* 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 tiling-assistant@ubuntu.com`. 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've spent the last 10 years off and on from Linux. Had I used something other than GNOME, I believe my experience would have been better.
I've been on KDE for the last 3-4 years and things work so well I could never imagine going back to GNOME.
On the other hand, I'm not a fan of people disparaging free open source software that they've never contributed anything to, either money or code.
Both Gnome and KDE support that. Actually Gnome a tad better as it gives you less knobs to turn an waste your time. Accept the defaults and if defaults are bad move somewhere else.
Because maybe not all people have the same preferences as you?
Distro: "The most used DE needs first class support, we should probably bend to it" → Distro: "We should probably make this DE the default since it's so widely used and supported" → User: "I choose the default" → Distro: "The most used DE…"
So yes, people have different preferences; but if your preference is GNOME today, it might not be GNOME tomorrow, and "I picked the default" isn't quite the neutral signal it looks like.
Since GNOME is the default Ubuntu DE, they have a certain responsibily to listen to the users/devs and leave the system open (to an extent). But their direction is the opposite:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210901171117/https://twitter.c...
They've been doing massive reduction in functionalities, really insane like limiting copy/past of terminals just to the current screen (which hurts any sysadmin), generally without any way to enable them back.
I haven't heard of any other OSS organization trying so hard to limit freedom of their users/devs, and this is an explicit goal - they don't want to weaken their brand.
GNOME is nothing short of the Oracle of open source.
I have put my parents on Ubuntu (gnome) in 2013 to replace windows XP. My mother is 88 now. I think it is the perfect fit for her (dad is dead years ago).
I use ubuntu gnome because tweaking my computer is not where I want to spend my time. YOLO. Using a "mainstream" desktop that can be explained to "non specialist" has its benefits. I accept to suffer some annoyances and there is always a way to fix the most annoying ones by sacrificing time.
But seriously why would they disabled the middle mouse copy paste buffer by default? Anyways, gnome tweaks to the rescue I guess
(I use Super+side mouse buttons to move between workspaces, I hate the keyboard-centric workflow when one hand is always on the mouse)
As for the negative Gnome feedback (not from you but others) I do like Gnome, it's just enough window manager for me, I like the defaults and I like the touchpad gestures etc. Generally looks and works well for all I do. I always feel swamped by KDE.
It doesn't. X was the only place I know of where that was a thing.
But hey! At least they are only flipping defaults, not removing the feature outright, like they did type-ahead search. [Insert angry rant here]
About your first point, however, keep in mind that "middle click insert" has been the default behavior in X since the 1980s, long before Windows or current generation MacOS's were around. To me, this is such a basic functionality, I would compare it something as fundamental as CTRL-X/C/V for cut/copy/paste on Windows.
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.)
As someone that habitually highlights what they are reading it was generally beyond useless for me. It was actively making me mad when I accidenatally pasted some non-sense because I just highlighted a paragraph before and accidentally inserted it into something.
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.
They did it on purpose for some reason. If I were you I'd give Plasma a try.
I've been using the Kubuntu 26.04 prereleases for a few weeks. No surprises from KDE, but Wayland has broken a few things. Autotype in Keepass does not work, keynav and even the Wayland keynav forks don't work, and Wayland does not support priority keyboard layouts for switching between two specific layouts.
I still mostly use Xorg though, I only have wayland on a tablet.
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/an-update-on-rust-coreutils/8...
Goes to show that not all security bugs are memory related bugs
I'd rather use something written in a crappier language that has been battle-tested for decades, personally.
I do agree that the second system effect is real, it’s just that the balance of benefits and drawbacks significantly shifted when it comes to “rewrite in Rust” (not limited to Rust though).
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-35338 - `chmod --preserve-root` can be bypassed. That doesn't seem that bad tbh.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-35341 - `mkfifo` accidentally resets the permissions of files that already exist, so if you manage to do `sudo mkfifo /etc/shadow` then it becomes world readable.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-35352 - TOCTOU in `mkfifo` lets you do the symlink trick to get it to change permissions on an unrelated file.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-35368 - You might be able to get chroot to execute arbitrary code.
Tbh I doubt if any of these would ever result in a real hack, unless your system is doing really mental things like running shell scripts with untrusted input.
I could only find a couple of CVEs that looked actually serious for GNU Coreutils too though. IMO if you're using these tools with untrusted input your system is janky enough that there are going to be serious flaws in it anyway. Probably though quoting mistakes.
I am sure a lot of this is fixable and will jsut take time to get used to, but honestly, at this point, I think I prefer ubuntu/linux to both Mac & Windows at this point.
I do love the hardware on the Mac and would probably try Asahi out if it wasn't a work machine.
Also worth pointing out that macOS is still better than Windows 11 at this point - MS should be ashamed at what they did to that OS.
1. Keyboard shortcuts are Emacs, Ctrl-A: start of line, E: end of line, K: kill selected or to end of line, Y to paste, etc. https://support.apple.com/en-au/102650#text
2. Karabiner elements (FOSS) fixes keyboard mappings outside of the Settings: https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/
3. I have the dock on the left hand side, not bottom and I have a 2 monitor (iMac 5K 27"+ Dell 4K 27") setup with the iMac flat in front of me and the curve/2nd to the right. Menu bar is then close to the main windows.
4. Menu bar widgets etc are fixable with thaw https://github.com/stonerl/Thaw
5. Window management via keyboard is fixable with rectangle https://rectangleapp.com/
6. Use Macports to add all the Linux/Unix utilities, works with MacOS properly (eg Python/Java frameworks). Ports can have variants, plus you can have multiple versions installed side-by-side with `port select`. https://www.macports.org/
Not sure about fonts, on a 5K iMac they're fine and the 4K Dell works too. You need to use a resolution that fits with Mac's ideas of resolution, so I've got the 5K and 4K both at 2560x1440, which is Mac's idea of 2x resolution.
That doesn't work with a single monitor though.
It is - sucks that you have to though. For keyboard shortcuts use Karabiner Elements.
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…
I initially tried to just use snaps but firefox was crashing quite often so I had to go with adding the mozilla's repository and of course configure the fake "firefox" package that actually installs the snap to be low priority for apt.
They have been working on a custom Desktop Environment which sadly still isn't very stable yet. Promising development, but putting me off of using Pop for a while.
Ubuntu 24.04 currently comes with 590, which is the most recent working driver.
Linux Mint is widely praised for being basically Ubuntu without the worst Canonicalisms (such as Snap). They maintain a Debian edition in parallel to their main one, as an exit strategy in case Ubuntu ever becomes unsuitable for their base. Some people already use that as their daily driver.
Just in case you're not aware, the default desktop environment on whatever distro you pick doesn't have to be what you use. I switched to KDE Plasma when Gtk-based desktops became intolerable, and haven't looked back.
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.
It is an urban myth
Even though I very much intenseley dislike the completely unintuitive idiosyncratic package management that Arch has. Which is further not helped by the fact that Cachy's default GUI for it isn't even integrated properly.
20 years ago your Linux installation might not include wifi drivers, bluetooth support, decent GPU drivers, fat32/ntfs drivers, or the widely used video/audio codecs of the era. And you had to be careful when shopping for things like wifi cards, as only certain chipsets could be made to work.
Much of which was kinda fair enough, because if you're a volunteer making an open source OS because of a strong belief on the open source ideal, you don't want to distribute closed-source driver blobs or patent-encumbered codecs. But it meant mean the initial installation process was not always easy. One of the things that contributed to the success of Ubuntu was a particularly easy initial setup process.
Today, things are a lot better - you'll still get unsupported hardware from time to time, but it'll be much less severe. If your laptop has a non-USB integrated camera you might have to download and install a kernel module. Your corporate laptop's built in fingerprint scanner might not work, but who cares?
Distro like Ubuntu are a fair compromise to get amd/nvidia GPU drivers, wifi, and brother laser printer/scanner networking installed. =3
edit: seriously, why down vote the guys karma if its a honest question. Try to be kind people.
When I was shopping Lenovo.com for my ThinkPad in 2018, there was a table with ThinkPads certified for Ubuntu Linux in one column, and certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in another column.
I chose the T580 as a RHEL-certified notebook, and it was fantastic. Lenovo.com let me configure each individual component exactly according to my needs and tastes, and it was custom-assembled and shipped from Shenzhen.
It did arrive with Windows 10 pre-installed (this was the least hassle and most popular OS option). I initially installed CentOS, but quickly realized that Fedora would be the sweet spot, and so it was a Fedora system for most of its lifetime. Near the end, I did revert to Windows 10, which also worked flawlessly.
The ThinkPad T580 literally never malfunctioned. It was still 100% working when I turned it in for recycling in 2025.
I've also run Ubuntu on my "daily driver" desktop system, which ran from 2006-2022. Yes, that's 16 years' worth of Ubuntu installs and upgrades. It was mostly a KDE Plasma (Kubuntu) system. I enjoyed every bit of that.
In 1999, I was avidly using OpenBSD on really old hardware (such as HP Apollo 425t workstations.) OpenBSD simply couldn't deal with the special graphics subsystem on those machines. I tried and tried to get something working, but there were obstacles, not only with the hardware and drivers, but also the monitor connection needed a particular type of cabling and a proprietary monitor, too.
However, OpenBSD did great for networking, security, Squid cache, proxies, all kinds of things. And even in 1999, though it was early, I ran Linux on a 386DX-40, because Linux supported the "ftape" floppy tape driver at that time, and I had some kind of QIC tape backup from Eagle that wouldn't be recognized by OpenBSD or NetBSD.
Meanwhile, in that same year, my "daily driver" desktop machine was a 486 with VLB, dual-booting Windows 98 and OpenBSD. The Windows 98 was set up with a Cygwin system and X11 server, so that I could run X11 clients on the OpenBSD machines, or the Linux machine, or whatever else was on the LAN.
I am pragmatic about it though so I still run Ubuntu for some things but it's no longer my first recommendation.
The rot set in when #ubuntu on Freenode (now Libera) became rigidly enforced as on-topic discussions of Ubuntu support only.
The channel is absolutely dead now. Maybe one person will say something in any given 12-hour period and no-one replies, just page after page of joins and parts.
I am starting to suspect this even might be intentional.
And yes, using a user-base as Beta testers is fairly cheeky. =3
For now, that is. I am afraid that they will stop providing coreutils and sudo for some of the future releases (like they did with upstart) because obviously they know better what's good for the users.
https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/meeting_matrix_fedoraproje...
The release notes don't seem to mention zfs. I hope these issues have been fixed?
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?