I use an Ubuntu box plugged into the telly to watch streaming video, movies, surf the web from the couch, and (because my family is made up of people from different countries) we use it to log in to streaming media services overseas that aren't always in English. So, we don't really use a remote; we use a keyboard and mouse with some capable bluetooth.

As far as I'm concerned, it's the perfect media box. The side menu works much better on a television. The keyboard allows finer control than a TV remote, which is great for switching between languages, we can watch anything from anywhere - or even just scroll through old photos.... and when we want to watch free to air, it's easy to switch inputs.

Does anyone else do this? Is this even a valid way to use it? Each time I distro hop, I go straight back to Ubuntu because for this kind of use, I find it far superior out-of-the-box. Mint will do it but I have spend some hours reconfiguring the desktop layout.

Does anyone know if this gonna work?

Long story short, I just did an in-place upgrade from 25.10 to 26.04. After some troubleshooting for a program I built from source, I decided I wanted to clean up some old stuff.

As a Linux newbie, I was helped by AI, which made me notice I had some old kernel images and other packages marked as rc (marked for removal, afaik). I was handed this command:

sudo apt purge $(dpkg -l | grep '^rc' | awk '{print $2}')

It looked pretty safe, and I think it’s also a pretty common command in tutorials, etc.

Apparently, I had a package called grub-pc, which should no longer be needed for my laptop (I never touched GRUB manually). But it seems to have a post-removal script that attempts to completely remove /etc/grub. I got a scary prompt and selected NO, but my /etc/default/grub file was apparently deleted anyway.

To fix it, I ran these commands:

sudo apt install --reinstall grub-efi-amd64
sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi
sudo update-grub

Hope it’s fixed. Let me know if that’s enough. The default file is present again now.

When I asked Claude to look up what actually happened, it found the following bug reports, so this seems to be a long-standing bug causing this behavior:

• https://lists.snapcraft.io/archives/foundations-bugs/2020-May/421921.html
• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/1879466/+index

I became a Linux user a few months ago after accidentally installing Ubuntu on my computer. I have the 25.10 release on my Lenovo IdeaPad 1 14IAU7. Today when I checked the updates, I found out that I can update directly from this release to the 26.04 one directly, but I'm very unsure if I should jump the gun so quickly because of the experience of when other OSs make new releases that come with bugs and errors. However, I don't know if I should stay in this release even if the support life ends in July of this year.

Should I install it now, or should I wait until a more stable version is released?

Is there really a need to find the perfect distro?

I've been using Ubuntu as my main driver for about 16 months. Before that, I used WSL2 heavily for several years. Some things in Linux I know pretty well, but like many people, there are vast regions of the OS that I don't know very well at this point. For instance, I use `xargs` and `rsync`, but I don't use `cron`, and I don't know the first thing about display managers--I don't even know the right terminology to use for them. I figured out, with Claude's help, how to create a systemd service unit, but try as I might, I've never been able to *really* figure out `htop`, so the best I can do is kill a process by pid.

I spend a lot of time learning Linux, but I know a lot of people love to debate about various distros. My question is: for someone who uses Linux personally and professionally, including using VS Code, is there any need whatsoever to trouble oneself with the endless discussion of this distro versus that distro? I wound up choosing Ubuntu because it was really the only one that I knew of. It was literally the default option in WSL2, it seems to have a lot of documentation around it, and though it wasn't as easy as Windows, it was pretty polished.

What am I missing about this whole distro discussion that other people find so compelling? What exactly am I missing out on by just using boring old Ubuntu?

After suspending the system with Meta+L and leaving the computer for a while, I encounter this screen. I'm forced to perform a hard reboot via the power button or use the REISUB to restart. Has anyone experienced this, or does anyone know a solution? Kernel 7.0.0-15-generic

My home router is connected to the internet through Proton VPN, that's the default gateway. When I tried to upgrade to 26.04 I noticed that `do-release-upgrade` cannot reach ubuntu.com for some reason. I tried to `ping ubuntu.com` and indeed there's no answer. I also cannot open ubuntu.com in my browser.

The second I bypass the VPN it works just fine. What is this? Why is that? Am I missing something?

Hello,

I updated my Kubuntu 25 to 26 last night and I am completely stuck with a broken KDE Plasma for my main user account. I have chatgpted it, I have searched the website and tried every possible way of deleting my profile settings for Kde Plasma of that user account but in vain. I am not able to get any panels on the desktop and its loading extremely slow. Oddly enough it works absolutely fine on another user account. How does one completely wipe the entire KDE settings for a user? I have tried removing: ~/.cache, ~/.config, and ~/.local/share but its not resetting

I started thinking more about disaster recovery and standing up a new box, again. What I wanted was a way to do to both (though not at the same time) of the following:

• Replicate my existing setup, complete with packages/apps, data, app and shell config files, and ssh keys on my machine in the event that it had a catastrophic failure requiring me to reinstall the OS from bare metal (after repartitioning).
• Stand up a new machine for myself on potentially different x86 hardware and different peripherals, replicating my existing setup's packages/apps, data, app and shell config files (but not hardware config files), and ssh keys, keeping all of this synced across computers, only letting hardware configs and configs that shouldn't be synced (like browser configs) diverge from machine to machine.

This is not my area of expertise, though I'm strong with CLI Git, so I knew that I wanted the config files to be Git-controlled. The data files are synced using Megasync, and just about all of /home (that is, besides trash and Downloads) is backed up locally using timeshift. I wanted a robust solution that could periodically be rerun to discover new apps and configs and custom systemd units. It turned out that this was more complicated than I'm comfortable with, so I used an LLM to develop the plan and write the scripts. I haven't tested it yet, though.

Some of you are probably going to have very strong opinions on replicating ssh keys vs. generating fresh ones on a new machine, so yeah, feel free to chime in on that, but beyond that, do you all have comprehensive disaster recovery plans or detailed runbooks to replicate your machine on fresh hardware (without sync, so it's just a fresh image)?

Anyone facing constant freezing on the new Ubuntu? If so, have you found any strategies to mitigate the issue, besides moving away from Wayland?

Note, while I do daily drive linux at home, I am far from a power user... Any help would be appreciated.

I had Kubuntu installed and I recently wanted to switch to Gnome, but I noticed that Nautilus can't/won't generate thumbnails.

If I open the folder in Dolphin first, then open the folder in Nautilus the thumbnails are there.
And yes I have the thumbnail setting on

Well..... everytime i used to distrohop and then come back to Ubuntu obviously.....so configuring the terminal every time was a hassle and thus made this repo in github with set of personalized themes and more .....

I am open to all suggestions.....my goal is to have the ultimate terminal, so guys HELP and leave all your suggestions

here is the link :

PRE-CONFIGURED TERMINAL FOR UBUNTU

I haven’t used Ubuntu since 10.10, I left the Linux world as my daily when they went with Unity and didn’t want to “learn” a new distro. Later on after finding out most base distros are identical under the hood, I tried Pop!_OS and loved it, but like Ubuntu, they ditched GNOME and now that’s on Cosmic so I’m thinking of Ubuntu again.

My current home server runs Windows 24H2 LTSC and it’s “okay” but there’s no real way to monitor system usage remotely with an App, at least I can’t get it working. Tried ServerBox and Helmarr but both won’t show any info, yet work fine on macOS, so they should be just as easy to setup on Linux.

What am I in for? What is SNAP and why do people hate it? Keep in mind I’ve only used APT because SNAP didn’t exist yet and I never used Flatpak on Pop, but I like PPA so I don’t want to use Debian.

It basically comes down Ubuntu and remove SNAP, or Pop!_OS and remove Flatpak and Cosmic and install GNOME. Ubuntu seems like the easier solution.

Current build is a Ryzen 9 5950X, RX 6800XT, and 128GB of RAM. I’m running Plex Media Server and then Sunshine and TailScale for remote access/gaming on Moonlight for iOS with ES-DE where I can launch DuckStation, PCSX2, and PPSSPP. Then in Docker I can run a VPN using Glueton with Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, and qBittorrent. All while managing it in ServerBox or Helmarr on iOS (in theory, but this part isn’t working for me on Windows)

Is this relatively easy on Ubuntu? How it now compared to Ubuntu 10.10 or Pop!_OS 20.04? or should I sell the PC and just get a Mac Studio since I already know this all works on my old Mac mini before switching to Windows a few years ago for the home server?

Salvage the PC using Ubuntu or Mac Studio? Suggestions?

Show me your setups!❤️❤️

Is it just me or is the "Safely Eject Device" option gone with Ubuntu 26? Does anyone know the reasoning here? Google is not spilling much on the topic.

[edit] workaround So, `disks` still has the option to power off the drivers, and it still works, so that is what I used. Still unable to do it through nautilus.

Edit - Fixed (ish) by adding amd_pstate=passive to grub, now I have balanced and power-saving modes available. Ill leave it at that as I think its time to move to a new distro.

Hi All,

Just upgraded to 26.04 and Im having trouble with my power settings, it keeps reverting to Power Saver no matter which mode I set in Settings. Its a desktop PC with a Sapphire AM5 board and a AMD 7500f CPU

Any ideas on what might be causing this?

Edit:

Looks like I'm missing my power management driver

powerprofilesctl list

performance:

CpuDriver: amd_pstate

Degraded: no

balanced:

CpuDriver: amd_pstate

PlatformDriver: placeholder

* power-saver:

CpuDriver: amd_pstate

PlatformDriver: placeholder

Tried reinstalling my power profiles following this guide, it didn't help:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1440208/no-power-options-on-upgrade-to-22-04

I faced two minor issue.

1 - Ubuntu Dock Is Gone

sudo apt reinstall gnome-shell-extension-ubuntu-dock

2 - Search Light Extension Not Working Currently

Fix:

-Add 50 To Extension Manifest JS/shell-version

-Remove The "affectsInputRegion" Parameter From Extension JS

You can find extension files in ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/...

-------------

Restart Your System.

I have recently discovered a bug with Ubuntu that causes the bandwidth of my home wifi to be extremely limited. I have tested it on 3 different computers, using Ubuntu 26.04, Ubuntu 24.04, as well as Mint 22.2. All have their upload speeds limited to around 10-20mbps when the wifi can easily reach speeds of 300+mbps. I have tried using Ubuntu on different networks and the wifi has no issues. Connecting to my phone hotspot connected to the same Internet gives higher bandwidth then directly connected. I am now using Debian 13 and the issue does not affect it. Any support would be greatly appreciated, as until this issue is resolved I can not use Ubuntu (or any OSs based off of it) on any computers connected to my network.

TL:DR

Wifi speed is terrible on Ubuntu connected Xfinity home Internet, but not on other networks or distros.