I started my Linux journey on Ubuntu and I am back to using it. Ubuntu is always special to me because it was my first foray into the world of Linux. But then when Ubuntu decided to use unity it was incredibly slow on my hardware back then forcing me to look for other options. Arch made a lot of sense because of the KISS and putting the user in charge of what software gets on your system. And TWM(XMonad) was a no brainer because of the low resources I had but as time passed by and I got better hardware I never revisited or question my decission which speaks a lot about Arch and XMonad both have been solid for me.
My last couple of posts have been very contradictory in that I first said I am leaving Arch+XMonad and then I said I was back to that and want to make it work and now I am back to saying Adios! to arch+xmonad. But I think this time around I just going to stick to Ubuntu. Long story short is I think I am done with having to constantly setup basic things(bluetooth,printer,scanner..etc.) and tweak xmonad config.
Ubuntu 22.04 installation was a breeze - took less than 10 minutes for me. I was debating if I should install Ubuntu or go for ubuntu mate(which will take you back to good old days of gnome 2), Kubuntu or xubuntu. But I think after many years, I am starting to like Gnome again. It seems more polished. Thanks to my 32G ram I don’t mind if it takes extra ram that was always my point of contention when choosing DE and meager RAM on my hardware during undergrad days and the reason I sought out XMonad.
Ubuntu 22.04 finally feels wholesome and well polished. There are fewer packages that come preinstalled. And the defaults are also something that I can live with, I would have liked to seen Geary instead of Thunderbird but I won’t complaint about that too much. Like many of the reviews have already pointed Firefox is now packaged with snap and it takes couple of seconds(which seems like eternity) to start-up firefox on a cold boot. I don’t need rhythmbox since I consume all my media online. But still the number of preinstalled packages is relatively still low that I really can’t/don’t want to complaint.
Gnome doesn’t load on wayland by default and I was so bumped at that because I am used to touchpad gestures. With the help of this post I was able to force Wayland instead of X. And it works like a charm now with my nvidia graphics card and am able to connect to external monitor.
Hopefully I can be more productive using Ubuntu fingers crossed and focus on learning Haskell :)