Ubuntu 21.10: Plan to do yourself an Indri? Here's what's inside... including a bit of GNOME schooling

Canonical has released Ubuntu 21.10, or "Impish Indri" as this one is known. This is the last major version before next year's long-term support release of Ubuntu 22.04, and serves as a good preview of some of the changes coming for those who stick with LTS releases. If you prefer to run the latest and greatest, 21.10 is a …

[Lon24]

Smooth FM

Upgraded my ThinkPad from Kubuntu 21.04 to 21.10 over the weekend. Done quickly and smoothly (for me).

I had reverted to using only LTS for my main desktop having had a few issues upgrading in years past. But Ubuntu seems to have sorted that so I may be revising my view on desktops. Production servers, of course, should be LTS.

And yes Kubuntu is a fine KDE distro if you can swallow systemd. I have to use Debian 11 KDE on some 32bit kit. Thank goodness I have Kubuntu alongside to sort issues caused by what the Debian team left out that the Kubuntu folks wisely included.

[richdin]

Re: Smooth FM

I tried twice... got kernel panics on my ThinkPad. Reverted to 21.04.3.

[gv]

Workspaces

I like my workspaces in a 2x2 grid.

[Manolo]

Re: Workspaces

I have my workspaces on a 2x2 grid (a cube even) in KDE, but since using a dual monitor setup I hardly use the virtual desktops anymore.

[Tom Chiverton 1]

If you really need the new kernel, use the upstream kernel PPA, no need to wait

[Doctor Syntax]

Gnome continues to remind us why a choice of desktop environments is a good thing.

[Alumoi]

Same way Linux Mint shows us what Ubuntu could have been.

[Manolo]

I still miss Mint's KDE edition, though I understood their decision to quit and I must say Kubuntu has gotten a lot better in the last five years.

[Chris Gray 1]

Sounds bad

What is an "Activity View"? I'm thinking its not something I want. I've never used multiple workspaces, so hopefully all that stuff for them will just vanish 100% from the screen.

I've been an Ubuntu user for many years. I spend much of my day sitting here, programming, testing, debugging. My screen is a 1920 x 1080 monitor rotated to portrait mode. I have two permanent xterm windows - one on the left where I run stuff, do email with Alpine, etc. The one on the right runs mouseless Gnu Emacs. There I do my editing, compiling, etc. That leaves a bit of space on the right where I have Mate's panel. It has icons for a few status indicators, common program launchers (e.g. Firefox), and my active programs.

I have an incredibly poor memory, so don't even try to remember key combos or mouse waves. I have no interest in the system scanning my stuff, so turn off the thing that nightly scans drives and builds an index. I start programs from menus or commands, not from some goofy "search" thing.

Tried KUbuntu for a while a few years back. Hated the "Peanut" thing I couldn't get rid of - never even understood what it was for. Couldn't understand their complicated settings filters, etc. Settled on Ubuntu Mate - comes with customizable menus which remind me what the weird names of needed-but-not-commonly-used programs are. So, will there be something usable for me, or am I doomed to continual frustration and annoyance?

[thames]

Re: Sounds bad

Since you're not actually using standard Ubuntu, I'm not sure how relevant any of that is.

"Activity View" is an overview of your current desktop by showing all open windows in a single plane, scaled to fit. If you have multiple windows open it lets you see if you have any windows hidden behind other windows and lets you pick one to come to the front. Either just click on "Activities" at the top left of the screen, or tap the super key.

Activities also shows and allows you to select workspaces. Alternatively you can just use the keyboard shortcut to move between them (ctrl+alt+ up or down key). A workspace is a virtual desktop. You can either have a dynamic number of workspaces (added on demand) or a fixed number (four being the traditional number). Multiple workspaces is a longstanding Linux feature, which I think goes back to unix days. Conceptually it's the GUI equivalent to multiple virtual terminals.

What you do with workspaces is to use them organize groups of windows for particular tasks. If you have a set of windows all set up to do whatever it is you intend to work on, if you need to do something else using different windows you can switch to another workspace to do it there without disturbing the windows you have organized for your main task. Another way to think of it is that it's like having multiple monitors without having multiple physical monitors.

You said you like to have windows set up in a particular arrangement when working. Well, that's what workspaces are meant for. If you are working on something and then need to switch to doing something else for a while, do it in another workspace. When you go back to what you were doing before you just go back to that workspace and things will be exactly the way you left them.

I have my PC set up with four workspaces and I like to set each one up in a particular way that I have gotten used to. Doing without workspaces would be a massive pain.

[Chris Gray 1]

Re: Sounds bad

Thanks for explaining the Activity View. An overblow version of a 1cm x 3cm area that I have on Mate's panel. :-)

I actually did know what workspaces are - as you say, four seemed to be standard, so I've seen that. As soon as I knew how, I shrank it to just one, of course.

As I mentioned in my diatribe, I don't really do multiple things at one time, so have no use for workspaces. I also don't use a web browser as much more than entertainment, so I don't generally have busy ones with lots of tabs. Firefox starts up in under a second, and then clicking on the vulture icon takes another < second, so I have no reason to keep one running.

I fully understand that other folks have different work requirements - I just like to know that my particular desires continue to be catered to.

Off to Emacs now to extract my memory dump code into a utility routine...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sounds bad

> I have no interest in the system scanning my stuff, so turn off the thing that nightly scans drives and builds an index. I start programs from menus or commands, not from some goofy "search" thing.

Absolutely! And not only indexing but also recording every interaction with the file system in a database.

In 16 and 18 the setting menu included an "privacy switch" to supposedly temporarily turn it off or delete a time window. However, by perusing the database file with a binary viewer I could confirm the data was still in the database file, but was just not visible using the the provided history viewer. So ironically, the intended to be private info would actually be highlighted to anyone specifically looking for it.

Turning off that history "feature" required removing the default GUI file viewer, which depended on it.

Such a mess.

Then with 20, it seemed to be gone. But actually, it was just replaced by a similarly functioning engine with a different name. Wasting more time on stack exachange turned up a relatively easier but non-intuitive way to turn it off without having the remove the default file viewer.

[Claverhouse]

Activities of the Damned

Fuck Gnome, Fuck Windows, and Fuck Activities too.

.

.

As for the last there is a long-running bug thread, these 9 years and more, seeking the KDE devs to restore the excellent ability to have different wall paper on each Virtual Desktop --- which VDs I personally find essential --- which upon removal they promised to restore, but have not yet done.

'Technical difficulties', which do not apply to other OSs now using Virtual Desktops, but which basically comes down to a dictatorial forcing to make people use their sad 'Activities' in place of VDs.

I have never used, nor will ever use 'Activities', an over-complicated and otiose solution to not having full Virtual Desktops; but they will no more restore this facility than the UK will apply to rejoin the EU.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341143

Bring back per-virtual-desktop wallpapers

[bombastic bob]

Re: Activities of the Damned

when I read about the rounded corners and comparison to Windows II I wonder if maybe the SAME driving force exists in BOTH the Gnome 3 and Windows desktop projects...

still I'll look forward to what Mint might do in its derived version, if for nothing else but updates and fixes to various things. I guess I'll need to update my Mint VM.

(I really do like the general stability of Ubu and Mint coupled with being slightly newer than Debian and Devuan, aside from the other obvious things)

[Claverhouse]

Re: Activities of the Damned

Try PCLinuxOS KDE full.

If not entirely perfect --- for what can be ? --- with some work still looks like 2012, pre Fat Slab Style, on my computer.

.

.

Of course no Systemd. Not that I care that massively, but it is an all-compassing annoyance I prefer to do without.

[Will Godfrey]

Thanks for the warning

Not coming to a computer in this house.

[NATTtrash]

The choice of no free choice?

That's a change you probably won't notice, but it should make it a bit easier for Mozilla to push out updates. The change comes at Mozilla's request, but it represents a significant step down the road of Ubuntu's transition to snap packages.

On every install snap and snapd are one for the first things to deinstall. And (IMHO) there is nothing wrong with that: if you want it, use it. If not looking for massive duplication and waste of disk space, you can deinstall. That's what free choice is all about, and, I assume, why we love the *nix environment. However...

I already noticed that Canonical, in some cases, has started to offer some applications as snap only. So no snap? Want to "just apt"? Sorry, please move on. And... if now major applications, like for example Mozilla, start moving down that road, your choice to rather not like use snap could become... a PITA like other big dictatorial OS providers, whose names can not be mentioned unhelpful and unproductive.

I do hope multiple ways to do the same thing stay available. But also so realistic I'm not holding my breath...