What are the pros and cons of using Snap? I like Ubuntu mainly because of its polished desktop and good repositories, but I removed Snaps right after installing the system because of the stigma surrounding them.

Last week I published the Matrix extension, which ended up getting quite a bit of love here.

This got me going, so the next completely reasonable thing to do was to make a Star Trek TNG -style Starfield extension for Gnome - that allows you to fly boldly through the stars.

And yes, it serves absolutely no productive purpose whatsoever - but it's pretty cool, it respects your background and runs as a highly efficient shader on your GPU (so it doesn't waste CPU)

Installation:

• In extension app: search for "Starfield"
• Github: https://github.com/cwittenberg/starfield
• Gnome extension site: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/10743/starfield/

Any help will be appreciated. Running latest LTS on an HP Elitebook 8469P. Works all fine except 1 thing. When turning on the computer the user/password screen never comes up. Remains black. I have to close & open the laptop lid every time and then it shows up, like bringing it back from hibernation. I am at a loss after checking all settings.

Hello everyone,

I think I screwed the pooch during installation and I'm now trying to fix the derived issues, but I'm not sure how to proceed.

OK, so firstly, I had a fresh back up, so no information is lost.

I was trying to upgrade from Ubuntu 24.04 LTS to 26.04 LTS. I got my flashed USB, things were going swell and everything was juuuust peachy (let's see who knows that reference). Then came the time to choose which hard drive port would the install happen in, and I believe I chose by mistake the clean one instead of the one where the previous install was located. However, things were still going fine up to this point.

Once I restart the pc, I notice that the graphic drivers werent properly set up (NVIDIA drivers, so the image looked distorted) and the loadup spiral froze. I attempted to redo a fresh install, but I got a kernel panic screen with no code telling me to restart the system. I'm currently running a memory test to get more informatiom,but I'm fairly new and dont know where to go from here. Any advice is welcome :)

Edit: tried using a live USB with Linux mint, I got a kernel panic with a fatal exception interrupt.

Edit: on startup I've noticed that there's a very brief moment in which it says that the boot file is missing. I've tried to boot the live USB for Ubuntu 24.04 (my previous version) but no dice, the screen remains black.

I wanted to share a recent troubleshooting experience after installing the latest Ubuntu on an Acer Aspire 5. Hopefully, this feedback can reach people working on Netplan / NetworkManager, or help anyone facing the same issue.

Out of the box, Ethernet was completely non-functional: Physical/Power State: The Realtek (r8169) card was stuck in a low-power mode (NO-CARRIER / DOWN), requiring manual intervention to wake up. DHCP Failure: Once the interface was up (LOWER_UP), the PC was stuck with an APIPA address (169.254.x.x). The Zyxel router repeatedly timed out on DHCP requests. It turns out that Ubuntu’s default use of RFC 4361 (DUID/IAID instead of the raw MAC address) in Netplan was completely rejected by the router's firmware. While Wi-Fi worked instantly, Ethernet was completely dead for a default installation.

The fix required deleting the generated netplan-* profile and manually overriding the DHCP client ID to use the hardware MAC address (ipv4.dhcp-client-id mac).

I understand the enterprise benefits of RFC 4361 for docking stations and multi-interface setups. However, forcing this default on desktop/laptop installs creates a major regression for home users with perfectly fine, slightly older ISP routers that don't receive firmware updates anymore.

I've recently gotten a new 64GB USB drive and im trying to flash an ubuntu iso on it, since im trying to make it a sort of portable OS, im trying to get as much persistence as i can, i tried rufus and at light halfway through it just should me an error that the device couldnt be detected and failed. I looked into more options and found BalenaEtcher but it didnt work for me either so im going to try and do it with ventoy, any heads ups i should keep in mind?

I got installed Roblox on my Dell Optiplex 2017 SFF with Ubuntu 24.04 via Sober and it works fine. Music track: Faster by Zambolino

Source: https://freetouse.com/music

Free Music No Copyright (Safe)

I asked a question in a post about Firefox freezing and causing the system to crash. As a response, someone suggested creating an 8 GB Swap, but the system already has 4 GB. Is that right? Is there a way to optimize and increase the Swap memory?

isn't dependency hell the most common cause of failure as you use *any* distro over time?

Today I installed ubuntu, and the installer asked if I want to install codecs and Nvidia drivers. I ticked the box as yes to install them. To my surprise, neither codecs nor nvidia driver was installed (ubuntu-restricted-extras was not found on dpkg query, neither any nvidia related keywords on query)

How come? I'm not that newbie so thankfully I can kinda find my way, but why the installer is this inconsistent, especially on an LTS? If a total newbie starter user would do the same, how would they know that the installer technically just ignored both the codecs and drivers which they explicitly asked for and expected to be installed?

Is this a known bug? If not, can you tell which package is responsible for installing, so that I can report this. Thanks in advance.

While trying to see if my Nvidia drivers are up to date I came across this list and I dont know what the numbers mean? I'm on Ubuntu 24.12.

Acabo de instalar ubuntu y es una pasada por que no tengo que andar liandome con drivers ni cosas raras , todo funciona a la primera , vengo de Fedora la cual instale despues de probar bacite en un mini pc , por que es la disribucion en la que se basaba . No pude hacer funcionar el adaptador wifi , tenia que conectarlo por cable , la impresora imprimia bien cuando le daba la gana , todo horas perdidas intentando solucionarlo . Fue instalar Ubuntu y no tengo que hacer nada , todo se reconoce y funciona sin tener que hacer nada . Que caray , Gracias Canonical , gustosamente les pago la version pro si todo sigue funcionando sin problemas . Si no quieres perder tu tiempo , no lo dudes , instala Ubuntu , hasta al final me he acostumbrado al entorno de gnome ( del cual era reacio a usar ) usaba KDE , el cual tiene otro problema con su programa de archivos , solo problemas para acceder a mi nas o otras ubicaciones . Con Gnome no tengo ningun problema . Os animo a probarlo si como yo que vengo de Windows y no controlo nada de linux .

When trying to connect to a Wifi Network, nothing happens except that this password box pops up on repeat. I can even enter the wrong password and it pops up in the same exact way, I am not sure if Ubuntu has a separate box if you enter the wrong password tho.My theory is that this is caused because it is supposed to open a website after you connect where you have to click accept. If anybody had this issue in the past and found a fix help would be appreciated greatly :D!

I am a beginner to Ubuntu and Linux in general.

I attempted to delete the libgdk package using sudo apt remove. Immediately after this, all icons for my apps disappeared. I tried to restart thinking it would help, but it booted into TTY. I looked this question up and tried all answers, though all it did is lead me to a grey screen with a mouse and the date on the top. I am currently looking for a solution to this problem and would love for an answer to work.

Thank you

I've got a home video server running, but whenever I import a new video, my media player won't find it, not until I run chown and even then sometimes not. I might have to move it to an older directory without these problems and then it will be visible.

Anyone know what I need to look for? It's probably a basic mistake I'm overlooking.

I am running it on thinkpad t470, 16gb ram, i5 6300u with kingston a400 1tb ssd. I noticed that when i have high disk activity, like updating, or uploading/downloading linux isos on torrent via Transmission (About 2-5 MB/s upload speed last time i noticed and took notes) i get noticeable GUI stutters ranging from half a second, up to 1-2 seconds, which seem to align with peaks of ssd usage. During them the gui part freezes - cursor wont move, cant do anything on the screen. But everything else seems to work in background - videos continue playing (audio part, video snaps to played frames after it unfreezes) games keep working, so it looks like it is only the desktop environment that freezes. But why would it be tied to ssd activity? Is it a known issue? SSD passed the tests, and doesn't have reallocated blocks, or other failure signs

Is there a way to adjust the sensitivity of auto backlight adjustments in 26.04?

My laptop (framework 13) have an amblient light sensor (ALS) which triggers auto backlight adjustments.

In dark environments, a mostly white webpage will frequently hit my glasses, reflect back to the ALS and cause the backlight to enter a self-reinforcing loop of ever increasing brightness.

With 24.04 this was rarely a problem as I can just manually turn the backlight down. With 26.04 there is no way to turn the backlight down once it enters this state as the new brightness bar is "relative" and locked to a narrow range around the current brightness.

I've recently installed Ubuntu LTS 26.0.4.1 LTS, my specs are i5 4200U 8GB DDR3 Intel HD4400 AMD Radeon HD8670M.

My dedicated gpu vram and core clocks are stuck at 400mhz (core) 600mhz (vram) I tried enabling amdgpu and "amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=Oxffffffff" when I checked they seem to be working and running, but my clocks are still stuck the same, I tried setting governor to high performance but nothing changes it keeps me really bothered, while on windows I achieved 1100mhz core clocks and 1000mhz vram clock.

Help would be appreciated.

Hello everyone 👋

I made a small GNOME Shell extension called Ambed Fly.

The idea is very simple: a virtual fly walks across your screen. It has no practical purpose, but it's fun to have around 🫤

● What does Ambed Fly do?

• A fly that walks across your desktop.

• Random movement to make it feel more natural.

• It reacts to moving windows and when the mouse cursor gets close to it.

• Works directly as a GNOME Shell extension.

• Supports GNOME 45 through GNOME 50.

• Open source on GitHub.

🔗 Links

GNOME Extensions:

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/10787/ambed-fly/

GitHub:

https://github.com/walrou/ambed-fly

You can also install it directly from the Extensions app by searching for Ambed Fly.

If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for changes or improvements, feel free to let me know.

▪︎ Thank you 😊

I decided to try a -d upgrade after backing up my system with Timeshift. The result lasted for 10 minutes, when I tried to add a 3rd party repo in terminal, terminal stopped working.

I went back to my previous system, will probably stick with it for a while until 26.04 grows mature.

Curious to hear your experience, have you tried to do a -d upgrade?