Ubuntu 26 + KDE Plasma 6.6 perfectly handles high-DPI scaling for me. I was originally planning to buy a Mac, but luckily I saw the news about Ubuntu 26 being released a few days ago.
* Select - Middle-click paste does not seem to work
* When something requires a password (ie just tried a bitlocker volume) the whole screen is blocked, so no password manager for you (unless you copy it before, or cancel - unplug drive-copy password - replug drive - paste.)
* The default tiling does not jive with me, sometimes I don't even know what it wants (it always tries to force you to also set a left windows if you tile right and vice versa) so I disabled it `gnome-extensions disable [email protected]`. Default Gnome tiling is ok (but missing quarter tiling (and 1/8th would be nice on my ultra-wide) imho so I use [0]
* I've been trying to use Nix home-manager for packages but I have GPU errors, need workarounds, icons that just remain generic. But I guess that is not Ubuntu's fault.
Ubuntu remains my nr. 2 choice, after NixOS (but I didn't get the latter to install on this Nuc, perhaps a bios update will help).
The installer offered (under experimental) to run root on zfs, I didn't end up selecting it because only on the forth try (and by that time you're clicking at a fast rate just taking defaults) I understood that it would only download packages via wifi, not the cable (same for NixOS installer, so must be my network).
I was never a fan of it. I always turned it off. And now it also freed up middle click for auto scrolling which is actually great, especially when the scrollwheel is somewhat broken.
As a trackpoint user, I am glad it's off by default.
Because of scrolling on Thinkpad keyboards (using the middle click), I had to turn that feature of every time, especially while working on longer documents I would otherwise accidentally paste stuff at random places.
> only made because the same feature does not exist in MacOS.
Or in anything that's not X?
Speaking personally for me only, I don't think it's a great thing. The <however many> clipboards on Linux is... not really a great thing. I for one never know which of the buffers contain what. And this is compounded by the fact that selection may or may not overwrite what's in one of the buffers, and middle click may or may not paste whatever was in that buffer. Additionally compounded by how inconsistent the behavior is across apps.
What should I use if I like Ubuntu but not snap, just Debian? Or are there alternatives around? Seems like Ubuntu has the best hardware and driver support so just curious what's new in Linux land.
I have a year ago switched from Ubuntu to Fedora and I like it. Clean and stable. Uses Flatpak. I'm using Fedora Workstation which is the default, but Fedora KDE Plasma seems to be nice as well if you want to have more configuration options available directly in the GUI. And the layout is more Windows like with start button menu etc for people coming from the Windows side.
Now Debian is packaging non-free drivers in the iso images directly. I would suggest to try Debian first, if it works well for you just keep it.
If you feel the need for newer packages, try other alternatives (or Debian unstable). I’ve set down on Fedora with XFCE, it’s really stable yet packages feel new.
I’m curious about proprietary Nvidia drivers. Ubuntu normally comes with fairly outdated, if not obsolete ones, but there’s a semi-official PPA with more recent versions. How does Debian handle this?
Debian has their own nvidia driver packages (it's nvidia's drivers repackaged in a nice way that integrates with the system well). I can't say if they're "outdated" or how different they are from what ubuntu ships, but they've always worked very well for me.
Dunno about the this release, but till 24.4 it was simply a matter of removing some packages then holding/masking the primary snapd one, followed by manually adding the official PPAs for Mozilla’s stuff (or just use the Flatpak).
Of course, there’s still the philosophical and long term issues with staying on a distro that’s promoting and continuosuly expanding the thing you dislike…
The issue is them adding it back, sometimes even on apt upgrade, or silently installing it as a dependency for certain apps without mentioning it unless you look closely. That gets tiring after a while and I gave up on Ubuntu as even after having removed snap multiple times it always returned.
I was using Ubuntu and installed the apt version of Firefox as the snap version would not open html files in locations like /var/tmp and would not work with USB devices. Every time I ran `do-release-upgrade`, all of that work would need to be redone. It was very annoying.
I distro hopped for a while and settled on Linux mint. Uses flat packs. Hits the spot for easy to use and easy to maintain without needing to use terminal scripts to get things my way. Just my opinion.
This looks like it might be the best solution, no snap, maintained by an actual system integrator and laptop maker, and I also like the new Rust-based desktop environment. I wonder how well it runs on Framework laptops or MacBooks as well.
Ubuntu LTS is still the choice for many production environments and education and learning. As someone with Ubuntu from 2010 CDs, I find it refreshing that modern Ubuntu distros work OOB on most computers these days with excellent driver support.
Is this even true? I mean, Windows is the main focus for all hardware vendors, and everybody who has owned a PC knows that malfunctions are unavoidable. If that is the case for Windows, then Linux cant be better.
I know that the interim releases had issues with zfs and trying to update gave the message "Sorry, cannot upgrade this system to 25.04 right now System freezes have been observed on upgrades to 25.04 with ZFS
enabled. Please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PluckyPuffin/ReleaseNotes for more
information. "
The release notes don't seem to mention zfs. I hope these issues have been fixed?
The comments there note there is no official Ubuntu MATE release for the first time since Ubuntu 15 (and before 14.04 gnome2 was an option). That's a shame but probably most people who chose MATE (or gnome2) no longer chose Ubuntu due to the conflicting ideologies inherent in the two. MATE users generally don't like change for change's sake.
not sure if this confirms the impression you have there... I wasn't like this until a couple of headless VPS'es (on Arm8) got through the upgrade from 18.x -> 20.x -> 22.x and then crashed out over -> 24.x for a still unknown reason. now I'm just afraid .. or I should say reluctant ..to repeat that whole fiasco.
There were some issue with how the menu icon manager handled the new security policy defaults. This means the editor will break, and the displayed menu may be missing any item that didn't follow the naming convention syntax. Its a lot of packages to bring into compliance, for that one silly feature the devs had to put in before it was ready...
Maybe they fixed it since the rc release, but there were some rough edges in Feb... the kernel USB support cooked the thumb drive partition structure.
In 22.04 to 24.04 the kernel Nvidia GPU driver EOL abandonment began... In 26.04 people will discover most EOL hardware support prior to RTX series will be difficult to bring up.
Probably wise to wait a few weeks for the bug reports to clear out a bit. =3
Keeping the key in the same room as the padlock only protects against casual drive theft and secure disposal.
Personally I'm more worried about someone stealing the entire server or a local threat actor.
Sure, keep TPM to help with boot integrity, maybe even a factor for unlock, but things like Clevis+Tang (or Bitlock Network Unlock for our windows brethren) is essential in my opinion.
The beta installer was completely unsuccessful in setting the TPM-backed disk encryption on both a ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Intel 258V) and a ThinkPad P14s (AMD 300-something). Hopefully they ironed that part out in the release, but it seems still early for this feature (at least for my comfort level).
In what way is TPM protecting your data if someone steals the entire server? TPM only ensures that the boot environment has not been modified. Whatever key is being used to automatically decrypt the disk would be in the clear.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your situation, I think you should look up the "Evil Maid Attack" to better understand how to mitigate risk for your threat model.
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/an-update-on-rust-coreutils/8...
Goes to show that not all security bugs are memory related bugs
* Select - Middle-click paste does not seem to work
* When something requires a password (ie just tried a bitlocker volume) the whole screen is blocked, so no password manager for you (unless you copy it before, or cancel - unplug drive-copy password - replug drive - paste.)
* The default tiling does not jive with me, sometimes I don't even know what it wants (it always tries to force you to also set a left windows if you tile right and vice versa) so I disabled it `gnome-extensions disable [email protected]`. Default Gnome tiling is ok (but missing quarter tiling (and 1/8th would be nice on my ultra-wide) imho so I use [0]
* I've been trying to use Nix home-manager for packages but I have GPU errors, need workarounds, icons that just remain generic. But I guess that is not Ubuntu's fault.
Ubuntu remains my nr. 2 choice, after NixOS (but I didn't get the latter to install on this Nuc, perhaps a bios update will help).
The installer offered (under experimental) to run root on zfs, I didn't end up selecting it because only on the forth try (and by that time you're clicking at a fast rate just taking defaults) I understood that it would only download packages via wifi, not the cable (same for NixOS installer, so must be my network).
[0] https://github.com/troyready/quarterwindows
It doesn't. X was the only place I know of where that was a thing.
Because of scrolling on Thinkpad keyboards (using the middle click), I had to turn that feature of every time, especially while working on longer documents I would otherwise accidentally paste stuff at random places.
(It's not just macOS.)
Or in anything that's not X?
Speaking personally for me only, I don't think it's a great thing. The <however many> clipboards on Linux is... not really a great thing. I for one never know which of the buffers contain what. And this is compounded by the fact that selection may or may not overwrite what's in one of the buffers, and middle click may or may not paste whatever was in that buffer. Additionally compounded by how inconsistent the behavior is across apps.
If you feel the need for newer packages, try other alternatives (or Debian unstable). I’ve set down on Fedora with XFCE, it’s really stable yet packages feel new.
Dunno about the this release, but till 24.4 it was simply a matter of removing some packages then holding/masking the primary snapd one, followed by manually adding the official PPAs for Mozilla’s stuff (or just use the Flatpak).
Of course, there’s still the philosophical and long term issues with staying on a distro that’s promoting and continuosuly expanding the thing you dislike…
Make a list of all ppa before proceeding.
What is your use case?
I was using Ubuntu and installed the apt version of Firefox as the snap version would not open html files in locations like /var/tmp and would not work with USB devices. Every time I ran `do-release-upgrade`, all of that work would need to be redone. It was very annoying.
https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/meeting_matrix_fedoraproje...
The release notes don't seem to mention zfs. I hope these issues have been fixed?
not sure if this confirms the impression you have there... I wasn't like this until a couple of headless VPS'es (on Arm8) got through the upgrade from 18.x -> 20.x -> 22.x and then crashed out over -> 24.x for a still unknown reason. now I'm just afraid .. or I should say reluctant ..to repeat that whole fiasco.
https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-mate/daily-live/current/
Maybe they fixed it since the rc release, but there were some rough edges in Feb... the kernel USB support cooked the thumb drive partition structure.
In 22.04 to 24.04 the kernel Nvidia GPU driver EOL abandonment began... In 26.04 people will discover most EOL hardware support prior to RTX series will be difficult to bring up.
Probably wise to wait a few weeks for the bug reports to clear out a bit. =3
This is going to be very useful for servers hosted in third party DCs.
Personally I'm more worried about someone stealing the entire server or a local threat actor.
Sure, keep TPM to help with boot integrity, maybe even a factor for unlock, but things like Clevis+Tang (or Bitlock Network Unlock for our windows brethren) is essential in my opinion.
Unless I'm misunderstanding your situation, I think you should look up the "Evil Maid Attack" to better understand how to mitigate risk for your threat model.
How well does 26.04 with the 7.0 kernel support these? Can it, say, use their GPU and NPU for compute out of the box?