linux desktop

tl;dr: linux on a desktop is way too complicated.

Let’s say I have to use Linux as my desktop environment, here are just a few observations I made. Beware: I’m looking at this from an users perspective. Not a developer, not a … I don’t know.

installation

Ubuntu 19.10 live boot environment makes some clicking sounds, the installed version of ubuntu 19.10 just has a “dummy device” as my audio input/output. No sounds at all. Okay…

To get things working again, I just had to google for like an hour, filter out the right blog post or stack overflow comment out of 100 results. I ended up editing a few configuration files, some which required my admin password. If I remember correctly, I had to blacklist some drivers and add some drivers? But why on earth did the default boot installation work fine? I don’t get it.

hidpi

Well, I got my first retina MacBook when it was released in 2011? 2012? A long time ago, it’s 2020 now. I started up ubuntu 19.10 and was presented with a 200% scale on my display. Everything was just huge. I went to the display settings and I could only scale to 100%, 200%, 300% and so on. So I tried things with 100% and everything was just super tiny tiny and I couldn’t see a thing. So where’s the setting for 125% or 150% scaling? It doesn’t exist. In the GUI. Of course, since it’s Linux, go to the command line.

Again, after some research online I came across the term fractional scaling which is apparently what I want. To do this, I just had to copy and paste another command into my terminal to make things scale correctly. Suddenly, 125% and so on appears in the GUI. why not in the first place?

suspend / sleep / hibernation

Naturally, when installing ubuntu I enabled encryption, because: encrypt all the things, right? Well, turns out, if you enable encryption, you can’t hibernate your system. When using hibernation, the OS usually puts all the memory contents on disk (or swap space). Well, the default installation process just creates a tiny swap partition which doesn’t fit my notebooks memory contents. So no hibernate for me.

Closing the lid on my system? Everything keeps running. I couldn’t find the setting for what’s supposed to happen when I close the lid. Only what is supposed to happen when I push the power button. Who on earth with a notebook pushes the power button first instead of just closing the lid?

bluetooth

Disabled bluetooth in settings. Not sure why, but I just assumed turning it off once there would mean it’s off. Well, it turns back on every time you log out or restart. Solution? Edit some file and blacklist the bluetooth usb device you can find with some other command and grep around.