Qt Ubuntu 24.04 betas show that there's room to innovate
- Reference: 1713547750
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/04/19/qt_ubuntu_2404_betas/
- Source link:
The beta announcements for [1]Lubuntu 24.04 and [2]Kubuntu 24.04 don't reveal quite as much information as the [3]Lubuntu's alpha-test announcement did. The Reg FOSS desk looked at the two Qt-centric remixes, and found some intriguing distinctions between them and their parent distro.
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The beta of Lubuntu 24.04 offers a new choice: live session or proceed directly to installation - Click to enlarge
When we [5]did a roundup of the remixes for the last LTS release cycle, 22.04, we noted that Lubuntu was a little different from the other flavors. For instance, Lubuntu 22.04 booted direct to a live session without asking, and if you did choose to install, it used the Calamares cross-platform installer, rather than Canonical's own tool.
These are aside from its svelteness. It's fairly well known as the lightest weight member of the Ubuntu family, taking less disk and less RAM than the others. That's a good thing, even if you are not short of resources: there's less to go wrong, it represents a smaller attack surface, and it leaves more resources available for your apps. A few Reg readers have told us that Lubuntu is their go-to Ubuntu remix, for its simple, no-nonsense approach as well as its modest resource usage, and we can't fault that stance.
It looks like the Noble Numbat release will offer some more functional differences over and above these. For instance, this release offers the option to install directly from boot-up, without starting a full desktop session. Since this is a flavor of particular interest to those who want a lighter-weight OS, it's good to see that the Calamares installer offers a "minimal" installation option – historically, some of the remixes didn't offer this.
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As we [7]reported back in February , with the 24.04 LTS release, Kubuntu is also switching to using Calamares as its installation program. We tried the betas of both Lubuntu and Kubuntu to see how the new installer is looking.
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Not two but three types of installation: normal, minimal, and even full, with extra snappy apps - Click to enlarge
This highlighted a difference that we weren't expecting: a three-way choice of installation types. In the betas of both Kubuntu and Lubuntu, you don't just get Ubuntu's "Normal" and "Minimal" offerings, but also an optional "Full" installation, which adds some extra packages to the mix. This adds the Element client for Matrix, the Thunderbird multi-protocol messaging client, the Virtual Machine Manager for [9]libvirt -compatible hypervisors, and KDE's Krita image-editing program. (It is perhaps churlish of us to point out that Thunderbird itself includes a Matrix client, but we must run that risk.)
[10]Lightweight Windows-like desktop LXQt makes leap to Qt 6 with version 2.0
[11]Ubuntu, Kubuntu, openSUSE to get better installation
[12]Cinnamon and KDE sync version numbers in desktop sibling rivalry
[13]Revamped Raspberry Pi OS boasts Wayland desktop and improved imager tool
One of the more common complaints about Ubuntu in recent years is its growing fondness for packaging applications in Canonical's snap format. In the [14]beta version of the standard Ubuntu desktop the Thunderbird email client is now a snap as well. Upstream Ubuntu also has a new Snap-centric App Centre , which no longer supports Debian packages: it's snaps or nothing. It should come as no surprise, then, that if you choose the Full install option in Lubuntu and Kubuntu 24.04, the additional apps are installed as snap versions.
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Instead of the Snap-based App Centre, Lubuntu offers KDE's Discover – but the beta has glitches - Click to enlarge
However, there is some good news for Lubuntu users. The new version includes a little extra instrumentation around the snap format, and Lubuntu "Noble" includes on-screen status notifications when Snap packages are installing in the background, thanks to a new program called [16]lubuntu-snap-installation-monitor . It also has a new first-run wizard, and alongside the standard Lubuntu login session, there are options for an unthemed LXQt session as well as a very bare login session with the OpenBox window manager and nothing else.
If you choose the Qt-based editions, though, you get the [17]KDE Discover graphical app store instead. This supports both Snap and Debian packages, and if you install the optional Flatpak back-end, it supports that package format as well. We did see some graphical glitches with Discover in the Lubuntu Noble beta, though, which made it unusable in Virtualbox. We tried the Virtualbox guest additions, and the equally FOSS VMware graphics driver, but neither helped. We hope this is resolved before release – it works fine in Kubuntu itself.
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The beta of Kubuntu 24.04 shows what the Discover app is meant to look like - Click to enlarge
As we [19]reported in February , KDE Plasma 6 was released just a little too late to be included in the latest Kubuntu. Both Lubuntu and Kubuntu 24.04 come with the previous stable versions of their respective desktops: [20]LXQt 1.4 and KDE Plasma 5.27.11. That means that by default, no Wayland sessions are on offer here, just plain old X.org. ®
Get our [21]Tech Resources
[1] https://lubuntu.me/noble-beta-released/
[2] https://kubuntu.org/news/kubuntu-24-04-beta-released/
[3] https://lubuntu.me/noble-alpha-featureset/
[4] https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/04/18/lubuntu_noble_chooser.jpg
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/18/ubuntu_remixes/#lubuntu
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZiLpeK7PW82K8pazhEo8fgAAAIU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/22/distro_installer_news_roundup/
[8] https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/04/18/lubuntu_noble_installer.jpg
[9] https://libvirt.org/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/29/lxqt_2_is_coming/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/22/distro_installer_news_roundup/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/01/cinnamon_6_kde_6b/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/03/raspberry_pi_os_5/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/15/ubuntu_24_04_belated_beta/
[15] https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/04/18/lubuntu_noble_discover.jpg
[16] https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=lubuntu-snap-installation-monitor
[17] https://apps.kde.org/discover/
[18] https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/04/18/kubuntu_noble_discover.jpg
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/06/no_kde6_for_noble/
[20] https://github.com/lxqt/lxqt/releases/tag/1.4.0
[21] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Snaps still don't work
Today I did a routine "apt update" on my little laptop, but it jammed because it ran out of disk space. When I searched for what was taking the most space, it was all HUGE snap directory trees, in several places in the filesystem.
I'm going to have to switch another distro if I can't re-install (X)Ubuntu WITHOUT snap. Any suggestions?
Re: Snaps still don't work
> I'm going to have to switch another distro if I can't re-install (X)Ubuntu WITHOUT snap. Any suggestions?
Asmi, the remix formerly known as Zinc.
Ubuntu 23.10 with Xfce and neither Snap nor Flatpak, but better .DEB management tools instead: Nala and deb-get.
The 24.04 release is in beta.
There's still time for common sense to prevail?
"That means that by default, no Wayland sessions are on offer here, just plain old X.org."
Well, THAT's certainly a plus. Perhaps in the next edition they'll get rid of the systemd-cancer.
Re: There's still time for common sense to prevail?
I don't know that much about Wayland--only that when my (former and cursed) distro defaulted to it after an update, things I depended on couldn't be used any longer. Wayland is not good for a mere end user like me, but I guess for certain developers it's nice.
Re: There's still time for common sense to prevail?
> Perhaps in the next edition they'll get rid of the systemd-cancer.
For an easy life, try MX Linux, then. Less work than Devuan, better compatibility with nVidia drivers and things, and it works well.
You're not alone, Mr. McMurtrie.
"I hate snaps."
The only people who champion them are management and marketing types, and modern pseudo-technical types who claim to be Linux proficient and yet wouldn't have any idea about how to create their own distro from scratch.[0]
Easy solution: Choose a distribution (or other OS) that doesn't mandate them.
[0] Cue several shouts of "Why would I want to do that?", thus rather neatly proving my point.
Re: You're not alone, Mr. McMurtrie.
"The only people who champion them are management and marketing types, and modern pseudo-technical types who claim to be Linux proficient and yet wouldn't have any idea about how to create their own distro from scratch."
My job title is "Managing Director". I'm 53. I ran Gentoo on my work desktop for 15 years, then Arch for seven. I have done Linux From Scratch, including running make config (not menuconfig, xconfig or any other wet handshake nonsense)
I fucking hate snap, me. Mind you I do quite like systemd, so there you go.
However unlike my native spoken and written language I dislike subject verb object for service incantations, eg: systemctl fuck service. Subject object verb is the way the good $DEITY intended because you really want to service service down hit arrow up service service up. Apparently the reason for SVO is that you can control multiple services, which you could still do by parsing the last word instead of the second one as the verb/action.
The ultimate irony here is that German (Mr Poettering's native language) is famously SOV ie you cobble together a load of nouns, adverbs, adjectives and conjunctions and then spit out all the verbs right at the end. English strips away all that gender stuff for nouns (except when it doesn't) and subjects verb their objects (as you do). English insists on a massive rule book and then proceeds to break nearly all of them except for the one that says ... anything goes if it can be understood by more than one person, but that is optional ... oh and you will never fathom when to use ei or ie within a word, I hate you ... la la la thhhhrrrrip! Oh and that's one formal English. There are loads of the buggers.
Re: You're not alone, Mr. McMurtrie.
adjectives and conjunctions and then spit out all the verbs right at the end.
I am classed as a native German speaker, and I still have nightmares about reading Kleist short stories... 10 paperback
pages of clauses, sub clauses, sub sub sub sub sub sub clauses, then the verb.
Snaps still don't work
Just yesterday I was thinking that all snaps were hanging on update. Less than 0.2% CPU, no disk, and no network. Just sitting there in the copying files stage. Restarting snapd when it's stuck like this takes about 5 minutes. Same problem on retry.
One was hanging. The others just needed an hour of doing absolutely nothing to finish. No errors logged. I hate snaps.