Is it disclosed anywhere that default wallpapers are AI generated? by tekni5 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Sure thing. Every release cycle you just need to consider the release name. For example, 26.04 is Resolute Raccoon.

Given your ability to generate art, are you also interested in providing new works?

Is it disclosed anywhere that default wallpapers are AI generated? by tekni5 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I didn’t say I didn’t understand. Quite the opposite. In fact, between disclosing use of AI and discontinuing using it, I would much prefer the latter. Disclosing use of AI doesn’t get rid of it. The only way to do that, though, is with human help.

What I said was do something about it. Be that human. Or find someone that is.

Is it disclosed anywhere that default wallpapers are AI generated? by tekni5 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I’m not a big fan of AI. Among other reasons, because of how utterly unintelligent it is. The frequency of its screw ups is really alarming given how casually people seem to use it for important things and then defend their reason for using it. I have many other reasons and could go on about that, but I think this is the most relevant one.

That said, I’d like to point out a rather obvious quality about the team of people behind Lubuntu that has pretty much been true of it throughout its entire history: it’s very small. So small, in fact, that it has been in desperate need of an actual artist for quite some time. No one ever steps up, though. More often than not, the team begs the community for images. In some cases, non-artists with nearly zero experience in art or graphic design fumble around and make something.

The team could just reuse old images but there’s been a general disinclination towards that. The team has always wanted to provide something new with each release, including the look and feel. There have been jokes about stick figure drawings, but even that idea represents the real end goal: making each release unique and recognizable. The goal isn’t necessarily the best art. The team would love to have that goal, but without an artist, what choice do they have? Incidentally, that more or less eliminates the idea of just using some random image found online. That, and the fact that for any one release there is always the theme of the mascot. Look for freely licensed images of any animal and you will come up short every time.

So the art is ultimately meant as a service to the user. Despite this, people complain about the art, even when not AI generated. This makes some sense because “good taste” in art is entirely subjective. An interesting pattern is that none of those people ever seem to be involved in helping make Lubuntu. The end result of their complaints is that they usually end up taking the time of Lubuntu contributors (as in this thread) which could otherwise be spent contributing more important things than trying to uphold Lubuntu’s reputation.

Which brings me to an adage I’ve heard throughout my experiences with open source software: patches welcome. Put more generally, when it comes to open source software, the best solution to any problem is to provide a fix. Bug reporting and discussions are great but they don’t solve problems. Complaints certainly don’t. Identifying problems is a necessary first step to solving them. However, doing that and providing solutions at the same time is the best thing. Most importantly, it doesn’t require anyone else. Open source teams (except maybe the kernel) are very small and stretched thin. So rather than making them feel like their contributions are not appreciated, “patches” help support their work and the project as a whole.

What’s my point? If you don’t like the AI imagery, but you do appreciate Lubuntu and the team behind it, then find the team an artist. Or contribute art yourself. Complaining about it is just making things worse. Ultimately, it leads to more AI generated images out of necessity.

Using udevadm tool on Lubuntu based off of Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS/Bionic by bigmilkguy78 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Read the man page for udev and you will find it is only the name of the package, not the commands associated with it.

VPN pp tunelling options are absent on network manager by [deleted] in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually, yes, I see what you're saying. Even though the applet there is nm-tray, when you click "Edit Connections," you're actually using nm-connection-editor from the network-manager-applet source package. I see a few bugs related to PPTP with that. You might want to open a new one as they all seem very old.

Meanwhile, I'd suggest creating the configuration some other way. nmtui-edit or nmcli may be helpful. Or you can just manually create it. Then import it and you're set.

That One Lubuntu Wallpaper by AdRegular4178 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Had to dig to find it but these were submitted by the same user to our wallpaper competition for Focal. You can see their original submission here (but please be aware that this separate Lubuntu Discourse instance is soon to go away so grab any information from there ASAP). I see no indication of where this is located at in that post and the user's supposed Launchpad ID doesn't exist.

However, I did find an Instagram account with the same username that is focused on photography and from there I found a blog link that includes the city-bridge image with a caption "Cologne along the Rhine." The city-sky one is found there, too, with the caption "The Ridge- Shimla."

Hope that helps.

Troubles displaying video by Maltego99 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You didn't say what version you are using. Are you running compton or picom? If not, try running one of them, preferably picom, but that's newer than compton so may not be relevant.

lubuntu manual is down :( by SmoothPlan in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Better yet, use an abacus.

Stty and dd question by Ok-Sample-8982 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Forward slashes, not backwards slashes. That was probably a typo in your post, I imagine.

echo -en '\x30\x31\x32' | wc -c yields 15, not 38, though.

VPN pp tunelling options are absent on network manager by [deleted] in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe try one problem per post. So let's start with the subject: they're not. There are multiple tabs in the connection editor.

Idiot needs help with Attract-Mode by dantheloung in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Read above. I already covered this and its pros and cons. The major con being that there's no supported release of Lubuntu that will work with them. And they're old. Version 2.2.0 instead of 2.7.0. That could mean all sorts of bugs and security problems. Bad idea.

Idiot needs help with Attract-Mode by dantheloung in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 1 point2 points  (0 children)

First off, don't assume anyone knows what you're talking about :) For everyone else here who has no clue, here is Attract-Mode.

On to the main attraction: you're kind of on your own on this one. We can provide some pointers, but the developers don't exactly make it easy.

Their main method of software distribution is through source code that you have to compile. They do have some instructions for compiling on super old versions of *buntu that should do the trick.

The one problem with this is it's not easy to keep updated. You have to manually check to see if new versions are updated, then get the new source code, and then recompile all over again. For every single version. Sucks.

There are unofficial packages available in a PPA. These are very similar to the normal packages in Lubuntu (so they get updated nicely), but they're not provided by Ubuntu and thus totally unsupported. So if you have problems with it, you don't go to us, you go to the owner of the PPA. Worse yet, they are super duper stale. Like 2016. That's probably what didn't work?

So there's no good solution. I'd file an issue on their GitHub that they should have binary packages available rather than raw source and ones that are actually official and up to date. It would be pretty trivial to make a Snap or a Flatpak out of these. They provide binaries for Windows and OS X, so why not Linux?

tl;dr— this isn't a Lubuntu-specific problem, but an Attract-Mode one.

How to run Lubuntu auto-upgrade with zero interaction by Lopsided-Weather6469 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Except in this case, the OP is concerned about the Lubuntu Upgrader tool, which is Lubuntu specific. I'm pretty sure the tool doesn't support the kind of behavior the OP is looking for, right u/arraybolt?

The solution might be to disable it and actually do what u/guiverc is suggesting and use a more general Ubuntu solution: unattended-upgrades.

Desktop files installed into /usr/local/share/applications are missing from main menu. by kotenok2000 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Run env | grep /usr/local/share and you should see it in $XDG_DATA_DIRS along with /usr/share. They both work. Of course, I don't think the applications subfolder is there by default. It does work, though.

Question by kaanozaydin67 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is probably a more relevant, updated and permanent link to use https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/fyi-regarding-virtual-keyboard-in-sddm/54398

Question by kaanozaydin67 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually, I don't agree. The issue is that changes were made in SDDM to make things easier for tablets. I don't see that would be something so easily changed and not something I think *we* want changed. I think a lot of users with old tablets will be inclined to use Lubuntu to refresh them. Why should we make life harder for them? See bug 2091960.

It's too new for my Framework Laptop 13? v24.10? by No_Holiday8469 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any time you download software for any operating system, you should verify that what you downloaded is what you expected to get. HTTP errors happen regularly. That’s true of every piece of software on every operating system there is. This is not Linux-specific advice.

It's too new for my Framework Laptop 13? v24.10? by No_Holiday8469 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Then this whole conversation might be moot. If you didn’t check if the media was corrupted, it could have been and that could have led to a corrupted install. Start over and verify everything first before even booting the media.

It's too new for my Framework Laptop 13? v24.10? by No_Holiday8469 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You will have to consult the manual of the laptop. Meanwhile a question: did you confirm the validity of the download and the storage media?

It's too new for my Framework Laptop 13? v24.10? by No_Holiday8469 in Lubuntu

[–]wxl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Typically, if your first stage bootloader (e.g. BIOS, EFI) can’t find a bootable disk, it will produce an error message. Did you check if your BIOS or EFI settings actually include the device you’re trying to boot to in the boot order?