Every so often i start believing all the posts about how Linux really made a lot of progress, and the desktop experience is so much better now, and everything is supported, and i give it another try.
I've got a small intel 13th gen NUC i use as a small server, and for playing movies from. It runs windows 11, but as i want to run some docker containers on it, i thought, why not give Linux a try again, how bad can it be. (after all, i've got multiple raspberry pi's running, and a synology diskstation, and i'm no stranger to ssh'ing into them to manage some stuff)
Downloaded the latest Ubuntu Desktop (23.10), since it's still a highly recommended distro, and started my journey.
First obvious task: connect to my SMB shares on my synology to get access to any media. Tough luck, whatever tool Ubuntu uses for that always tries SMBv1 protocol first, which is disabled on my synology due to security reasons. If i enable it on my synology i get a nice warning that SMBv1 is vulnurable and has been used to perform ransomware attacks, so maybe i'd rather leave it disabled (although i assume that's mostly the case if the port were accessible from the internet, but still). Then i thought "it's probably some setting somewhere to change this", but after further googling, i found an issue that whatever ubuntu is using for SMB needs a patch to not default to SMBv1 to get a list of shares.... Yeah, great start for the oh so secure linux, i'd need to enable a protocol that got used in ransomware attacks over 6 years ago to get everything to work properly... (yeah, i ended up finding how to mount things manually, and then added it to my fstab as a workaround, but wtf)
Then, i installed Kodi, tried to play some content. Noticed that even though i enabled that setting on Kodi, it's not switching to the refreshrate of the video i'm playing. Googling further on that just felt like walking through a tarpit. From the dedicated librelec distro that runs just kodi that has special patches to resolve this, to discussions about X not supporting switching refreshrates, and Kodi having a standalone mode that doesn't use a window manager that should solve it but doesn't, and also finding people with similar woes about HDR. I guess the future of the desktop user is watching stuttering videos with bad color rendition? I'd give more details about what i found if there were any. Try googling it yourself, you'll find so little yet contradictory things...
Not being entirely defeated yet, i thought "i've got this nice GUI on my synology for managing docker containers & images, let's see if i can find something nice on ubuntu", and found dockstation as something i could try. Downloaded the .deb file (since ubuntu is a debian variant it seems), double clicked the file and ... "no app installed for this file"... google around a bit, after some misleading results regarding older ubuntu versions, i found the issue: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/10/install-deb-ubuntu-23-10-no-app-error
Of course Ubuntu just threw out the old installer for debian files, and didn't replace it yet. Wouldn't want a user to just be able to easily install files! what is this, windows?
For real, i see all the Linux love here, and for the headless servers i have here (the raspberries & the synology), i get it. But goddamn this desktop experience is so ridiculous, there has to be better than this right? I'm missing something, or doing something completely wrong, or... right?
I think you're expecting Ubuntu to behave exactly like Windows. There are tasks which any Linux machine is going to be better-equipped for than Windows, and it'd be silly to say that Windows "is a terrible development experience" because it doesn't run valgrind or strace or whatever. Contrawise, there are things which will definitely be easier or more intuitive to set up on Windows as opposed to any Linux distro you find, but that doesn't mean it's a bad desktop; just that it has a different set of strengths and weaknesses. For me, adding to fstab would be more of a normal thing to do than to use the Ubuntu GUI by quite a lot.
It kind of sounds like you're not interested in a lot of the benefits of having a Linux installation, just interested in something that works exactly like Windows and is good at exactly the same things. In which case, and I'm not trying to sound sarcastic, Windows might be more what you're interested in.
(Or, actually, a Mac may be more specifically what you're looking for -- similar "it just works" ness like Windows but works better for most things, outside a handful of specific tasks Windows still does better)
(Also - if Ubuntu really is refusing to talk to an SMB v2 machine I'd be very surprised by that. Which tool were you using? The built in Ubuntu desktop SMB browser I assume? What did you do to verify that it was the lack of XMB v1 that was the problem (e.g. enabling SMB1 temporarily and seeing if the tool started working)? As you noted, SMB v1 is terrible and if it's forcing the use of it, that's a for-real problem.)
I have literally never in my life had my monitor's refresh rate switch to match the framerate of the video I'm watching. What refresh rate was it, and what's the framerate that you wanted it to match? I'm trying to wrap my head around what it is that you're watching that just letting the screen refresh at 60Hz or whatever speed it was going at won't cut it.
The HDR is a fair point. That's a legit example of something where I could easily see Windows working better than Linux, which is why I wouldn't try to use one as a drop-in replacement for the other. This exact type of thing -- some niche feature which genuinely is pretty useful but requires a bunch of different softwares to play nice with each other when Windows just sort of works out-of-the-box -- is something where Linux tends to lag behind.
This just isn't the way to do it -- installing Debian .debs on Ubuntu definitely won't work reliably, and downloading and installing random .debs from the internet is rarely the way to do it even if the distros do match (flavor and exact version). Does Rancher fit your needs? Looking over this it looks like that's the first thing I would try if I wanted "something like Dockstation that works well on Ubuntu."
I think overall -- just realize that Linux was created for very different reasons than "I want exactly the same thing as Windows, just to do all the work to create Windows over again and give it away for free." It was created for people who wanted a very specific type of development-friendly and Unix-friendly environment, and since the majority of it is still being made by those people for those people, it's gonna be constructed according to those parameters.
So expecting the stable version of ubuntu to not just have thrown away its installer for one of the main ways of installing things on it, and for it to have disabled a protocol that was used in ransomware attacks almost a decade ago is... "i'm expecting ubuntu to behave like windows".
I'm sorry, but you're just ridiculous.
Regarding the refreshrate: this also connects to a projector, and i don't think it's able to wait for frames, it'll just push out x frames per second, and if it doesn't match your video source, you'll see smooth motion isn't quite that smooth. It may be an "advanced" usecase, but if supporting something like this is "expecting ubuntu to work like windows", then yeah, maybe i better stick to windows... I had expected linux to also be good for htpc usage, but maybe not then.
But for real, i've got multiple headless linux machines here, i ssh in to them, got docker containers on them with some complicated usecases too, i know what to expect from linux and i don't expect it to be like windows. But for the very first 3 things i try on a popular "beginners distro" to be this awful. This is not expecting "this works like windows", this is me expecting a vulnurability of 2017 having been addressed, them not fucking up something as major as a package installer in a "stable" version, and the refreshrate is maybe a tiny bit specific, i can kind of forgive it that (but it would make linux bad for my usecase sadly, but for a modern desktop OS, i don't see why it wouldn't be supported).
Regarding the deb files not being the way to do it. I'm sure that's why plenty of sites have install instructions for ubuntu be like "here, install this deb file". You say this is not the way to do it, SO MANY APPS say it is. can this community please make up its mind??
Not at all what I said. Distros are generally made as coherent wholes; the stuff that comes through
apt installgenerally works great, and you never interact directly with a .deb. The whole model of "I found this thing on a web site and I want to download and run it on my system" is going to be a little more difficult on Linux. Since that's the only way on Windows, since Windows doesn't come prepackaged with thousands of different packages you can install through package management, it'll seem to a Windows person like that's "the way," and when it's not easy on Linux, it'll seem to you like a deficiency in Linux.You didn't answer my question. What steps did you do that led you to conclude that SMB v1 was the issue? I actually agree with you that that's pretty bad and needs to be fixed in Ubuntu if it's true, but I'm not convinced based on your description that that was what was making it not work. It sounds like maybe it didn't work, and when it wasn't working you decided it was trying to speak SMB v1 and didn't test your conclusion. No?
Like I say, I'm not trying to tell you not to have that as a feature if you want it or that you're wrong for wanting this to work. I'm just saying that this seems like getting pretty far into the weeds of weedy things to raise as criticisms.
Was the video quality noticeably off in any way? It might have been that there was a genuine issue, unrelated to the frame rate. Given the history of interlaced video and vsync in video games, I'd be pretty surprised if the average human could even tell the difference between 24Hz and 24Hz-sampled-at-60Hz even paying close attention.
I'm gonna be a little harsh. Having several Linux machines doesn't mean you know what you're doing. You say stuff like:
You, just like the person who wrote this thing you linked to, seem to be under the impression that Ubuntu is supposed to install .debs you downloaded when you click on them, and that not doing that means they "removed" it. That's wrong. I have no idea why Ubuntu removed that behavior, but I suspect that it's because installing some .deb you downloaded from the internet is almost never the right thing to do. The underlying package management can definitely still do it. If you know enough for it to be a safe thing to do, you'll be able to do it without the GUI, and understand the messages you might get back and be capable enough to get it done to the point that the .deb you downloaded might actually work. If you just want to download and double-click and don't know how to use the relevant tools, then it's extremely unlikely that what you were doing was ever going to get your software to install and run in the first place.
I know this is kind of gonna be offensive me saying this, or unhelpful, or "see this is why it's not ready for the desktop!" But I'm honestly just trying to communicate, this is how it works. Linux is designed as more of an integrated whole; in a lot of respects, that's a really good thing. It sure is a pain in the ass when you want to install certain types of third party software though, yes, definitely. Windows (of necessity) has pretty good support for installing third party apps as self-contained entities. Again, on Windows the whole model of how you install software is to download something from some random internet site, so it's even a little hard to process the concept of doing it some other way, or why that way wouldn't be simple.
If you want to say "this is a big problem, we need Flatpak and Docker to improve in X Y and Z way so they can be viable replacements for drop-in installation of third party software like on Windows," that sounds great. But -- again, I apologize about this for being a little harsh -- if your whole model for solving this problem is that Ubuntu should install .debs when you double-click on them, I don't think you know enough about it to say what needs to happen to make it better.
I typed in the exact error message i got in google, and found the issue is that it tries to use SMBv1 to get the list of shares, and if it's disabled on the server, you're out of luck.
It was running 24fps video on 30hz refreshrate. It's subtle for sure, but easily noticable. It means every 5th frame last twice as long as the others. If the camera pans, you just see it isn't perfectly smooth. It isn't a complete disaster, but is it really that hard of a feature? I can kind of get the "you don't need it" in some cases, but i've spend all this time & money on a nice projector & sound system to watch movies. I don't want to see some slight stutter whenever a camera pans since my OS can't match my refresh rate to the video it's playing. Even though i can manuallly switch to that exact refresh rate if i wanted to.
Dude, it is. Google it yourself. Pretty much every single link you find when googling why clicking on deb files gives an error that the application for such files is not founds shows you how to assign the default installer in ubuntu to those files so it works. You're really gaslighting me here. this is expected behavior, everything you can google indicates it is expected behavior, i gave you the link about someone helping with alternatives now they suddenly broke it, but that link also says they expect it to soon be fixed again in ubuntu. But now i complain about it being broken and you're all like "that's totally not expected behavior".
Look, i get it, you like linux and are happy with it. But you can't just wipe any negative experience under the carpet with gaslighting like this. That's just ridiculous. It is expected behavior for a distro like ubuntu, and pretending it is not is just ridiculous.
What was the error message? I want to investigate this a little bit.
Hm, yeah, I could see that, actually. I just didn't expect it to be running at 30Hz is part of where I was coming from, I assumed minimum 60Hz.
Yeah, I mean, all I can really tell you is what I said before -- this is a down side, yes. A lot of the people who build the technology aren't too invested in solving this type of problem, and in general there's no one with money at the center of it trying to ensure a good end-user experience, so you may have to just set 60Hz and hope for the best.
Hm, I was just indicating my personal opinion on it. I don't think recommending to anyone who doesn't have the knowledge to muck around with the command line to mess around with .debs they found on the internet is going to end well. I see some people on the internet (this is a good example) saying they recommend it for stuff like Google Chrome, but I just think that's a recipe for trouble.
For me, I would tell them to install Chromium through apt and explain that it's the same without some Google crap. I think people's natural tendency is going to be to try to install software on Linux by finding it on a web site, downloading it, and clicking it, and I think if you're teaching someone Linux, part of your job should be to educate them out of thinking that way. I get why the Ubuntu people would want to emphasize that in service of a good end user experience I guess, but I would not do it that way.
Not true. What I said was "I have no idea why Ubuntu removed that behavior, but I suspect that..." IDK, maybe you're right that they want users to be able to do that, and they just managed to cock it up in one particular version of Ubuntu. In which case, I actually fully agree with your assessment that that's a bad thing about Ubuntu (on top of me already thinking that it's a bad thing if they want users to be able to do that). All I really take away from that is "Oh no, maybe the people telling you Ubuntu isn't the right 'easy mode' distribution to use" are maybe onto something.
Let me use an analogy. Someone always eats at an Italian restaurant. Then, they go to a Mexican restaurant one day. They look at the menu and try to look for their chicken piccata. Then they ask where is the bread for the table. Someone says, well we can get chips if you want to start with chips, but they're not really bread. They say, no I want bread. You can see where the analogy is going. It's just a different restaurant.
Someone could say, well, you're just trying to gaslight me into saying that bread wasn't terrible. It was hard and stale and thin and there was no butter. It was salty and horrible, I barely wanted to eat it. I'm trying, right now, to get you to eat the salsa. I'm actually happy to talk with you about all kinds of bad things about Linux and the reasons behind them, but you have to understand why things are the way they are and the upsides before. Or, I mean, you can do whatever you want, but it'll lead you to a better experience (whether or not you keep it on the desktop, it'll probably help you with the headless servers in some regard).
failed to retrieve share list from server invalid argument
What the HECK man
I'm starting to agree with you on assessment of Ubuntu. I don't think "the desktop experience" is really a priority for a lot of the people who actually get the work done to make Linux, so this is likely to remain an issue to some degree with whatever distro you decided to choose, but I agree, this is pretty poor. The fact that it was persisting across multiple major versions would irritate me as well as it does the people in the bug reporting.
I mean, the main developers don't "work for you" in the same sense that people at Microsoft kind of do "work for you" in your position as the consumer. I think it may be that Ubuntu doesn't make much money and can't really fund the development to make their software meet the goals they set out (end user friendliness), and most of the core developers elsewhere who do real work don't care about it all that much.
Ah, i see you found the same ticket i did.
Sorry for not posting that link, but i'm now not on the ubuntu machine (for maybe obvious reasons), so i didn't have easy access to the exact error message & ticket ^^'...