cyborganism

I was testing out Debian in a VM and trying to set up Timeshift to see if I can make snapshots and Timeshift didn't work because of how Debian sets up volumes with BTRFS.

Apparently Timeshift uses Ubuntu's way of setting up volumes and nothing else. Check this video to find out how to install Debian on BTRFS so it works with Timeshift.

Hello,

So I've been a long time Linux user (since 2000) and for the past 20 years, I've been using exclusively Ubuntu and its flavours. Lately I've been seeing posts and articles about how Ubuntu's Snaps are ruining the user experience and causing a lot of discontent. Since I was on the verge of scrapping Windows on my machine and going full Linux.

I started to explore the different distros out there. I installed Linux Mint, (K/L)Ubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Debian, Endeavour OS (Arch), Bazzite, Fedora, OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Elementary OS, Fedora Kinoite, Nobara, etc. I wanted to see which one could be my next long run install it and forget it distro. In the end, I was already comfortable with Kubuntu and the few tests I tried in a VM seemed like it was still pretty solid and I really didn't have any reason to change. So I installed Kubuntu as my main and only OS... And I'm starting to regret it dearly.

Snaps really is awful. And the only reason is because Canonical is forcing it on its users. Modifying APT to install Snap packages instead of Debian packages?! And having certain software exclusively available as Snaps? Firefox, Thunderbird, CUPS, FFMpeg, and some of their own utilities like Firmware Updater, and even some KDE core stuff apparently?

So as I was finishing configuring my freshly installed Kubuntu, I was having problems with SDDM. My computer would completely freeze whenever I logged out. Like nothing worked except the power button on my PC. I installed the NVidia drivers and that appeared to have fixed it. I also installed ZSH and set it as my default shell. However, upon reboot, I realized all my Snap based apps were gone from my application menu. I couldn't even set them as default apps in the control center. Firefox being one of them and that's why I noticed.

After checking in the Discover app, I saw it was still installed. I noticed a bunch other ones were missing, but they all appeared as installed. I tried uninstalling Firefox and reinstalling, but that didn't work. I don't know whether it's Snap or KDE that's broken. So I started removing all the Snap variants and installing their Flatpak counterpart instead. But I soon realized this couldn't be done with all software. Like CUPS. The printing system. It's only available as a Snap??? You can't even install it as a Debian package? Some apps are only available as Snaps and they won't show up in my KDE applications menu or anywhere else.

This is incredibly frustrating and disappointing. I feel like I'm being pushed in a corner by Canonical. I'm afraid I really have to switch distributions after all these years. I think I'll be installing Debian 12 stable. Besides, with Flatpak I can get fairly updated applications instead of the .deb packages. So the "old packages" reputation becomes almost irrelevant.

UPDATE:

So installing zsh and setting it as my default shell is what broke Snap. Apparently, zsh doesn't run any of the /etc/profile and /etc/profile.d/ scripts which run scripts that set up environment variables for snap and flatpak and stuff. Adding the following line to /etc/zsh/zprofile fixed my problem:

emulate sh -c 'source /etc/profile'

Anyway, it's still bullshit.

UPDATE 2:

Thanks @Ephera@lemmy.ml for the advice. I've since reverted my default shell to bash in my /etc/passwd file and configured my console app to start ZSH instead to avoid any further problems. #LessonsLearned

A really great and easy to understand article about BTRFS snapshots.

This is a really great article about how to use BTRFS snapshots with examples.

I have this collection of mp3s from the 90s-2000s from before the streaming services era. Back when people used Winamp or XMMS to listen to their music. I backed up my music files in two places and they're both organized differently.

I need a tool to go through the whole thousands of files, find out what each track is (artist, album, track title, track number all that meta data), rename the file accordingly and apply all the metadata, then move the file in a certain directory structure.

Are there any music organizers out there that can do this? Or do I have to implement my own script?

For context:

I've been using Linux since 2000. Started with Mandrake Linux (Helios?), then I moved to Ubuntu in 2004 and alternated between Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu MATE for a time until I settled with Kubuntu for the last few years.

Ubuntu has been rock solid for me for the past 20 years and I'm used to the APT package management and Ubuntu/Debian environment overall with all the various services and configs, setups and release cycles, etc. The stability allows me to enjoy my spare time playing games and doing other important tasks instead of troubleshooting my system and figuring out how to make something work. Ubuntu has been awesome in that regard.

I've also been dual-booting this whole time with Windows. Gaming on Linux simply wasn't up to snuff up until very recently with Steam working on Wine and Proton for the Steam Deck and Bottles, which makes running Windows games on Linux almost comparable to Windows.

Windows 10 was a great OS, except for a few flaws and privacy issues with the introduction of mandatory Microsoft accounts and One Drive integration. But you could work around those things. It was supposed to be the last Windows we would have to install with perpetual rolling releases, but apparently they changed their minds about that. Windows 11 was released and reading about it gives me nightmares. Using it for work also has been an incredibly buggy and frustrating experience. The invasion of privacy, data collection, screen monitoring and AI integration plus the additional advertisement are all reasons for which I will never install this OS on my personal computer. And some of these features have started to leak into Windows 10.

So I've made up my mind. I'm wiping Windows from my PC and will be running Linux only. I believe it's become good enough to use as a daily driver for a home gaming desktop and for productivity. But... Which distribution should I choose?

The dilemma:

There's been a whole slew of new Linux distributions that have come out lately. Some have been early in the Linux gaming aspect such as POP! OS. Others have tried to become a solid replacement for the default immutable Steam OS such as Bazzite. And there are now some pretty awesome sounding gaming-focused distros such as Nobara. And that's on top of the various existing Ubuntu flavors, Fedora's spins, OpenSuse and the many Arch variants that almost seem to pop up monthly.

I've been shopping around for a distribution to become my daily driver from now until who knows when. I'm expecting to stick to that distro as long as possible. Here's some of the things that I am looking for:

• Not immutable : I find this to be adapted for devices like tablets, IoT devices and handhelds instead of an actual PC. I'll need to be able to change my system configs as I please and an Immutable distro seems like a pain in the butt to deal with that.
• Rock solid : This is the most important aspect and is why a lot of the Arch or other bleeding edge distros won't do. (With some exceptions)
• Hardware support : The second most important aspect. I think that's pretty much covered by most popular distros, but some have better support than others. Especially for ease of getting the right drivers. (Especially for NVidia GPUs, or gaming controllers and devices.)
• Performance : Most popular distros offer ok performance, but some have been enhanced to provide improved performance according to the hardware. This is a very big nice to have, especially for gaming.
• Desktop choice : I'm really not a big fan of Gnome 3. It seems nobody really is. Many Gnome based distros come with quality of life extensions out of the box to fix that. Not a big fan of GTK apps' UI ergonomics either. That's why I prefer KDE over Gnome or Cinnamon. Budgie seems like a great alternative as well. Also having a PowerToys-style FancyZones tiling system is a big big plus (KDE has that OOTB)
• Applications : The thing I love about Ubuntu is the amount of available applications in their repos. I'm hoping to have the same availability in my next distribution.
• Online community/support : Having a great online support community is very important. The more users, the larger the knowledge base and the easier you can find answers to questions to troubleshoot problems.
• Online services integration : Optional but a very nice to have would be to have integration with Google apps like GMail, Calendar, Keep and Google Drive to name a few.
• Customization : As funny as this sounds, I want to use the desktop in its most vanilla form as possible with as few customisations as possible. Over time I found that having extra customisations like extensions, applets, etc tends to break things because of lack of support over time. It's also more difficult to troubleshoot when very few people are using them.

The distributions that ended up meeting my requirements are the following in order of preferences :

• Kubuntu : So far its been working great for gaming but I think there could be some performance improvements. It's my first choice because I'm just so comfortable with it already. Zero effort, but with some compromises in performance.
• Nobara with KDE Plasma : This looks solid and ticks all the requirements. I think there's some amount of learning to do for using YUM/RPM packages and to understand some of the customisations, but I think this effort will be minimal. I am concerned about long term support however since this is a fairly new distro supported by individuals.
• Ubuntu Budgie : I really like this DE, very simple but elegant. But, like Kubuntu, I don't know how it's going to fare performance wise. And I don't know what kind of tools there are to configure gaming controllers, etc.
• Ubuntu (I'm willing to deal with Gnome 3 for simplicity's sake)
• Fedora KDE Plasma spin : Everybody is raving about Fedora so maybe I'll give it a shot as an Ubuntu replacement.
• ~~Manjaro~~ Endeavour OS with KDE desktop :Possibly the only Arch distro I'm willing to install because they focus on stability, however learning about the packaging system and configs/environment feels like a drag. But with the great community and documentation I'm willing to make an effort for this one.

What are your thoughts on this? What are your recommendations based on my requirements?

EDIT:

Thank you very much for everyone's input. I've spent a good part of the day installing distros in a VM to check out some of your suggestions and reading more about my choices.

I can't believe I am saying this, but I am reevaluating my choice of using Kubuntu. After some reading I have found out that Ubuntu and it's flavors will not be supporting flatpaks starting in 23.04. And there are several known problems with snap, such as serious performance issues. A task that would take 1-5s as a regular .deb installed app, would take up to 10 times that time to complete. Canonical is also working to modify apt to use snaps instead of installed .deb packages. They are aggressively pushing snaps to a point where they'll want to replace the majority of the software with snaps eventually.

Yeah there's security features built-in and all, which flatpaks don't necessarily have. And the security is tighter around Canonical's snap repos compared to flathub for example. But I don't know if I'm ready to move to that new way of doing things. And Canonical is going against what the community wants.

I don't know. I think I'm more confused now that I was when I started...

Like the title says. There are communities whose purpose is to just repost Reddit posts using bots and they're flooding my front page. I'd like to block it using Jerboa. Is it possible? Or can it be done via the web interface?

I'm soon going to transition to full Kubuntu and remove Windows from my PC. I've been looking for alternatives to a lot of the stuff I use and this one was a bit problematic. Or so I thought.

I'm also going to migrate from Google to Proton at the same time and it looks like some of these tools support Proton Drive as well!

What's your opinion about adding chicory to coffee? I know there's a few places, like Café du Monde in New Orleans that offers coffee with chicory. It's also sold as a mix in grocery stores in France.

I started trying it recently by adding a small teaspoon to my coffee in my French press and it gives a really smooth brew.

What do you think? Are you a purist? Have you tried it? What's your opinion?

I've been receiving 3-4 phonecalls per week from call centers where the caller is always Indian and they're all calling about a special promotion from one of the big three telecom companies.

I actually registered my phone on the no call list from the federal government. I'm not even a customer of the big three. (Videotron in Quebec ftw) So I shouldn't be receiving these calls. I've also asked multiple times not to be called again. But they still call.

Has anyone else had this issue? How did you deal with it?