Qt Ubuntu 24.04 betas show that there's room to innovate The beta versions of Lubuntu and Kubuntu 24.04 are out, showing that there's room to improve on the standard Ubuntu formula. The beta announcements for Lubuntu 24.04 and Kubuntu 24.04 don't reveal quite as much information as the Lubuntu's alpha-test announcement did. The Reg FOSS desk looked at the two Qt-centric remixes, and …
Just yesterday I was thinking that all snaps were hanging on update. Less than 0.2% CPU, no disk, and no network. Just sitting there in the copying files stage. Restarting snapd when it's stuck like this takes about 5 minutes. Same problem on retry.
One was hanging. The others just needed an hour of doing absolutely nothing to finish. No errors logged. I hate snaps.
Today I did a routine "apt update" on my little laptop, but it jammed because it ran out of disk space. When I searched for what was taking the most space, it was all HUGE snap directory trees, in several places in the filesystem.
I'm going to have to switch another distro if I can't re-install (X)Ubuntu WITHOUT snap. Any suggestions?
> I'm going to have to switch another distro if I can't re-install (X)Ubuntu WITHOUT snap. Any suggestions?
Asmi, the remix formerly known as Zinc.
Ubuntu 23.10 with Xfce and neither Snap nor Flatpak, but better .DEB management tools instead: Nala and deb-get.
The 24.04 release is in beta.
The best solution (IMO) to the sprawling Linux filesystem was implemented in GoboLinux.
Its creators re-mapped the entire structure so that there are only 5 sub-directories in root: "Files", "Mount", "Programs", "Systems" and "Users". Each application gets its own dedicated sub-directory within "Programs", so there's no need for a package manager at all. The directory structure is the package manager.
I would still want a package manager to handle updates/etc, but I do still /really/ think we need to rethink some of the basics at some point, and I've gotta say, using the organization of the file system itself seems very advantageous to me, and doesn't seem all that far off from the way things have been going anyway with containers and flatpaks, etc.
Same thing here, since it is becoming more and a more of a pain to actually remove snapd and its tentacles (in the correct order for success!) and subsequently get the software you need for an efficient productivity box. And apparently we are not the only ones, since I see/ hear more and more people looking for alternatives, e.g xfce Debian, xfce Mint, xfce Devuan, Xebian,.. It's sad to see something that was thought out and worked well decompose. Ah well, let's keep calm and hop... or live that LTS to its end and get on that productivity...
Typo, or command?
In the open source spirit... whatever you choose it to be (the lack of which is the main issue with snaps IMHO)
I envisioned two options though: either hop to another distro, or resort to another hopping solution (see icon) and "forget" all about it.
Either way, I don't think you have a leg to stand on.
Strangely, that has occurred when executing that last option...
"I'm going to have to switch another distro if I can't re-install (X)Ubuntu WITHOUT snap. Any suggestions?"
The following link describes how to do it with it never coming back.
https://www.debugpoint.com/remove-snap-ubuntu/
If needing Firefox/Thunderbird installed as .deb files .
https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/ppa
I don't know that much about Wayland--only that when my (former and cursed) distro defaulted to it after an update, things I depended on couldn't be used any longer. Wayland is not good for a mere end user like me, but I guess for certain developers it's nice.
"For an easy life, try MX Linux, then. Less work than Devuan, better compatibility with nVidia drivers and things, and it works well."
Then you need to put up with their foolishness like a never updating kernel as the default install does not make sure to have the meta package for that to happen installed. The firewall turned on a home network stopping you from connecting to the machine and other junk I forget at the moment I had to do when trying it. Oh command line modifications to config files ignored for samba at least, you had to use their graphical programs to do the configuration changes, with the their way or the highway approach. Though I did solve the shutdown problems with the one machine I installed and kept it on, turns out without the garbage systemd installed the machine will shut down perfectly fine. Use it and it continues to be powered on but supposedly off so a power button push and hold is needed to shut it down..
"I hate snaps."
The only people who champion them are management and marketing types, and modern pseudo-technical types who claim to be Linux proficient and yet wouldn't have any idea about how to create their own distro from scratch.[0]
Easy solution: Choose a distribution (or other OS) that doesn't mandate them.
[0] Cue several shouts of "Why would I want to do that?", thus rather neatly proving my point.
"The only people who champion them are management and marketing types, and modern pseudo-technical types who claim to be Linux proficient and yet wouldn't have any idea about how to create their own distro from scratch."
My job title is "Managing Director". I'm 53. I ran Gentoo on my work desktop for 15 years, then Arch for seven. I have done Linux From Scratch, including running make config (not menuconfig, xconfig or any other wet handshake nonsense)
I fucking hate snap, me. Mind you I do quite like systemd, so there you go.
However unlike my native spoken and written language I dislike subject verb object for service incantations, eg: systemctl fuck service. Subject object verb is the way the good $DEITY intended because you really want to service service down hit arrow up service service up. Apparently the reason for SVO is that you can control multiple services, which you could still do by parsing the last word instead of the second one as the verb/action.
The ultimate irony here is that German (Mr Poettering's native language) is famously SOV ie you cobble together a load of nouns, adverbs, adjectives and conjunctions and then spit out all the verbs right at the end. English strips away all that gender stuff for nouns (except when it doesn't) and subjects verb their objects (as you do). English insists on a massive rule book and then proceeds to break nearly all of them except for the one that says ... anything goes if it can be understood by more than one person, but that is optional ... oh and you will never fathom when to use ei or ie within a word, I hate you ... la la la thhhhrrrrip! Oh and that's one formal English. There are loads of the buggers.
adjectives and conjunctions and then spit out all the verbs right at the end.
I am classed as a native German speaker, and I still have nightmares about reading Kleist short stories... 10 paperback
pages of clauses, sub clauses, sub sub sub sub sub sub clauses, then the verb.
>German (Mr Poettering's native language) is famously SOV
That's not true. German is SVO (like English) except for questions which are VSO (like older English: "have you any wool?") and subordinate clauses which are SOV.
So you'd say something like "She went to the shop [SVO], because we no milk left had [SOV]. Need we anything else [VSO]?"
“Linux is a dead end too. Unix in general is. We should have gone with Plan 9, and we still should.”
— Liam Proven, back on 12th April.
Plan9 is an interesting OS ... I've been running it on one box or a dozen, and in one guise or another, since it was first made available. To date, I have found absolutely no use for it at all, except as a tool to learn about OS design, and as a curiosity. I used it as my main writing platform for about a year (coding, documentation, contracts, the books I'm writing, longer posts to ElReg, dead-tree letters, etc. ... ). Honestly, I gave it a good solid chance, but I'm back to Slackware.
Plan9 is the poster child for a solution looking for a problem.
But I like the silly thing. I want to find a use for it. Maybe someday.
And no, using it as a container server for Linux applications isn't it ... just use another Linux box. Shorter learning curve for all concerned.
This post has been deleted by its author
"I'm not sure what you mean by a container server for linux?"
Came from one of Mr. Proven's typically useful articles:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/21/successor_to_unix_plan_9/
"Also i don't agree with "plan 9 is not unix""
I rather suspect that the authors might argue with that. From the Plan9 FAQ "Plan 9 is not Unix (or anything else you're likely familiar with). While the command set is superficially similar, it's most certainly not the same (cat on Unix has a dozen or so options; on Plan 9, it has zero). Many people come to Plan 9 expecting unix++ or similar, and are disappointed when they find something much more different than that. Even the development environment is similar but entirely distinct: we use mk, not make; we use C, but the library isn't ANSI and our compilers understand some C extensions that aren't in GCC (and not most of the non-standard ones that GCC made up); the default preprocessor is much simpler than ANSI's.".
In that case, why can’t you perform container-style isolation, running multiple alternate userlands, on Plan 9? That’s the kind of thing that is easily done on Linux.
Think of it the other way round: Plan 9 “namespaces” are equivalent to just “filesystem namespaces” on Linux. Linux puts all its other userland-accessible kernel facilities into their own namespaces as well: processes, user IDs, network interfaces, even the host name and system time. In addition, it has “cgroups” for managing groupings of processes and controlling their resource usage. “Containers” are not a primitive provided by the Linux kernel, but are woven out of all these lower-level bits. This is why you have a range of container styles, from basic things like systemd-nspawn and LXC all the way up to Docker and beyond.
In short, Linux has no need to suffer from namespace-envy: Plan 9 is the one suffering from container-envy.
> How’s That Plan 9 Switch Going?
You did read the whole series, right?
https://www.theregister.com/Tag/One%20Way%20Forward/
You are very keen to keep telling me and other commenters to go ahead and write stuff. Go on then.
Once there's a Plan 9 that can run a modern web browser, I'll give it a go.
1. An African phrase meaning "humanity towards others"
2. Ubuntu is an ancient African word, meaning "I can't configure Debian"
I like the first, the second has more than a little truth. I like Devuan, but in retirement tend to use Raspberry Pi OS light and Mac OS.
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