
Xubuntu 19.04: The Exhaustive Update - mariuz
https://bluesabre.org/2019/04/18/xubuntu-19-04-the-exhaustive-update/
======
yagodragon
What really sets me off with linux DE's is how poorly they handle dpi scaling
on external monitors. I recently bought a 24" 2560 × 1440 monitor for my 15.6
laptop running Ubuntu Mate 18.04. This is what i went through just to make it
work.

1\. Plugged the hdmi, everything looks so small. 2\. Mate desktop had HiDPI
support but only by a scaling factor of 2. Now everything looks very large.
3\. I have to manually change the fonts dpi settings. Chrome and some other
apps look good but the menus, file manager and firefox are still upscaled. 4\.
I manually change layout.css.devPixelsPerPx in about:config to make firefox
look good.

Finally, the result looks very unpolished. The menus are still largely
upscaled and some apps like vlc won't even scale at all. My laptop's screen
can't be used as a secondary screen because everything is upscaled, not to
mention that i have to manually undo all those steps to revert everything back
to "normal" for my 15.6" laptop screen. I eventually wrote some scripts with
dconf to automate the proccess but it's just not good.

Does anyone have experience with external monitors and linux desktops? How
does xfce or kde handle this? I tried gnome that supports fractional scaling
and it's way better than mate. Now the problem is that i only have 8GB of ram
and gnome shell is known to be a ram hog.

~~~
Sangeppato
Unfortunatey, in my experience Gnome is simply by far the most "modern" DE
regarding this kind of features, basically the only one able to compete with
Windows and macOS (For example, the touchpad behaves like I would expect in
2019). I haven't used KDE in a while so I have no idea about their Wayland
situation (at this point, I simply refuse to mess with Xorg config files, so
it's Wayland or nothing for me, at least on laptops). I really don't want to
be a Gnome evangelist, but it's really the only option for some kind of
features

~~~
danieldk
My experience is the same. I mostly use macOS on the desktop, so I am used to
Lo/HiDPI screens to work together. On my Linux workstation, I tried several
desktop environments, but GNOME on Wayland was the only environment to nail it
6-12 months ago (there may be improvements in other desktops now). HiDPI
worked with Wayland and X11 applications and I could just use both screens
with different DPIs, drag windows between them without oddities, etc.

It's a shame that they nailed this, but decided to remove menus, desktop
icons, system tray icons, etc. GNOME could have been a great competitor to
macOS and Windows, if they actually talked to real-world users. I wish that
they had an UX steward like Sun Microsystems back in the days.

~~~
bluedino
Yes, GNOME is horrible. So many hacks to get it usable. It's as if they
designed it for a tablet or something.

~~~
rhinoceraptor
It seems like they're just completely discarding the desktop metaphor like
Windows 8 did. Everything in Gnome discourages you from using multiple
windows, and there isn't even a desktop anymore without running hacky plugins.

I do like things like window snapping, and miss it in MacOS, but the actual
desktop experience is so much better in MacOS than pretty much anything else.

------
willvarfar
Whaoo I can't wait!

Where does Xubuntu and Kubuntu stand, install-base-wise, compared to the
default Ubuntu? And other distros, for that matter?

I'm one of many people who left Ubuntu as soon as they started doing their big
UI changes. I went to Xubuntu.

But I have no bigger idea of which distro is hot anymore; once I settled on
Xubuntu, I haven't really been shopping around for alternatives.

~~~
kgwxd
I've been on Xubuntu since the Unity move too, so there's at least 2 of us :)
I've dabbled, but never found a good reason to use anything different,
simplicity and stability are all I care about.

~~~
spaced-out
Same here. XFCE is highly configurable, stable, and has a small memory
footprint, which you notice if you're doing any processor-intensive or memory-
intensive work. There are also plenty of easy-to-install themes that look
quite nice.

I don't see what any other DE gives me other than glossy animations that I
don't even want.

------
virtualpain
I'm not sure whether Xubuntu includes KDE's stuff or people here confused
between Xubuntu and Kubuntu?

~~~
StevePerkins
This thread is baffling. Most of the comment replies are about KDE, for which
Kubuntu (with a "K") is a completely separate spin.

The XFCE-based Xubuntu spin includes nothing of KDE by default, and neither
KDE or Kubuntu are mentioned in the linked article at all. Call me cynical, I
just don't think most people clicked the link or even took a close enough look
at the title here.

~~~
viraptor
Alternative: People know exactly what they're talking about. Kubuntu is just
an interesting, related topic and a valid comparison.

------
bklaasen
No mention of having fixed screen tearing in videos.

I'm a longtime Xubuntu user because it just gets out of my way and is rock
solid, but the apparently unfixable screen tearing makes me weep.

Seemingly Manjaro XFCE edition[1] solves the screen tearing by using a
different compositor[2].

[1] [https://manjaro.org/download/xfce/](https://manjaro.org/download/xfce/)
[2] [https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/130616/the-xfce-
surprise...](https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/130616/the-xfce-surprise-
entroware-ares-review-choose-linux-7/)

------
JasonFruit
I was struck by something reading this article: almost none of the
applications have names that express their function. If you haven't used it,
what does Thunar do? Parole? GIMP? Gigolo, Garcon, or Ristretto? I don't see
what's wrong with a name that has something to say about what your program
does.

~~~
Soft
I think it is useful for projects to have a searchable unique names. Also, I
think the desktop files for those programs also include a generic name
describing program's function that an application launcher can decide to show
instead.

For example, my KDE application menu refers to applications using these
generic description ("Web Browser" instead of Firefox, "Music Player" instead
of Spotify).

~~~
II2II
Agreed on the ability to search for programs, add to that the difficulty in
creating a meaningful name that won't confuse at least some users and doesn't
step on trademarks or other project names. Even popular software titles have
naming issues, with brand recognition being the main distinguishing factor
that helps people figure out what the software does:

\- Excel, says absolutely nothing about what the product does.

\- PowerPoint is only tangentially related to what the product does.

\- Internet Explorer vs. Windows Explorer confuses many users.

To avoid singling out just Microsoft, look at Apple:

\- Numbers basically depends upon people associating spreadsheets with any
form of quantitative analysis.

\- Keynote is only tangentially related to what the product does.

\- Safari says absolutely nothing about what the program does.

Contrast that to the brilliantly named GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program.
It is clearly a program for enhancing photographs of gnu's! Okay, maybe it's
not so brilliant. Yet it does demonstrate that naming is hard even when the
name states what the program is.

------
FrozenVoid
> Xfce Quick Launcher Plugin has been removed from the Debian and Ubuntu
> archives due to it no longer being supported.

Its the fastest option to quickly load scripts, and its convinient to have it
always on the taskbar for frequently launched stuff. Whats the rationale for
removing it?

~~~
ac29
>removed [...] _due to it no longer being supported_

~~~
FrozenVoid
Thats an excuse to not update code. The plugin is extremely useful.

------
le-mark
Anyone know when xfce screensaver will make it in? I'd upgrade for that!

------
k__
Did they go back to the roots and made it more lightweight again?

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
not sure if kde can be considered as having ever been lightweight. as far as I
remember it was always one of the most heavy DE's around.

edit: I'm rate-limted[x] from commenting for defending myself against people
calling me a brown-nosed European and white supremacist so I can't really
reply below to @Crinus:

here reply inline:

oh I didn't know about v1, I think the first version I used was kde2 and that
was the heaviest option you could install back then (iirc).

fwiw my comparison to i3 above isn't really fair. one is just a WM the other
is a full-blown DE.

[x]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19633128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19633128)

~~~
alex_duf
Kubuntu => KDE

Xubuntu => xfce

~~~
phosphophyllite
Can linux-desktop stand more fragmentation?

~~~
mnbvkhgvmj
Xubuntu has existed for at least 8 years not. Possibly much longer.

~~~
theandrewbailey
Since 2006[0]. I remember looking for a small user-friendly distro in 2008/9
that would fit my college-issued laptop's OEM emergency partition (5-ish GB).
That partition was never used, as reimaging was the solution to almost every
problem, yet they never bothered to delete it from the official images.

In the time and machines since, I've kept using Xubuntu.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu)

~~~
k__
I used Xubuntu for many years, but somehow having my own Linux machine became
less and less important, even as a developer.

Now I just have Windows 10 and macOS Mojave.

For Linux stuff, I spin up a Cloud9 EC2 instance.

------
cdaringe
Excellent job! These little patches here and there make a big difference. I'm
super grateful for your work (if you're reading this thread :))

------
lousken
was the clipboard bug when copying high resolution pictures resolved?

~~~
viraptor
Do you know the launchpad bug for this one?

~~~
lousken
no, only xfce
[https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13537](https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13537)

------
noir_lord
I switch from Xubuntu to Fedora/Cinnamon.

I really like fedora and Cinnamon is kind what I imagine XFCE would be if they
rebuilt it from scratch.

It's nice to have choices that fit my workflow though.

------
fareesh
I've been using Kubuntu since 18.04. The performance has been good i.e. much
better than Ubuntu w/ Gnome, and most things are relatively painless/intuitive
to setup when needed.

KDE has some decent themes as well to get it to look a little more polished
than the default theme.

~~~
viraptor
This really came with kde5. I get why they started using the name "plasma
desktop". It's almost completely different thing from kde4. Whatever options /
expectations people had after kde4 and earlier, they just shouldn't apply.

~~~
Crinus
AFAIK they call it Plasma (just Plasma, not Plasma Desktop) because that is
now the name for what was previously called KDE and KDE now is the name of the
community and project that acts as an umbrella for various other projects,
including Plasma but also applications such as Krita, KDevelop, Amarok, etc.
The desktop environment isn't officially called KDE anymore, it is Plasma.

~~~
kijin
Does this mean that Kubuntu will become Pubuntu at some point?

It's weird seeing a KDE product without a single K in its name.

------
pojntfx
XFCE is great but OSTree really is the future. I don't see any reason for
still using the dinosaur Ubuntu in a world where one can have Fedora
Silverblue.

~~~
oblio
What does OSTree have to do with XFCE?

OSTree:
[https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/introduction/](https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/introduction/)
-> The underlying architecture might be summarized as "git for operating
system binaries"

vs

XFCE: [https://www.xfce.org/](https://www.xfce.org/) -> Xfce is a lightweight
desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and
low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user
friendly.

Also that Silverblue thing, assuming it's this site:
[https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/](https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/)
doesn't really do a good job at explaining what it is...

~~~
danieldk
The charitable reading is that they meant 'Xubuntu'. They probably argue that
Xubuntu is nice, but not the future because it does not do atomic upgrades
with rollbacks.

(I largely agree that OSTree-based systems are better, but Ubuntu is so
popular that it is unlikely that Silverblue replaces it soon. By the way,
Silverblue fans should look at Nix ;).)

------
paulcarroty
I'm prefer Fedora 'cause better stability & great contact with developers.
Xfce with their "WinXP forever" style can be popular only inside old people
communities and greedy enterprise desktops.

~~~
2038AD
>Xfce with their "WinXP forever" style can be popular only inside old people
communities

Little funny for me as I'm running Xubuntu with the XP desktop background
(bliss). I'm not exactly old though.

