I'm nearing a year of using this Linux laptop as a 50% daily driver and I really have to say…
Linux's quality of life on an ordinary laptop is *embarrassing*.
Like, I'm able to use it. But it is embarrassing. No normal person would put up with the garbage desktop Linux puts me through. I put up with it because I'm stubborn and ideologically motivated.
I see problems including, but not limited to
- When I close the laptop lid and open it again, a shocking percentage of the time it does not wake up and I have to force power it off ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-oem-6.8/+bug/2064595 , ongoing since April)
- Every time I briefly brush my fingers against the screen, GNOME enters an entirely broken "touchscreen mode" in which it pretends my keyboard and mouse don't exist. It fixes itself after an unpredictable amount of time ranging from 5 to 30 seconds. Can't be disabled
[Impact] On some OEM platforms observed bad suspend occurs on lid close and power LED stays on without normal sleep behavior at that time. Needs to call GFXOFF to the right state during the suspend stage. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/ca299b4512d4b4f516732a48ce9aa19d91f4473e Closes: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/3132 Fixes: ab4750332dbe [Test case] test that s2idle works after installing the update [Regression potential] minimal
- Firefox can't show image previews when selecting attachments (because of "security", somehow)
- Often, when I direct a program to open a new window, GNOME refuses to let the program do it, and instead opens the window at the back of the stack and shows a top-of-screen notification letting me know there's a new window (I guess also "security")
- Just fresh weird stuff happening at random intervals. Since last week, when I right click in Firefox, I can't click on the menu. It's happening RN
@double_a_runi I am very picky about margins on interface elements and IMO the ones in GNOME are Good and the ones in KDE and FVWM are Bad . Despite this I may switch to KDE at some point simply because I very much like Qt.
My current plan is to shelter in place until Cosmic lands (see post elsewhere in thread) and if I'm already doing that then switching to Kubuntu only to quickly tear it down again is not a good use of time.
@mcc @double_a_runi You can install multiple DE/WM and swap between them to try them out without installing a new OS. This command offers the basic options, but there are more:
sudo tasksel
At the login prompt when booting up, there is probably a drop-down somewhere to choose which of the installed options you want to boot into this time.
COSMIC will naturally take some time to mature as a new project, so perhaps it won't be a waste of time to install Kubuntu until that happens.
Despite using openSUSE Tumbleweed, I do think that Kubuntu is a rather good KDE distro to pick. However with some of your issues, you may want to look into installing the native DEB or Flatpak Firefox package instead.
mcc
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