[kwlug-disc] Xubuntu 22.04 to 24.04 Upgrade

[Charles M]

We've been comparing Xubuntu 24.04.1 to Linux Mint (21.3 and 22) as
part of our exploration of Xubuntu 24.04.1 and here are some minor
differences we noticed:

Xubuntu has better integration with Xscreensaver "out of the box."
Linux Mint XFCE uses light locker (Xubuntu may as well, but it seems
to start the
xscreensaver daemon on load). I know screensavers are not much of a
thing these days, but we used to use them to draw people's eyes away
from the Windows machines...

Handbrake, which isn't installed by default, behaves a bit differently
when first installed. Xubuntu, when you click Open Source, remembers
the
path you last added a file from. This comes in really handy if you
have a directory of 100 files, open source, opens to that last
directory. Clicking
Open Source in Linux Mint XFCE opens the /dev directory each time.
There's probably a setting somewhere to change this behaviour, but not
everyone's going to realize this is a difference between the two. It's
just going to be a bit more annoying in Mint.

Xubuntu uses Atril for it's default PDF reader. Atril seems to open a
bit quicker on low-resource machines than Xreader (Linux Mint XFCE).

Linux Mint XFCE uses Xed for its text editor. Xubuntu uses mousepad
for its text editor. While I like both Xed has bracket completion,
which is
nice for people who don't need a full fledged code editor, but
appreciate some of the functionality.

Mint has Timeshift and mintbackup, handy tools for making restore
points, and backing up files. We've been adding Timeshift to our
installs
for awhile, it comes in handy because sometimes we have issues with
nvidia drivers, and it's nice to timeshift back to the floss driver.

Linux Mint 21.3 uses an old kernel. This can be a problem with new
hardware, but we have a sort of niche case where it's useful. One of
the issues
we ran into with Xubuntu 22.04 was adding NVidia drivers for certain
old cards. Those cards advertised a driver, but when attempting to
install that
driver (390 I think) Xubuntu would simply fail to install the driver.
It was after installing Linux Mint 21.3 with it's older kernel that we
realized the issue
had to do with Xubuntu's newer kernel, the driver just couldn't
compile against that newer kernel, but it could against the old Linux
Mint 21.3 kernel.
So a few of our machines perform better with lower end Nvidia cards
because of this kernel difference. With Linux Mint 22 it's a moot
point as
it uses a newer kernel, so those cards won't see proprietary drivers
in the future.

The snap store in Xubuntu 24.04.1 is fast, and while they've added
support for Debian packages back to the snap store (My Apps), it still
doesn't have
support for flatpaks (for obvious reasons). The old (GNOME) Software
Centre can still be installed in Xubuntu 24.04.1, and support for
Flatpaks can
be added to its UI. The speed of the "My Apps" snap store is something
that Xubuntu/*buntu has needed for several versions, it's been my
biggest
gripe with Xubuntu over the years. While I mostly use cli to install
anything, I heard the frustration of some who used GNOME software
centre - slow.
Linux Mint XFCE's software manager seems a bit slow when first
started, but nothing like the slowness of GNOME software centre. I
think it's also a
bit more intuitive in the sense that search has a decent sized search
bar, as opposed to just a search icon (until you click it).

We've been doing a fair amount of installs of both Xubuntu 24.04.1 and
Linux Mint XFCE, and we found we had a lot of crash report prompts
with
Xubuntu 24.04.1 (xwrapper). Linux Mint XFCE also had some applications
crash, but things happened more silently (which could be a good or bad
thing depending on your perspective). In Mint System > System Reports
> Crash Reports lets you look at any crashes and report them. I like
this a
bit better than the intrusive, always reporting that Xubuntu does.
Again, probably a setting to turn this off, but just detailing out of
box experience.

Lastly, I've always thought Linux Mint had the edge when it came to
appearance, but I think I actually like the work the Xubuntu team has
done
for 24.04.1 better. The new icon theme is a bit brighter, and though
they only added 1 new wallpaper for this release, I prefer the look of
it to the
somber look of Linux Mint 21.3/22.

Cheers,

Charles

On Wed, 9 Oct 2024 at 15:29, Chris Frey <cdfrey at foursquare.net> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 09, 2024 at 02:41:07PM +0000, Doug Moen wrote:
> > I would argue that the doctrines that packagers of binary-based Linux
> > distros have built up around shared libraries are very specific to the C
> > language. When these doctrines were formed, all binary executables were
> > compiled from C or early stage C++ code.
>
> That's fair enough, and perhaps there are new technologies yet to be
> created in the shared library world (and software licensing world)
> when it comes to these new generic languages.  I understand if C-shared
> must look different than C++-shared or Python-shared or Rust-shared or
> Julia-shared, as long as they actually share.
>
> My objection is that for some languages, they don't seem to be trying,
> or more accurately, it is not a priority for them.  Saying
> "it's impossible" doesn't convince me either.  Sure, there's
> a lot of template/generic code out there, but that's not all of it.
>
> I looked up your example of Julia, assuming it would be a super generic
> example of something impossible to build into shared libraries.  Yet
> they document app building that allows for including all the Julia
> standard libraries or not, implying that you can assume certain stdlibs
> already exist on the target machine.  Looks like they support C-level
> .so files for interoperability purposes.  I couldn't find whether they
> have a stable ABI yet, but they do document their calling conventions.
>
> It also looks like there are some folks on the Rust side working on a
> stable ABI:
>
>         https://slightknack.github.io/rust-abi-wiki/intro/intro.html
>
> So, it's basically what I said originally... it's just what happens
> when people start something from scratch, and eventually they will catch
> up to the rest of the world on the old techniques, while having invented
> a lot of new techniques in the process.
>
> - Chris
>
>
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-- 
Charles
Mastodon: @chaslinux at techhub.social