to need more time devoted to tuning and maintaining it. I just want a nice Linux desktop where I can tune things and dig into the code if I want, but usually won't have to. Ubuntu fits that for me. Some people here say they think Ubuntu has gone downhill in the past few years, but I don't know of an alternative I can switch to and stick with for the next decade like I have with Ubuntu (more than a decade).
borissk 4y ago
Tried Ubuntu three times on different laptops in the last 5 years or so. Eventually, when a new major version got released, updates stopped working on all 3...
andy_ppp 4y ago
I’ve had to use a Windows 10 machine in a new job and I am shocked how bad it is! I would have thought they would have made things better since Windows XP but it’s absolutely junk. Restarts, screen flickering, slowness, Dell crap, policy and spyware crap. Just flakiness everywhere. I don’t think anything buggy/not actually functional like this happens though, I wonder how Apple manage to produce such high quality software, the fit and finish really is worlds apart compared to Linux Desktop or Windows.
phendrenad2 4y ago
The real story here is that Ubuntu removed "performance" and now there's only "balanced" (balanced between what?) and "power-saver".
PennRobotics 4y ago
At least for my on Fedora 37, having `tlp` installed/configured made the GNOME settings dialog only allow power saving mode. There wasn't much indication of why, just a similar bug report (and associated fix) somewhere online. After uninstalling, I could again select all 3 power modes.
- NGRhodes 4y ago
  I read somewhere that Fedora ships a new power management component called Power Profiles Daemon, I suspect it and TLP conflict.
AzzieElbab 4y ago
Sounds like GUI bug, doesn’t it? Maybe starting control centre from terminal will provide more clues?
- jmclnx 4y ago
  Yes, GUI has a bug, news at 11. I do not know what 'powerprofilesctl' is (I am on Slackware), but if I want to change scaling I just echo to file: /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor That is the thing, having a fancy GUI when a menu that executes a script to do the same thing seems a bit over kill for me. People should really look at xmessage(1), poping up an xmessage with a selection for this setting makes for a very simple script. I have many such scripts that use xmessage(1).
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    It's supposed to do the echoing automatically. Also, if I'm not confusing it with something else, it pretends it's able to "adapt" this to different things. Like, if you start compiling for dear life, it'll crank it up to performance. I, personally, don't bother with these, I haven't seen much difference between those profiles on my laptops, neither on Windows or Linux (PM works fine on Linux for me, I get comparable battery life to Windows).
- k8sToGo 4y ago
  Have you read the article? He does both. Even links to the bug tracker and that it got already fixed.
  - AzzieElbab 4y ago
    Right. Was too early in the morning
  - WmWsjA6B29B4nfk 4y ago
    So what's the point of the article then?
    - 4y ago
dncornholio 4y ago
Wondering if the same would happen if you set your power profile to something else then balanced, or power-saver.
intsunny 4y ago
- blueflow 4y ago
  Yes! Twitter is not important anymore, and i celebrate it.
- heywire 4y ago
  I appreciated the heads up, I wasn’t aware of the issue.
- KMnO4 4y ago
  I use Ubuntu every day, but don’t care about Twitter in the slightest. Even if I used Twitter, HN is for intellectual curiosity, not big corp drama.
- gonzo41 4y ago
  Who cares about Twitter. Surely FTX and all the other crypto implosions would be staying on the front page for a little longer.
- snapcaster 4y ago
  We're focusing on what's important
johnklos 4y ago
Ubuntu is feeling more and more like Windows every day. There are lots of parts that feel unpolished, and blatant bugs make it feel untested. I had to use Ubuntu for a couple of days recently, and in just that little time I found a handful of glaring bugs. This bug here doesn't surprise me. So this is what happens when distros become too commercial, huh?
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >Ubuntu is feeling more and more like Windows every day. There are lots of parts that feel unpolished, and blatant bugs make it feel untested. That's way worse than Windows. All core Windows GUI components actually work and are stable. GUI wise, my Ubuntu 22.04 provided at work is way, way, more buggy than my Windows 11 Pro install at home. Don't know if it's Ubuntu issues, GNOME issues, GNOME extensions issues, Wayland issues, SNAP issues, pipewire/pulseaudio issues, or a combination of those, but as a user trying to get work done, I don't have time to debug which component of this bazaar engineering laundry list is at fault. The whole point of Ubuntu is that you were getting older packages and components, but it was bulletproof, battle tested, working and stable. They seem to have lost the plot a while ago. I can't even disable the touchpad when a mouse is plugged in lol. Granted, Gnome has some stellar UX choices though, credit where credit is due, but if I were to recommend someone a Linux distro reagrdless of desktop environment, to it wouldn't be Ubuntu.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    I have yet to fully grok and rein in pulse. It's just easy enough to fix it ad-hoc that I never bother to dive in and resolve my issues fully.
  - erwincoumans 4y ago
    Agreed, Ununtu is way worse. Especially when Ubuntu performed a background update, and the NVIDIA GPU stops working properly. It happened several times to me, and a few times the GPU drivers were so hard to update that a reinstall of Ubuntu was quicker/easier. This never happened to me in Windows.
swarnie 4y ago
Oddly i setup a new Ubuntu VM for a project im working on and left it running for a few weeks, came back to find it consuming 13Ghz from the host. Considering it was a default install with nothing but an IP address i was rather confused. Anyone seen similar in 22.04?
aNoob7000 4y ago
Is there a perfect O/S? I see a lot of complaints about Linux, Windows, and OSX. I personally use Mac OSX at home and Windows at work. I find both have there own set of issues. For example, I find the Finder app in OSX to be a joke compared to Explorer on Windows.
- aliqot 4y ago
  plan9
- bayindirh 4y ago
  Actually Finder is pretty feature packed, but all of these features are well hidden from eyes, so unless you discover them it feels like that, you're true.
- AuthorizedCust 4y ago
  Far too much of Mac OS’s UI is click-happy, minimally functional garbage (or if allegedly functional, hides a lot of good things). And for reasons I can’t grasp, many keyboard shortcuts take 3-4 keys even though Mac has four specialty keys (Ctrl, Alt, Apple, and the #-like key). I remember a Gartner article warning that Mac users will prefer the OS for nonobjective reasons, and that IT leaders just need to learn to accept it. I’ve finally had a Mac for a year, and I can’t agree more on the nonobjective part. It’s not good.
  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    I can explain the Mac bits. The command key (⌘) is the primary key and is used to implement system-wide (via convention) shortcuts: e.g. copy, paste, find, minimize window, etc. The option key (⌥) is used for symbols and composing diacritics. The ctrl (^) key is a tertiary key, used for a small amount of keyboard navigation. The fn (globe) key is largely unavailable for use in shortcuts. There is no apple key, it got replaced by the command key. Since the command key does a lot of work, you end up with a lot of chording.
    - Karunamon 4y ago

88 points by mikece 4y ago

I seriously stopped recommending ubuntu to new users of linux. Some ubuntu based ones are ok (like elementary) but ubuntu itself for years has had myriad issues in stability for a long time. The only real benefit is since ubuntu is more popular, you're more likely to find getting help for it online, more readme's will have ubuntu specific install directions or packaged binaries, googling for errors and such will be easier, etc.

bodge5000 4y ago
Also concerns around privacy and similar things which first started to be treated more seriously when it came prepackaged with an Amazon app. To my knowledge right now they are just that, concerns, no absolute proof, but why risk it when there are so many other distros where those concerns don't exist? Also theres the whole snap controversy, yeh sadly Ubuntu's issues go beyond stability
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
I don't see that at all, but OTOH I run i3 so maybe it's more an issue with their gnome setup?
codegeek 4y ago
Thr benefit of being able to find help online is a huge one. I use Ubuntu because ut just works for my use cases (VPS) and I can easily find issues/commands online if needed. Other distros, I m a bit wary. This doesn't apply if you are a Linux expert but most of us are just devs using Linux for hosting, deployments etc.
- LoveMortuus 4y ago
  >The benefit of being able to find help online is a huge one. Very very true, I'd say that's one of the biggest reasons why Raspberry Pi and Arduino are much more popular then STM32 or other, equality or more capable at an equal or even better price, microcontroller.
- 4oo4 4y ago
  I initially had this same concern too about migrating from Ubuntu as well, but for any Debian based distro those same commands are going to be almost exactly the same, and really the main differences are what comes default and package versions. How Debian feeds into downstream distros is something that Linux novices might not know, but I think that the differences aren't as intimidating as they might seem. It's called The Universal OS for a reason, and I think if people give themselves enough credit for using Linux in the first place they would be surprised at how capable in using other distros and they can be and how much the skills transfer over. I think part of that is because if you're used to using Windows you get a sense of learned helplessness because you're taught you're not worthy of learning how the OS works, so if the first distro people use is Ubuntu that same feeling will carry over, and you tell yourself "this is the only Linux I'm capable of using". Also when you've only ever used one distro having dozens of different options makes it seem like every one is radically different, despite having similar conventions and using the same code within distro families. So never be afraid to "fuck around and find out" and see what else is out there, if you can use Ubuntu you're capable of using many other distros. Ubuntu is geared for enterprise deployments and cloud VMs nowadays, instead of regular people just dipping their toes into Linux like it used to be. So its status as the default user friendliest distro isn't valid anymore. You can also get the "just works" experience from other distros, and in fact maybe more so because of all the issues with snap based applications that Canonical forces on you that add complexity, makes troubleshooting more difficult and creates a much worse overall user experience.
kayodelycaon 4y ago
What do you recommend instead?
- noobermin 4y ago
  So I should have specified, I'm mainly talking about linux for users, not as a dev tool like the first reply. As I hinted to, I do recommend elementary because it uses ubuntu under the hood so most terminal tutorials online will work with it but it's much more polished. I feel like the elementary folks put a lot of effort into the OS.

tgiba 4y ago

Are Ubuntu GUI bugs Hacker News worthy really?

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Oh boy, let me tell you the story of the GNOME file picker thumbnails.
forgotpwd16 4y ago
It's a seemingly ridiculous bug that can impact usability on the most popular Linux distro.
- wmil 4y ago
  It's pretty par for the course for the Gnome team. Gnome 3 had a major impact usability on every single distro, and there were many more problems following that. The Ubuntu team probably doesn't feel safe updating the Settings app without extensive regression testing.
geerlingguy 4y ago
I posted this blog entry mostly for my own reference (I use my blog as a searchable index of all my findings, since Google is easier to use than any note taking app), and it always surprises me what makes it into HN vs what doesn't... I think in this case it may have unintentionally riled up the "Ubuntu isn't what it used to be" sensibility that's prevalent among Linux users, but I see it more as an annoying little bug that will hopefully be fixed in stable releases soon... but until then, here's the workaround.

readingnews 4y ago

I am not going to bash one distro or another, but I have been using Linux since (literally) 1992, so I have some history with slackware, gentoo, redhat (since the early TSX-11 archive days), ubuntu, mint, MXlinux, SuSE, Debian, and Fedora. I was a real RedHat user for many years, and some of those I listed I was intimately familiar with. I echo some other comments... I think perhaps 10-12 years ago, I would strongly recommend Ubuntu to new users. I find now I actively try to get people to stop using it. Here at the uni professors blindly ask for it since it is so popular, but it causes more trouble than it is worth. I used to be a very large Mint proponent, but even now I find it harder to recommend that distro. In an odd twist, my most stable builds are gentoo boxes, which are by no means built for any kind of novice, or heck, even some real linux users have issues with it. I installed and used MX a few times, and perhaps will migrate most to that distro. Other than moving to Debian, I wonder what is a truly stable desktop distro these days, which someone could recommend for a new user? Might have to break down and start trying some cherry picked ones from the distrowatch list again...

morjom 4y ago
Pretty confident in Fedora, even for new users.
- i_am_proteus 4y ago
  Fedora is my "Just Works" distribution of choice as of 36. I haven't upgraded to 37 (which just came out).
  - leodriesch 4y ago
    GPU drivers for NVIDIA graphics card have been a bit of a hassle for me, I'd love to see a version with (proprietary) NVIDIA drivers included, like Pop!_OS provides.
    - bravetraveler 4y ago
      Unlikely first party, truly unencumbered software is one of the tenets

peter_retief 4y ago

Ubuntu has some serious issues. I have moved to Fedora, tried Debian for awhile but the rpm based Fedora makes a great workstation. My recommendation.

roody15 4y ago

I have also found issues with Ubuntu 22.04. From my perspective the Distro was released a bit early and still seems like beta. I find Ubuntu 20 way more stable and still a better fit for most users at this point.

longwave 4y ago
I agree. There is mouse lag during high CPU load in Wayland that I never had in X11, but if I switch back to the X11 desktop then mouseover/hover cursor changes are broken in Firefox. I can't find solutions to either of these issues, so I'm seemingly stuck with one or the other, unless I reinstall and downgrade to 20.04.
- remram 4y ago
  To be honest I have mouse lag in Ubuntu 22.04 with X11 and KDE, for example every time I start a Java application (even a command-line one).

the__alchemist 4y ago

I've tried Linux (usually Ubuntu) every other year for ~15 years. Weird stuff like this is the norm. You can sometimes fix these things by searching SO + forums, and C+P terminal commands.

loudmax 4y ago

It's unfortunate the GNOME is still the default desktop environment for most Linux distributions. People give Linux a try, then give up because it's unstable and difficult to troubleshoot. Linux itself is stable (given the right hardware drivers), and provides a solid foundation for a well designed desktop environment. It's GNOME that's a mess. One of the core strengths of Linux is its modularity, with parts being easily swapped so distro managers or end users can customize what they need. GNOME goes against this by taking on hardware management tasks that are well outside the scope of a desktop environment and munging it all into a giant ball of complexity so everything depends on everything else. If the GNOME project had the resources to hire a massive QA team to catch issues like this, it wouldn't be such a problem. But they don't, so GNOME's shortcomings and poor design choices give desktop Linux a bad reputation.

bluedino 4y ago
The bad thing is that it's what people are used to (thanks, Ubuntu. But it's Fedoras default as well)), our KDE systems were met with a lot of resistance and ended up needing to change to GNOME
okamiueru 4y ago
Could you give examples as to what is messy? I used gnome on a daily basis, as well as Windows 10/11, and occasionally MacOS. My experience is that gnome is consistent, consolidated and intuitive. While windows is all over the place, with at least two separate UIs with slightly different overlap in functionality.
- betaby 4y ago
  Nagging update messages which won't disappear after clicking. Random window switch unresponsiveness/delay. Those are in Gnome, I have no such problem in KDE, I have a different set of issues.
- w4rh4wk5 4y ago
  https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/file-roller/-/issues/4 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/file-roller/-/issues/4

rr888 4y ago

After having trouble with battery life in Linux I just went back to Windows. Everything works as designed and does what I want. Only problem is some Python libraries dont work so well, but I dont need that much. Most of my time is using IDEs, browser and shells which any OS does pretty well now.

plaguepilled 4y ago

Gonna be a contrarian here but, well, so what? This is a bug. Upstream (vanilla GNOME) fixed it. It hasn't been patched to downstream (Ubuntu GNOME). Exposure to bugs can be reduced by choosing well maintained software projects, but they are sadly the norm past a certain level of complexity for many desktop environments. I could point to analogously silly bugs in my favourite DE (KDE), or even much more minimal projects like Sway and DWM. At this stage, users have 4 choices (wow!): 1. Just wait for Ubuntu to port the patch (easiest) 2. Install vanilla gnome on Ubuntu (or use another distrowith vanilla gnome) 3. Install KDE or Sway or whatever you want on Ubuntu and learn that (or, again, use a different distro that has a new DE) 4. Become The Cool Terminal Dude (the custom keyboard layout community would like to talk to you about the word of the holy lord, staggered column layouts) Personally I like option 2 and 3 because then I get to shill all the nice alternatives out there like Fedora and Gentoo, but you do you.

tokai 4y ago
You forgot option 5. Write rants about everything GNOME being bad. If you are high level you might even sneak in some systemd hate. It's important not to do anything constructive though. What would be the point of that?
prewett 4y ago
The so what depends on your perspective. If you think of Linux as a hobbyist's operating system, and you get to join the party and tinker around, well, sure, this is just people's spare-time project, sure it's going to have bugs. I've come to the conclusion that this is the most correct view (as in, matches what the reality _is_). But don't complain about the year of Linux on the Desktop never arriving, because this kind of bug is not acceptable for a production operating system. In every commercial app I've been a part of developing, a crash is a showstopper bug--we don't ship until it is fixed. In a settings app, it's even worse, because now you've got to research how to do all this stuff on the command line. But my experience is that there is always some major bug like this with the GUI. Obviously the command line is the real interface and the GUI is just to paint the pig. Why is it never the Year of Linux on the Desktop? Because (among other things) the real interface is the command line. Ok, fine, just don't ship hobby-grade system software and expect to be taken seriously, just man up and say "the developers of this OS don't have time to write a real GUI, so it is command-line only, expect a high learning curve."

Ologn 4y ago

Most operating systems I work with have issues. I just got a new MBP from work yesterday. The time zone was off so I went to settings to change it, but I need administrator access to change the time zone (although inexplicably if I turn off my wired connection and turn on wifi the system will switch to my current location). I have a jerry-rigged thing hanging over the camera, since Microsoft Teams randomly decides to turn my camera on during meetings, particularly very large meetings (although once in a while I do need the camera on). I find the new MBP M1 power dongle which plugs into the MBP more bulky than the one on the previous MBP. On my personal MBP, I've also encountered some Intel/ARM headaches with the MBP chip changeover, but that is another story. I worked for a company three years ago which assigned me a Windows laptop. That had even more issues. I have had so many issues with Windows over the years I don't even need to go into them. Have not had many problems with Ubuntu in recent times. Last minor problem I had was getting all the nvidia libraries in so I could do Stable Diffusion Dreambooth training. So every time I make the decision to upgrade the system software and kernel stuff comes in, I have to do a little extra work or Nvidia will go away (and the screen will go to 800x600 or something). Much due to Nvidia not playing ball with Linux over the years. I can't think of any system which would be easier to do Automatic1111 Dreambooth training on though along with the rest of the system I'm setting up. Also there's the X11/Wayland thing. When I resize my terminal in X11 a tooltip shows me what the new size is, not in Wayland. There are some other things I need X11 for, can't even remember them all offhand. So I still use X11 and not wayland, but that's not a big deal currently (although when I upgrade I sometimes forget to switch to X11 initially and get confused why some things break for me). Also, if you want stability, like in many things in software, it doesn't make much sense to upgrade on the day a new Ubuntu release drops. It usually takes about 2-3 months to shake out some larger bugs. When I had more time in the past I used to fire up a KVM, download the beta, test it out and file bugs if I found anything (or even send in patches sometimes). Ubuntu has its problems, but it has been the best of all of them for the past years. Forget Windows. MacOS is OK - with MacOS there is a stability/limiting tradeoff - it might be a little more stable, but it is more limiting sometimes. I prefer the limits off, I prefer to be able to dive down into the GTK libraries or even kernel if need be. Also with MacOS I could conceivably get stuck with something, with Ubuntu I'm not going to get stuck with anything because if I want to enough I can always just go down and change the code. Ubuntu can have issues, but I don't know of anything better for my needs. It can depend on needs - Gentoo in some ways is even less limiting, but seems to need more time devoted to tuning and maintaining it. I just want a nice Linux desktop where I can tune things and dig into the code if I want, but usually won't have to. Ubuntu fits that for me. Some people here say they think Ubuntu has gone downhill in the past few years, but I don't know of an alternative I can switch to and stick with for the next decade like I have with Ubuntu (more than a decade).

borissk 4y ago

Tried Ubuntu three times on different laptops in the last 5 years or so. Eventually, when a new major version got released, updates stopped working on all 3...

andy_ppp 4y ago

I’ve had to use a Windows 10 machine in a new job and I am shocked how bad it is! I would have thought they would have made things better since Windows XP but it’s absolutely junk. Restarts, screen flickering, slowness, Dell crap, policy and spyware crap. Just flakiness everywhere. I don’t think anything buggy/not actually functional like this happens though, I wonder how Apple manage to produce such high quality software, the fit and finish really is worlds apart compared to Linux Desktop or Windows.

phendrenad2 4y ago

The real story here is that Ubuntu removed "performance" and now there's only "balanced" (balanced between what?) and "power-saver".

PennRobotics 4y ago

At least for my on Fedora 37, having `tlp` installed/configured made the GNOME settings dialog only allow power saving mode. There wasn't much indication of why, just a similar bug report (and associated fix) somewhere online. After uninstalling, I could again select all 3 power modes.

NGRhodes 4y ago
I read somewhere that Fedora ships a new power management component called Power Profiles Daemon, I suspect it and TLP conflict.

AzzieElbab 4y ago

Sounds like GUI bug, doesn’t it? Maybe starting control centre from terminal will provide more clues?

jmclnx 4y ago
Yes, GUI has a bug, news at 11. I do not know what 'powerprofilesctl' is (I am on Slackware), but if I want to change scaling I just echo to file: /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor That is the thing, having a fancy GUI when a menu that executes a script to do the same thing seems a bit over kill for me. People should really look at xmessage(1), poping up an xmessage with a selection for this setting makes for a very simple script. I have many such scripts that use xmessage(1).
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  It's supposed to do the echoing automatically. Also, if I'm not confusing it with something else, it pretends it's able to "adapt" this to different things. Like, if you start compiling for dear life, it'll crank it up to performance. I, personally, don't bother with these, I haven't seen much difference between those profiles on my laptops, neither on Windows or Linux (PM works fine on Linux for me, I get comparable battery life to Windows).
k8sToGo 4y ago
Have you read the article? He does both. Even links to the bug tracker and that it got already fixed.
- AzzieElbab 4y ago
  Right. Was too early in the morning
- WmWsjA6B29B4nfk 4y ago
  So what's the point of the article then?
  - 4y ago

dncornholio 4y ago

Wondering if the same would happen if you set your power profile to something else then balanced, or power-saver.

intsunny 4y ago

blueflow 4y ago
Yes! Twitter is not important anymore, and i celebrate it.
heywire 4y ago
I appreciated the heads up, I wasn’t aware of the issue.
KMnO4 4y ago
I use Ubuntu every day, but don’t care about Twitter in the slightest. Even if I used Twitter, HN is for intellectual curiosity, not big corp drama.
gonzo41 4y ago
Who cares about Twitter. Surely FTX and all the other crypto implosions would be staying on the front page for a little longer.
snapcaster 4y ago
We're focusing on what's important

johnklos 4y ago

Ubuntu is feeling more and more like Windows every day. There are lots of parts that feel unpolished, and blatant bugs make it feel untested. I had to use Ubuntu for a couple of days recently, and in just that little time I found a handful of glaring bugs. This bug here doesn't surprise me. So this is what happens when distros become too commercial, huh?

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>Ubuntu is feeling more and more like Windows every day. There are lots of parts that feel unpolished, and blatant bugs make it feel untested. That's way worse than Windows. All core Windows GUI components actually work and are stable. GUI wise, my Ubuntu 22.04 provided at work is way, way, more buggy than my Windows 11 Pro install at home. Don't know if it's Ubuntu issues, GNOME issues, GNOME extensions issues, Wayland issues, SNAP issues, pipewire/pulseaudio issues, or a combination of those, but as a user trying to get work done, I don't have time to debug which component of this bazaar engineering laundry list is at fault. The whole point of Ubuntu is that you were getting older packages and components, but it was bulletproof, battle tested, working and stable. They seem to have lost the plot a while ago. I can't even disable the touchpad when a mouse is plugged in lol. Granted, Gnome has some stellar UX choices though, credit where credit is due, but if I were to recommend someone a Linux distro reagrdless of desktop environment, to it wouldn't be Ubuntu.
- ehnto 4y ago
  I have yet to fully grok and rein in pulse. It's just easy enough to fix it ad-hoc that I never bother to dive in and resolve my issues fully.
- erwincoumans 4y ago
  Agreed, Ununtu is way worse. Especially when Ubuntu performed a background update, and the NVIDIA GPU stops working properly. It happened several times to me, and a few times the GPU drivers were so hard to update that a reinstall of Ubuntu was quicker/easier. This never happened to me in Windows.

swarnie 4y ago

Oddly i setup a new Ubuntu VM for a project im working on and left it running for a few weeks, came back to find it consuming 13Ghz from the host. Considering it was a default install with nothing but an IP address i was rather confused. Anyone seen similar in 22.04?

aNoob7000 4y ago

Is there a perfect O/S? I see a lot of complaints about Linux, Windows, and OSX. I personally use Mac OSX at home and Windows at work. I find both have there own set of issues. For example, I find the Finder app in OSX to be a joke compared to Explorer on Windows.

aliqot 4y ago
plan9
bayindirh 4y ago
Actually Finder is pretty feature packed, but all of these features are well hidden from eyes, so unless you discover them it feels like that, you're true.
AuthorizedCust 4y ago
Far too much of Mac OS’s UI is click-happy, minimally functional garbage (or if allegedly functional, hides a lot of good things). And for reasons I can’t grasp, many keyboard shortcuts take 3-4 keys even though Mac has four specialty keys (Ctrl, Alt, Apple, and the #-like key). I remember a Gartner article warning that Mac users will prefer the OS for nonobjective reasons, and that IT leaders just need to learn to accept it. I’ve finally had a Mac for a year, and I can’t agree more on the nonobjective part. It’s not good.
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  I can explain the Mac bits. The command key (⌘) is the primary key and is used to implement system-wide (via convention) shortcuts: e.g. copy, paste, find, minimize window, etc. The option key (⌥) is used for symbols and composing diacritics. The ctrl (^) key is a tertiary key, used for a small amount of keyboard navigation. The fn (globe) key is largely unavailable for use in shortcuts. There is no apple key, it got replaced by the command key. Since the command key does a lot of work, you end up with a lot of chording.
  - Karunamon 4y ago