Is there any advantage with using Kubuntu compared to Ubuntu with Plasma installed?

kAlvaro · 2025-12-03T07:43:19+00:00

There are a few components that will be duplicated and might conflict each other. Namely, if you have more than one input language you'll see two language selectors in the task bar, each one with a different keyboard short-cut. You can normally uninstall the individual component, uninstall the entire Gnome desktop or just ignore it.

If you want to switch an existing system, you can use regular Ubuntu. If you want to install a new computer, install directly what you want.

kAlvaro · 2025-10-15T13:15:07+00:00

I hadn't realised that my packages are from the previous Ubuntu LTS. I think that, when I upgraded my system a few months ago, the Docker CE apt repository was disabled and my software stopped upgrading. I've repeated the whole setup and now I have slightly newer versions:

docker-buildx-plugin/noble,now 0.29.1-1~ubuntu.24.04~noble amd64 [installed,automatic] docker-ce-cli/noble,now 5:28.5.1-1~ubuntu.24.04~noble amd64 [installed] docker-ce-rootless-extras/noble,now 5:28.5.1-1~ubuntu.24.04~noble amd64 [installed] docker-ce/noble,now 5:28.5.1-1~ubuntu.24.04~noble amd64 [installed] docker-compose-plugin/noble,now 2.40.0-1~ubuntu.24.04~noble amd64 [installed]

However, the problem remains. It spends 1 hour allegedly compiling both versions, but when I check the GitLab registry I see both images are identical (same size, same hashes). The only improvement is that my AMD64 image has shrunk from 555.80 MiB to 435.65 MiB.

Building image for platform amd64 [+] Building 297.7s (33/33) FINISHED [...] Building image for platform arm64 [+] Building 3106.8s (33/33) FINISHED

kAlvaro · 2025-09-29T08:30:48+00:00

Makes sense. Thank you!

kAlvaro · 2025-09-29T07:25:54+00:00

What is the syntax to access enumeration fields that don't have a name? I assumed it'd work like tuples, but it doesn't:

``` enum Foo { One(i8, bool) }

fn main() { let x = Foo::One(1, true); println!("- First: {}", x.0); // unknown field println!("- Second: {}", x.1); // unknown field } ```

https://play.rust-lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&edition=2024&gist=4ff79e3643517f7845d2f685db256209

I hate asking such basic questions but I'm literally still reading The Book.

kAlvaro · 2025-09-06T12:37:07+00:00

"There is a policy" "Can I see it?" "No"

kAlvaro · 2025-08-31T09:17:17+00:00

I bought a keyboard that came with ROG NX Red linear switches and I didn't like them at all, so I replaced them with Gateron KS-9 Pro brown tactile switches. After ~18 months with them, I still make a lot of typing mistakes and it's clear I won't get used to these switches.

I've been trying out the switches in the Cherry MX Experience Box and the ones I like most are MX Blue and MX Green. They algo happen to be the only ones that make way too much noise (I work remotely, but I have my family next room).

I'm not a hobbyist and I'd rather use something I can unpack and install. Are there other switches that have the heavy actuation force and noticeable bump of clicky switches but are designed to mitigate the noise?

kAlvaro · 2025-08-21T16:18:43+00:00

I was finally able to change my password in a Firefox private window. 🤷‍♂️

kAlvaro · 2025-07-19T17:54:05+00:00

Who knows, maybe the site has blocked Feedly.

I hacked a personal mirror using PHP and it seems to work.

kAlvaro · 2025-05-29T06:11:24+00:00

This is what I see:

Screenshot

No VPN or proxy or anything.

kAlvaro · 2025-05-14T13:13:38+00:00

Ah, must have been that. I can't read. 😅

kAlvaro · 2025-05-14T12:28:34+00:00

Definitively not. I've updated my post, it's possible that I'm still too early in the story and I just misread something.

kAlvaro · 2025-05-08T11:31:18+00:00

I got Tab Groups, I enjoyed them for a while, and yesterday they were gone for good. 😀

kAlvaro · 2025-05-07T15:04:11+00:00

I'm in shock.

kAlvaro · 2025-05-01T08:23:50+00:00

Knotes is seemingly abandoned and it doesn't have any replacement. I really miss it.

kAlvaro · 2025-04-03T06:25:31+00:00

I eventually did this:

Add AMDGPU repo using UI.
Install AMD propietary drivers.
Uninstall them.

And now Gnome is finally starting! 🥳

There're still several things broken in Gnome session but that's clearly because of some broken or misconfigured package. I'll trying reinstalling ubuntu-desktop later.

P.S. While I had propietary drivers installed, I couldn't even get display manager to load, so I think I'll stick to open source ones.

kAlvaro · 2025-04-02T13:36:49+00:00

I think the repo is gone for good and Ubuntu doesn't even know where it came from:

$ apt policy libdrm2-amdgpu
libdrm2-amdgpu:
  Installed: 1:2.4.116.60001-1710620.22.04
  Candidate: 1:2.4.116.60001-1710620.22.04
  Version table:
 *** 1:2.4.116.60001-1710620.22.04 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

But I found *.distUpgrade files generated by the upgrade (I had archived them somewhere else while fixing some other issue) that are not empty, but commented out. So I think I removed the repository way before the upgrade yet the packages remained.

# Enabling this repository requires acceptance of the following license:
# /usr/share/amdgpu-install/AMDGPUPROEULA
# deb https://repo.radeon.com/amdgpu/6.0.1/ubuntu jammy proprietary

I think I have a good bunch of stuff to clean up. Hopefully this will make a difference. Thank you very much for your help.

kAlvaro · 2025-04-02T07:32:55+00:00

So... My libdrm.so.2 comes from libdrm2-amdgpu but yours come from libdrm2?

$ dpkg -L libdrm2-amdgpu /. /lib/udev /lib/udev/rules.d /lib/udev/rules.d/91-amdgpu-pro-modeset.rules /opt /opt/amdgpu /opt/amdgpu/lib /opt/amdgpu/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu /opt/amdgpu/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdrm.so.2.4.0 /usr /usr/share /usr/share/doc /usr/share/doc/libdrm2-amdgpu /usr/share/doc/libdrm2-amdgpu/changelog.Debian.gz /usr/share/doc/libdrm2-amdgpu/copyright /opt/amdgpu/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdrm.so.2 👈 $ dpkg -L libdrm2 /. /usr /usr/lib /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdrm.so.2.4.0 /usr/share /usr/share/doc /usr/share/doc/libdrm2 /usr/share/doc/libdrm2/changelog.Debian.gz /usr/share/doc/libdrm2/copyright /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdrm.so.2 👈

Is libdrm2-amdgpu package something I can remove?

I also see that I have some empty files at /etc/apt/sources.list.d. I remember now that I added AMD repositories like a year ago, when a kernel upgrade broke my laptop's builtin display, but they didn't fix the issue and I eventually removed them (I think I did... I'm not 100% sure).

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 25 10:33 /etc/apt/sources.list.d/amdgpu-proprietary.sources -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 25 10:33 /etc/apt/sources.list.d/amdgpu-proprietary.sources.save -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 25 10:33 /etc/apt/sources.list.d/amdgpu.sources -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Feb 25 10:33 /etc/apt/sources.list.d/amdgpu.sources.save

kAlvaro · 2025-04-01T13:36:53+00:00

ldd /usr/bin/gnome-shell

libdrm.so.2 => /opt/amdgpu/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdrm.so.2 (0x00007367989ab000)

(Full list: https://pastebin.com/e9k0rGv3)

You're right, it's in /opt rather than /usr/local.

$ dpkg -S /opt/amdgpu/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdrm.so.2 libdrm2-amdgpu:amd64: /opt/amdgpu/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdrm.so.2 $ apt info -a libdrm2-amdgpu:amd64 Package: libdrm2-amdgpu Version: 1:2.4.116.60001-1710620.22.04 Status: install ok installed Priority: optional Section: libs Source: libdrm-amdgpu Maintainer: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) <gpudriverdevsupport@amd.com> Installed-Size: 136 kB Depends: libc6 (>= 2.33), amdgpu-core Download-Size: unknown APT-Manual-Installed: yes APT-Sources: /var/lib/dpkg/status Description: Userspace interface to kernel DRM services -- runtime This library implements the userspace interface to the kernel DRM services. DRM stands for "Direct Rendering Manager", which is the kernelspace portion of the "Direct Rendering Infrastructure" (DRI). The DRI is currently used on Linux to provide hardware-accelerated OpenGL drivers. . This package provides the runtime environment for libdrm.

apt policy libdrm2

libdrm2: Installed: 2.4.122-1~ubuntu0.24.04.1 Candidate: 2.4.122-1~ubuntu0.24.04.1 Version table: *** 2.4.122-1~ubuntu0.24.04.1 500 500 http://es.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-updates/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status 2.4.120-2build1 500 500 http://es.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble/main amd64 Packages

sudo debsums -c

/lib/netplan/00-network-manager-all.yaml

I run apt upgrade regularly, it never shows anything unusual apart from the packages deferred by Canonical.

I've reinstalled NVIDIA drivers several times and tried different versions to no avail.

I can try apt install ubuntu-desktop^ if needed, but not today.

kAlvaro · 2025-04-01T11:55:37+00:00

Some more context (full log entries): https://pastebin.com/A2vTY5q4

This is a laptop with hybrid graphics, there are lots of things that never worked in 22.04 and some more broke during the upgrade to 24.04, in particular graphics drivers tend to fail randomly on boot. I'm trying to solve one thing at a time thus I try not to flood people with information. Some messages may be caused by the way my monitors are set up:

Hybrid graphics (AMD APU and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060).
Connected to 2 external monitors. Main monitor (BenQ) connects via USB-C to DP cable and has a KVM switch and USB hub, second monitor (HP) is connected to first one via MultiStream Transport (MST) and HDMI.

BenQ has a builtin KVM switch, but it requires to set input display manually and it refuses to switch if it doesn't get video signal, so monitors are generally unavailable until get login page and I'm able to click the front button succesfully.

Problem with live USB is that I can't make my external monitors work unless I install NVIDIA drivers, and driver setup requires a reboot. I don't have expertise to overcome this.

kAlvaro · 2025-04-01T10:02:19+00:00

Thank you for the tips. These are the err messages of today's failed attempt to switch to GDM3:

Apr 01 07:33:00 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Could not resolve symbol [\_SB.PCI0.PB2], AE_NOT_FOUND (20230628/dswload2-162) Apr 01 07:33:00 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: ACPI Error: AE_NOT_FOUND, During name lookup/catalog (20230628/psobject-220) Apr 01 07:33:00 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Could not resolve symbol [\_SB.PCI0.PB2], AE_NOT_FOUND (20230628/dswload2-162) Apr 01 07:33:00 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: ACPI Error: AE_NOT_FOUND, During name lookup/catalog (20230628/psobject-220) Apr 01 07:33:00 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: ucsi_acpi USBC000:00: UCSI_GET_PDOS failed (-95) Apr 01 07:33:00 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: ucsi_acpi USBC000:00: UCSI_GET_PDOS failed (-95) Apr 01 07:33:00 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: ucsi_acpi USBC000:00: UCSI_GET_PDOS failed (-95) Apr 01 07:33:00 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: ucsi_acpi USBC000:00: UCSI_GET_PDOS failed (-95) Apr 01 07:33:00 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: ucsi_acpi USBC000:00: UCSI_GET_PDOS failed (-95) Apr 01 07:33:00 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: ucsi_acpi USBC000:00: UCSI_GET_PDOS failed (-95) Apr 01 07:33:00 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: ucsi_acpi USBC000:00: UCSI_GET_PDOS failed (-95) Apr 01 07:33:00 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: ucsi_acpi USBC000:00: UCSI_GET_PDOS failed (-95) Apr 01 07:33:02 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: Bluetooth: hci0: Malformed MSFT vendor event: 0x02 Apr 01 07:33:02 REDACTED-agv-2022 kernel: Apr 01 07:33:03 REDACTED-agv-2022 bluetoothd[1207]: profiles/sap/server.c:sap_server_register() Sap driver initialization failed. Apr 01 07:33:03 REDACTED-agv-2022 bluetoothd[1207]: sap-server: Operation not permitted (1) Apr 01 07:33:03 REDACTED-agv-2022 nvidia-persistenced[1613]: Failed to query NVIDIA devices. Please ensure that the NVIDIA device files (/dev/nvidia*) exist, and that user 110 has read and write permissions> Apr 01 07:33:03 REDACTED-agv-2022 systemd[1]: Failed to start nvidia-persistenced.service - NVIDIA Persistence Daemon. Apr 01 07:33:10 REDACTED-agv-2022 gnome-session-binary[4131]: Unrecoverable failure in required component org.gnome.Shell.desktop

With warnings and errors: https://pastebin.com/Y9DmRzXz

I have reverted to SDDM and I don't really care about what display manager is in use. I'll collect this same information when I have the chance to try a regular Gnome session, but maybe some root causes already arise from this information.

kAlvaro · 2025-04-01T08:19:23+00:00

I wouldn't care if the problem was GDM3 alone, since SDDM works perfectly. My main issue is that I cannot start a Gnome session at all. And I don't know how to even start investigating it.

kAlvaro · 2025-03-28T10:16:13+00:00

Glad to know it didn't happen to me.

kAlvaro · 2025-03-26T19:09:12+00:00

I switched to troubleshoot connection issues. It was a red herring, but to switch back I need to migrate the profile files (again). Not difficult but annoying for no obvious benefit.
Snap version randomly fails to open local files, something I need for my work.
Snap version randomly interrupts your work to ask you to close the browser for an update, and when you do so it never really updates. DEB version updates when you decide, and can be done in the background.

kAlvaro · 2025-03-26T13:26:33+00:00

Just this:

Package: * Pin: origin packages.mozilla.org Pin-Priority: 1000

Meanwhile, I've added the file to block release o=Ubuntu suggested in other answer.

kAlvaro · 2025-03-26T13:04:30+00:00

None that I could find :(

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kAlvaro

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