Linux

How good is Pop!_OS in 2020?

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I have been using MX_linux, and while I think the premise behind it is good, the implementation falls a bit flat. As someone that has used Linux for years, I was avoiding using my small and light laptop because I did not want to deal with the system that was running it. That is not a good sign.

So, I decided that I was going to install a new Linux distro on my system and get back to writing and doing things. Out of curiosity I dropped in to distrowatch to see what the flavor of the month was currently. To my surprise I saw MX_Linux on the top. After the issues I have had with it, that was interesting to see. But, sitting at spot number 5 was Pop!_OS. Huh? I had heard of it, but thought that is was some simplified version for kids. I was wrong.

What is Pop!_OS?

It turns out that Pop!_OS is an operating system based on Ubuntu by the folks over at system76 . System76 make Linux computers, laptops, and servers, and at one point used Ubuntu. But, do to some sort of falling out, they made their own distro based on Ubuntu. And, that is how we got Pop!_OS.

Enough of the history lesson.

How do I think it stacks up? So far, I am liking it. The desktop is running Gnome3. It has been a year or 4 since I used Gnome as my main desktop windowing system. For a while, I have been using XFCE, Mate, or Cinnamon. And, while all of those are perfectly good GUIs, I like the way that Pop!_OS has set it up. Either that, or I just like Gnome 3. It is a completely different experience than you get with other systems.

Initial Thoughts on Pop!_OS

How does the system work on my laptop? There was 1 issue that I had to fix right away. On my laptop, the screen brightness was cycling through the various brightness settings. This is due to battery life help and auto brightness control. That can be changed in the settings panel, and after I did that, life got immensely better. (Having your screen change brightness constantly will make you go insane. Trust me on this one.) The next thing that I did was change the touchpad to not click on tap. While it was not overly sensitive, I have heavy hands, and always turn this off.

The next part comes down to typing. I like to write this blog and to do some coding on the side. With MX_linux I had to disable the touchpad for 1 sec after typing so that the location of the mouse would not cause my jumping to go to where the pointer is. This is a serious distraction when attempting to write code or to write just about anything. My experience on Pop!_OS has been great. I have been typing my thoughts about Pop!_OS for that last little bit, and have not had any issues. That is a huge plus.

But, what about when you close the lid on your laptop, and power settings? All of that worked out of the box. with MX_linux, I fought with it continually. With Pop!_OS I did not have to make a single change. By default I believe it suspends when you close the lid. It has not frozen at all on wake up, and the experience has been great.

Installing New Software

Pop_OS! comes with the Pop!_Shop. This “shop” has a very large set of applications that are available for installation. Below is an image of what it looks like when you launch it.

From the Pop!_Shop it was easy to get other applications installed. I was quickly able to install Spotify, and it has links for Chromium (open source version of Chrome), Atom, Steam, and a slew of others. Also, it automatically checks for updates, and prompts you to install them.

It was a nice change of pace not having to add additional repositories in order to install some common applications. I use Visual Studio Code for dev work on Linux, and even it was there and easy to install, just make sure to use the .deb version.

If you do not want to use the Pop!_Shop, you can always fall back to the command line. That is my default for much of way that I run my system, and since Pop! is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian, apt and aptitude still work. Note, you will need to install aptitude if you want to be able to use it.

In case you are interested, below is a short list of preinstalled software:

  • Python3
  • Firefox
  • Git
  • LibreOffice

Configuring Gnome 3 Keyboard Shortcuts

For me the biggest switch was moving back to gnome and enabling keyboard shortcuts, or finding out what the keyboard shortcuts are. This has more to do with me wanting as many shortcuts as possible. Others don’t mind clicking the mouse to switch screens, but that is not the way that I like to work. So, I will share the settings that I use.

In Gnome 3 there are virtual workspaces that are located up and down from the main display. You can hit the Windows/Special/Power key and it will display on the right I prefer to quickly jump between workspaces by using the keyboard. So in order to do that you need to do the following.

  1. Super + / –> enter “Settings” (this will open the settings menu)
  2. Find “Keyboard” in the left hand menu
  3. Click customize shortcuts
  4. Choose navigation
  5. From there I add shortcuts for moving windows between workspaces and being able to jump between workspaces.

Doing this gets the system to the point that I can use it without worry. Well, without wanting to throw it out the window. By default alt+tab will switch between windows on all workspaces. This is a benefit as, I have had to fight with other systems to get that functionality to work. Don’t get me started about windows.

Overall Opinion on Pop!_OS

After using Pop!_OS for just a short period of time, I think I am going to stick with it. The system has been easy to use and configure. It just gets out of the way so that I can get my work done. To be honest, I wish that I would have found it sooner. For me, it just works. Yes, I am a power user, but that is all good.

Even running Gnome3 on a 3 year old machine with 8 gigs of ram is fine. I will admit that I would be hard pressed to run any virtual machines on this, but for being able to build and run apps it is fine.

Another item that I like is that I did not have to fiddle with different system settings and repos to get base functionality. I have spent hours trying to get Fedora configured properly, and that is just a waste of time for me at this point.

If you are interested, I think you should give it a try.

Issues with Ubuntu’s Startup Disk Creator for non-debian ISOs

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Let me start with the scenario that led me into issues with the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator. I had been running Ubuntu GNOME, a flavor of Ubuntu that was focused on a mostly vanilla install of Gnome on top of Ubuntu. Well, Ubuntu was finally getting rid of the Unity desktop, so the spin off that I had been using was no longer going to be updated. Fair enough.

I had Ubuntu installed, and I wanted to give Fedora a try (it has been a while), so I just needed to create a bootable USB stick. Normally I would use dd, but Ubuntu has a tool, and I thought sure, let’s try this gui tool. Quick and easy. That led me down the rabbit hole that you see here.

Ubuntu has a page dedicated to the topic. Create a bootable USB stick on Ubuntu. This page walks through using the Startup Disk Creator. It does mention using an Ubuntu ISO image, but what should work for one, should work for most any ISO. At least this is what I thought. It turns out that if you are not using a Debian based distro, then the application will fail silently. It just sits there and does nothing.

At this point, I could have just used dd and been done with it, but I wanted to find out what was going on with the application, and why it was not working. Let me add a quick note and say, I had not tried a Debian based ISO on the application. This was because I wanted to try out the latest Fedora, and had not bothered to pull down another ISO.

Finding the source code for the USB Creator took a bit longer than planned. The code is hosted on LaunchPad which uses Bazaar as its version control system. Having used multiple systems over the years, launchpad felt like a step back in time. Unless I missed something, there is no easy search within a project, the navigation is antiquated, and the look and feels leaves a bit to be desired.

My first thought was to create a bug on the issue. Even if I was going to fix it, I wanted to ensure that the issue was being tracked, and to see if anyone else had submitted a bug on the topic already. I was surprised when I went to the bug page, and found that the package had not been configured for bug reports yet. At this point, I was more frustrated than anything else, and had decided I was going to use dd to create the usb disk, but I wanted find out what the problem in the code was.

Digging through the code, I found that the core of the application is a few python scripts. Nothing wrong there. I am a huge fan of python for a number of reasons. So, I dug into the code and found the issue rather quickly to my surprise.

From https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~usb-creator-hackers/usb-creator/trunk/view/head:/usbcreator/backends/base/backend.py

[code language="python" firstline="41"]
        if extension == '.iso':
            label = self._is_casper_cd(filename)
            if label:
                self.sources[filename] = {
                    'device' : filename,
                    'size' : os.path.getsize(filename),
                    'label' : label,
                    'type' : misc.SOURCE_ISO,
                }
                if misc.callable(self.source_added_cb):
                    self.source_added_cb(filename)
        elif extension == '.img':
            self.sources[filename] = {
                'device' : filename,
                'size' : os.path.getsize(filename),
                'label' : '',
                'type' : misc.SOURCE_IMG,
            }
            if misc.callable(self.source_added_cb):
                self.source_added_cb(filename)
[/code]

The issue is on line 42. The application checks to see if the iso file ‘is_casper_cd.’ This check returns `None` if it does not follow this format. A simple exception could have given the end user some sort of idea about what the issue was, but instead, it fails silently.

From https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~usb-creator-hackers/usb-creator/trunk/view/head:/usbcreator/backends/udisks/backend.py

[code language="python" firstline="145"]
    # Device manipulation functions.
    def _is_casper_cd(self, filename):
        for search in ['/.disk/info', '/.disk/mini-info']:
            cmd = ['isoinfo', '-J', '-i', filename, '-x', search]
            try:
                output = misc.popen(cmd, stderr=None)
                if output:
                    return output
            except misc.USBCreatorProcessException:
                # TODO evand 2009-07-26: Error dialog.
                logging.error('Could not extract .disk/info.')
        return None
[/code]

The fact that this code fails silently, the code base does not provide for bug features, and that there is no documentation on this bug/feature is problematic. A simple review of this should have caught the problem. Also, as you can see in the previous section, they do log an error when the data can not be extracted, but they do nothing if the file format does not exist.

At a minimum they could have thrown an error. Another option would have been to continue with the disk write, but to skip the label information. Otherwise, give the end user a clue.

In the end I just used good old fashioned `dd`.

[code language="bash"]user@host$ sudo dd bs=4M if=/path/to/archlinux.iso of=/dev/sdx status=progress oflag=sync[/code]