Monthly News – April 2020

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clem
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Monthly News – April 2020

Post by clem »

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Moonstone Man
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by Moonstone Man »

clem wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 12:26 pm https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3890
So after looking at names such as “Ethernator”, “Datanator”, “XFiles”, “Overcast”, “Capsule”, “DropZone”, we finally went back to the original name and decided to stick to it. “Warpinator” does sound ridiculous, but many people liked it and after hearing it so much we kind of get used to it.
YAAAY!
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by JoeFootball »

Kadaitcha Man wrote:YAAAY!
Agreed. :) In private, I shall be referring to it fondly as The Warpinator-O-Matic 5000.
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by rene »

I on the other hand will be referring to it as "cuteware name that no one is able to remember for more than 5 minutes no. 5000".
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by Pjotr »

This is very good news:
the activation of APT recommends by default.
Excellent. This restores full compatibility with Ubuntu how-to's. :)
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by thx-1138 »

Ah...nice (not). First thing to turn-off after install my guess...
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by JosephM »

Pjotr wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 6:28 pm This is very good news:
the activation of APT recommends by default.
Excellent. This restores full compatibility with Ubuntu how-to's. :)
We'll see how this works out. It was disabled originally because some apps have recommends which aren't needed and just cause users issues. For example, I know there were some apps that would do things like install Nautilus when there was no reason for it all.
When I give opinions, they are my own. Not necessarily those of any other Linux Mint developer or the Linux Mint project as a whole.
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by rene »

In theory I believe it to be a good thing. I.e., Debian's package-split fetish has been annoying me for some time now and this at least does something to forego the reason for why it does so. That said I have noticed that recursively enabling recommends can pull in a whole, whole lot more than is in fact sensible, so, depends I guess...
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by Pjotr »

JosephM wrote: Mon May 04, 2020 3:28 am
Pjotr wrote: Sun May 03, 2020 6:28 pm This is very good news:
the activation of APT recommends by default.
Excellent. This restores full compatibility with Ubuntu how-to's. :)
We'll see how this works out. It was disabled originally because some apps have recommends which aren't needed and just cause users issues. For example, I know there were some apps that would do things like install Nautilus when there was no reason for it all.
Is it perhaps possible to identify a couple of commonly installed apps that have problematic recommends like Nautilus? If so, it might be a good idea to name them in the release notes, with the advice to install those with --no-install-recommends.

I should add that I've activated the APT recommends in Mint for years, as a matter of course. I can only remember having to use --no-install-recommends once or twice...
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by thx-1138 »

rene wrote: Mon May 04, 2020 3:59 am In theory I believe it to be a good thing. I.e., Debian's package-split fetish has been annoying me for some time now and this at least does something to forego the reason for why it does so. That said I have noticed that recursively enabling recommends can pull in a whole, whole lot more than is in fact sensible, so, depends I guess...
I don't really have (that much) experience with other package managers (eg. ones that don't split into -dev packages etc etc),
but honestly, i've never ever found the 'by default enabled' --install-recommends option to be useful, only an annoyance,
at the cost of increased memory usage eventually (& disk usage, but nowadays that doesn't really matter).
Doubt if i've used it more than a handful of times, and that is on very specific 'corner' cases,
say to pull semi-exotic specific 'extras' for some audio transcoding application,
and quite way back in the past, for few extra features in this or that cd burning app.

So-called 'metapackages', eg. say for 'desktops' or like mint-meta-codecs,
render the 'forced recommends' concept even less useful in my opinion.
And i prefer such obviously, as it's way easier to 'break' them,
& only keep individually what you actually need afterwards,
instead of manually mucking around with control files, or using equivs etc...

Debian (and Ubuntu even more), also have on occasion some very weird choices,
in regards to which libraries get linked in this or that, or how...on software that i frequently use and/or build from source,
i frequently find myself comparing their patches with upstream, or say cross-examining with pkgbuilds...
But i haven't been that much 'annoyed' on the whole,
to decidedly move on to a different ecosystem (and thereby package manager) to be honest.

All in all, the very exact opposite from Pjotr's experience above...
Not sure to which "ubuntu tutorials' he refers to ;-)

Anyway, i think Mint is already very overloaded with quite a few stuff...
It actually has more packages than stock Ubuntu, and i'm fairly confident such won't change.
This Mate 18.3 installation currently has 1543 packages, roughly more than 100 are manually installed,
free reports 207M used right after boot, so, i'll simply get rid of what i don't need from such.
Started of with...2100(!) packages on a fresh install. But anyways, Ubuntu or Mint or whatever derivative,
and no matter what's pre-installed or 'force'-recommended, i'll customize the distro exactly to my needs eventually...

Ie. the above is not really a complain - just an observation:
it's somewhat surprising that Mint doesn't try to achieve the same or even better results,
but with (slightly) less packages / dependencies instead...
Could bring very specific examples as well, but it doesn't matter my guess.
People who aren't willing to tweak stuff & understand how/why dependencies get resolved,
will just use another more 'lightweight' distro after all...
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by deepakdeshp »

What are

Code: Select all

apt recommends , --no-install-recommends.
 
ANy links to educate myself?
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by Pjotr »

deepakdeshp wrote: Mon May 04, 2020 7:36 am What are

Code: Select all

apt recommends , --no-install-recommends.
 
ANy links to educate myself?

Code: Select all

man apt-get
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by deepakdeshp »

Pjotr wrote: Mon May 04, 2020 9:08 am
deepakdeshp wrote: Mon May 04, 2020 7:36 am What are

Code: Select all

apt recommends , --no-install-recommends.
 
ANy links to educate myself?

Code: Select all

man apt-get
AH RTFM :)
If I have helped you solve a problem, please add [SOLVED] to your first post title, it helps other users looking for help.
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by rene »

thx-1138 wrote: Mon May 04, 2020 7:27 am I don't really have (that much) experience with other package managers (eg. ones that don't split into -dev packages etc etc)
It's in essence/theory not so much the package manager as the distribution, although indeed both dpkg and rpm provide for e.g. -dev support in a (more or less) automated fashion. Less so on Slackware and Arch but essentially any package manager allows for any granularity; it's just that basically anything that uses dpkg is based off of Debian --- and Debian goes absolutely wild with the package-splitting.

Now, purely in its context that even makes sense, what with Debian-based systems being used also on tiny embedded devices, but I on my desktop with the 2T of disk space really could not care less whether some given disk sector that I'm not actively using is filled with zeroes or with a header file. And that means that certainly at the level of Ubuntu this starts making a lot less sense, because it does mean when I for example recently had to get OpenCL going while I was up to then not familiar with it I got to manually apt-get install quite a few utterly obscure packages until I had things functional. I mean, come one, if I install something concerning OpenCL just give me OpenCL, not just random bits and pieces that only make sense after you already know what they are. If I'd ever argue about newbie unfriendliness of Linux that's an aspect I'd be picking...

--install-recommends seems to be one step in the right direction regarding this issue, although yes, I've as mentioned also seen it drag in quite a bit too much. As such you have a good point that what I'm personally more after is better/more meta-packages rather than --install-recommends, but well, as long as we don't have those...
thx-1138 wrote: Mon May 04, 2020 7:27 am Anyway, i think Mint is already very overloaded with quite a few stuff...
I soooo had to stop caring when I started using Mint in the first place that I'll admittedly now defend not caring until I'm blue in the face, and Ubuntu bases off of Debian, but, frankly, I believe it should undo quite a bit of Debian's package splitting, either directly or as you say through many, many meta-packages because it makes very little sense on a modern desktop.
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by thx-1138 »

that I'll admittedly now defend not caring until I'm blue in the face

Yes, i hear you there. :mrgreen: My main 'beef' is the supposed 'full compatibility with Ubuntu' perception.
Like Ubuntu somehow handles package management, inter-dependencies & patches 'properly' (while others somehow don't).
Myself, the more that time passes, the more i get annoyed by some of this or that choice here or there... :?
Exactly because i get to understand / examine better how things get 'glued' and why,
and adjust accordingly if needed be.Or maybe it's just that my personal needs have evolved...

On Mint, i've seen some quite funny things here or there...examples...
Ruby, being pulled due to a...single pastebinit script. Hadn't even noticed such,
only did so when...that script stopped working at some point. :)
Surely a whole language for a single simple script could be avoided? Python is king in Mint after all...
The modified gdebi, which pulled gnome-icon-theme due to a...single icon.
Couldn't they just ship their own 1 single icon instead? Maybe a mint-ified one as well?
Lintian was further made explicitly hidden in it's gui as well (to not....'scare' end-users with it's diagnostic warnings),
yet still got pulled along with countless perl modules...
If you do reduce gdebi's functionality, well, then do reduce it's dependencies as well, isn't it so? :)

But admittedly - those don't pull libraries / services that get loaded on start-up,
totally 'innocent' annoyances for the lack of a better term, though they did had triggered my OCD if you will...

However, as a vastly different example now, which was not that 'innocent' at all...
I do recall certain people complaining in the past, about the inclusion of the virtualbox-guest modules in bare metal installs.
They were completely ignored...until such bit people in the butt at some point down the road, with Xorg failing due to such.
Numerous threads & hundreds of end-users running like headless chickens around here in the forums asking...
"what is a tty / how to switch to a tty", in order to apt purge such & get back on their desktop normally.
Should probably also add that at least some of those who had warned / questioned such in the first place,
(and who usually had pretty sane & helpful suggestions / constructive criticism to make), don't seem active around anymore... :|

Guess what i'm trying to say, is that yes, ocd behavior is probably meaningless for the majority of users,
however keeping a certain level of balance & avoiding pulling 'extra' stuff when possible is always a good idea though.
Less potential for conflicts, certainly less bugs to hit, better performance overall.
For ultrapedantic freaks, i assume more 'secure' probably as well.
Considering people's usual complaints around here (eg. too high memory on Cinnamon & friends etc),
and furthermore the lack of willingness from a huge amount of people around here,
to dig into what this package does & why that config there exists,
somehow myself i don't really feel that forcing recommends will work out very well eventually.
Keep it relatively small & simple - that is, if you theoritically target simple users after all.
There is a difference between the Ubuntu user-base & the Mint user-base after all, i mean,
let's not kid ourselves here...a distro also chooses it's base as much as the user chooses the distro.

Maybe to put it the other way around...
And my opinion now is probably 110% heretic i assume, for those forums at least,
where certain things get demonized to the extreme - you'll get my point:
although not personally really much of a fan of Flatpak / Snaps...
i use neither, and it would have to be a very special specific case for me to opt to take that route.
Say a closed src app with lots of extra dependencies or something among those lines.
Let alone i'm not really hopeful at this point in time in regards to where that 'trend' has been leading us so far,
that is, both from Gnome / RH's side & from Canonical's side way way much more...

But still - from an end-users' point of view, i'd find it 10 times more useful practically,
to have optional integration of Snap in the so-called Software Manager,
in the very exact same / optional manner Flatpak got integrated,
instead of installing 'in the background' hundreds of semi-irrelevant 'recommended' packages that the...
ahem, casual Mint end-user, most likely won't even know their names in the first place,
let alone use or ever learn what they're meant to do or not...

Such would also gain 'full compatibility with Ubuntu' this way - that is,
if we're meant to perceive Canonical's package management choices as a certain 'standard' to be followed... :wink:
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by rene »

There was a time when I repackaged GCC on my systems due to being dissatisfied with a suboptimal structure of its standard "spec" file (a text file/recipe for arranging its compilation stages; see gcc -dumpspecs) but currently I never even noticed or cared about your e.g. Ruby or gnome-icon-theme examples. Some would defend this as personal progress. Personally I'm fully aware that I just died a bit and gave up. Bury me in bloat, see if I care.

As to Flatpak/Snap I've (again...) given up trying to defend specifically the first here on the forums ever since seeing my initial reservations regarding having 3 or 4 versions of the GNOME-runtime installed become actual reality on my system in absolutely no time at all (and, by the way, after seeing a Qt dependency drag in all of the KDE runtime in the same way I expect a GTK dependency to drag in all of the GNOME runtime) but as to both it and Snap I still hold that a system much like it is the only hope "Linux" has at significant third-party software development and, therefore, at being more than a server OS and/or toy for those that don't in fact need to interact with the world all that much.

The VirtualBox thing I feel excusable. People writing tech-articles on the internet or "reviewing distributions on YouTube" are in very large majority clueless idiots and I've seen quite a few articles/reviews where the person didn't know enough to install the VirtualBox guest additions before commenting on say graphics issue, or at least mark things "not working out of the box" up as an explicit minus. So what's something like Mint to do if it aims to target those clueless enough to listen to said clueless ones...
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by thx-1138 »

...the vbox issue i was referring to was this one (the 'main' thread back then if you will)...
Ie. clearly a mistake from a too-relaxed 'let's add everything for convenience' attitude from Mint's side, in my view at least...
Still excusable though, i wouldn't claim the opposite...mistakes we are, people we make :)

With Flatpak & Snap...i honestly don't know anymore what someone should be expecting out of such by now.
Was quite a bit more 'positive' in regards to Flatpak in late 2017 / mid 2018...
With hindsight, maybe my expectations were initially set much higher than they should.

It's custom for people to claim / blame the usual StatCounter, w3schools, NetMarketShare etc etc as being unreliable.
Still, they're the 'best' we got in terms of estimating the general trend, they've been running countless yrs after all,
so completely wrong they aren't: 'scientific' or exact they aren't for sure, but i'd say they give a pretty decent overall idea.
Just compare the 2.2%-2.3% they were reporting back in mid / late 2018 for Linux usage (was probably a record as well),
with the 1.7% or even less that they report in the last few months...

It's not hard i believe to make an educated guess why such decrease took place gradually in this 1.5 - 2 yrs period.
MS brought directly to Win10 pretty much all of the development-related stuff,
that they hadn't bothered porting over there for decades. While in the meanwhile, on Linux side,
the 'wet dream' was / is a Microsoft / Android-like 'store', with the perceived goal of eventually attracting developers.
MS on the other hand, managed to drain a sizable portion of said programmers by providing them all the toys & what not.
Good ole 'Developers, developers, developers', but redefined for the open src world.
Under that light, so far at least, WSL 2 & friends - Flatpak/Snap = 1 - 0...

And when i further think that some 15yrs ago most numbers were also cloaking roughly at...1.3%,
then by...2020, i kinda doubt a store with it's accompanying 'standardized' package,
is what will reverse the course of things and/or attract significant third-party development.
Still welcomed one way or another though, if nothing else, to increase interoperability between distros,
and de-duplicate efforts hopefully. 'Easiness' for end-users can't hurt as well.
Speaking of gcc above as well, i do find it to be somewhat of hybris not being included out of the box in Bionic & later.
Flatpak and/or Snap pre-included, nice, recommends enabled as an extra step, but hey...
someone can't even build his/her missing wifi driver after install?
That much confidence over at Canonical's headquarters that 'all works out of the box, plug-and-play'?

...But maybe with only 2-3 yrs of Flatpak / Snaps having being more widely deployed out there,
it's still too early to judge / predict...and i'm just too 'pessimistic'.
Eg. on a relatively similar scope, 5 yrs ago i could have not imagined something like fwupd,
and companies actually being convinced into participating in such a concept & infrastructure, so who knows...
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by rene »

Yah. Cosmo tended to be a bit too binary about right and wrong (also known as "German") for my tastes though; I'd still hold that I see reasons for including the guest-additions by default even if it's a technically nonstellar choice.

And yah. May I just agree that I also just don't know any more? Hope Mint integrates Snap support so as to further practice just not giving a <bleep> any more while evaluating it but, yah, well, after some twenty years of the basically exact same overall status I readily admit I also just don't know any more. There's the idea out there that Linux is in fact successful but the only way in which I find it to be is in the sense of nothing comparable being available. Just wait for the two seconds it'll take the e.g. embedded space to jump ship when something to them better is, either technically or legally, for example (in which sense I also note that my current if admittedly already somewhat older TV runs FreeBSD even if basically all my network devices run Linux).

In fact, I'm anxiously waiting for that to happen to submit the Glorious Return of Ftape to the kernel, i.e., when Linux is once again a full-on geek toy...
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by marts123 »

thx-1138 wrote: Mon May 04, 2020 7:30 pm
It's custom for people to claim / blame the usual StatCounter, w3schools, NetMarketShare etc etc as being unreliable.
Still, they're the 'best' we got in terms of estimating the general trend, they've been running countless yrs after all,
so completely wrong they aren't: 'scientific' or exact they aren't for sure, but i'd say they give a pretty decent overall idea.
Just compare the 2.2%-2.3% they were reporting back in mid / late 2018 for Linux usage (was probably a record as well),
with the 1.7% or even less that they report in the last few months...
It seems like Linux share is increasing..or perhaps its just that companies that have temporarily shut during the pandemic have switched off their Windows machines
Here’s a summary of the latest market share report:

Linux (all versions) market share increased to 2.87% from 1.36%
Ubuntu market share increased to 1.89% from 0.27%.
Windows (all versions) market share declined to 86.92% from 89.21%.
Windows 10 market share declined to 56.08% from 57.34%.

Code: Select all

https://www.windowslatest.com/2020/05/04/windows-10-market-share-drops-as-macos-linux-record-growth/
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Re: Monthly News – April 2020

Post by TonyThuitai »

Does Linux Mint 20 come with the Realtek Wi-Fi rtl8723de driver out of the Box? Ubuntu 20.04 LTS has this driver working out of the box both when trying the iso live, can be used during installation to download updates and after installation. The driver works flawlessly. I do not know how they included it because the driver is usually downloaded from github (mostly lwfinger's rtlwifi_new repo) and can be built and installed by using make or dkms, and the packages required for building and installing a git source driver are not installed. I hope that Linux Mint 20 has the driver working out of the box.
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