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  • Diary of a happy distrohopper III: is it a bug or is it a feature?

Time to share the dirt but pls notice part II with nothing but pure joy listed.

Notes of wonder and sometimes puzzlement from a years Solus Budgie use. Some of them surely due to operator error, some probably already known or fixed but if you spot something worth a proper bug report do let me know.

Very cool to notice, when going through the list, that a lot has been fixed already. What remains is this stuff that didn't seems to work on this box:

Settings

  • Wifi outages during larger downloads on WLAN (BCM4313). Pretty sure it 'used to work' so pardon me for not reporting it properly earlier. It times out and takes the connection with it for a minute or two.
  • shortcuts for all, window or area screenshots never took any pictures here
  • adding a Microsoft account didn't seem to do much, maybe because I use Thunderbird? No OneDrive in Nautilus either
  • same for Pocket, not sure where that hooks into budgie
  • touchscreen inputs (select/click/right-click/multi) isn't consistent from app to app - not sure whether that's driver, OS or app dependent.
  • can't find the entry for autostart, ie. apps that launch at boot, chose some way back but not sure where
  • Rhythmbox apparently doesn't have a stream browser (only add per url) and Gradio refuses to add any channel to the library

Nautilus Captain, my captain

  • missing a 'duplicate' option in context (right click) menu
  • can't click and drag files in gallery (or icon) view, or ctrl+click pick, only adjacent files
  • image previews are inconsistent when browsing for a file to add to a web form, sometimes they are shown, sometimes not
  • is there a complete shortcut list somewhere and does it include a jump to left column entry?

SW center

  • single search terms only (maybe not that big a deal, allright)
  • after searching once, the search field opens last search result – not a blank search field
  • some uninstalled apps appears in the installed list (swear I've seen some, not today though..)
  • mostly mousedriven, can't switch between left column entries with tab/shift+tab when in the search field

SW I never found, tried or dared build from source:

  • driver for fingerprint reader
  • backup / image recovery
  • global media archiver and search index (shotwell, polarr, etc.)
  • some kxstudio tools (gladish and catia jack session manager f.ex.)
  • Tracktion 7 (deb only, proprietary)
  • Davinci Resolve 16 (CentOS or deb only via makeresolvedeb)
  • tonelib.net music apps, deb/buntu only
  • tesseract or paperwork OCR scanner
  • a OPML compatible podcatcher with cached playback position (continue where you left of). Elementary's Vocal crashed at every corner. Ended up with old school gPodder + SMPlayer combo.
  • a pixel ruler! 🙂
  • I may end up with a RAM&CPU eating clunker like getstation.com to have search and notifications from Drive, OneDrive, Mastodon, Facebook, Telegram Hangouts, Reddit etc. in one unified app

Wishlist

  • a Solus minimal image, without X or any DE/WM
  • set diff. night light values for each display (might need 2 graphic cards for that...?)
  • disable night light for fullscreen (like f.lux and maybe Ubuntu Budgie)
  • Nautilus column for media files meta info, resolution and bit rate f.ex.
  • computer says no no no hot corners, skippy-xd works but is oh so ugly, sorry
  • Okular is magic but isn't there a fullscreen mode somewhere...?

UX and SW prefs

  • don't get the point of some notifications when they can't be clicked to action anyway. Nice enough with alerts from reddit, youtube and such but else...
  • Budgie Menu categories is mouse driven only (not a biggie)
  • can't open folders from desktop (never use it, some may)
  • when using dual displays alt+tab app list placement jumps (inconsistenly?) between them
  • Gnumeric and Abiword (75MB) instead of LibreOffice (1+GB and bloat counting as we speak)
  • switched to Thunderbird to be able to search across all mail accounts (and RSS feeds and IRC chats) in one query. Elementary's Geary couldn't at the time of test.

    korbendallaskoop Wifi outages during larger downloads on WLAN (BCM4313). Pretty sure it 'used to work' so pardon me for not reporting it properly earlier. It times out and takes the connection with it for a minute or two.

    Possibly kernel related.

    shortcuts for all, window or area screenshots never took any pictures here

    Odd, mine show up in /Pictures/

    adding a Microsoft account didn't seem to do much, maybe because I use Thunderbird? No OneDrive in Nautilus either

    I'd suggest mentioned that to GNOME, since they're the ones which develop GNOME Online Accounts and GNOME Control Center.

    same for Pocket, not sure where that hooks into budgie

    It doesn't.

    can't find the entry for autostart, ie. apps that launch at boot, chose some way back but not sure where

    Budgie Desktop Settings -> Autostart. Can also check your /.config/autostart folder.

    Nautilus Captain, my captain

    No offense, skipping over this. We use an old version of Nautilus, developed by GNOME, to allow for desktop icons in Budgie.

    SW center

    Getting rewritten in the near future.

    driver for fingerprint reader

    See https://dev.getsol.us/T4881

    backup / image recovery

    We have loads of file syncing and backup software in the repo.

    set diff. night light values for each display (might need 2 graphic cards for that...?)

    Not possible in Mutter (the window manager)

    Nautilus column for media files meta info, resolution and bit rate f.ex.

    I would suggest filing a feature request with the GNOME / Nautilus developers.

    disable night light for fullscreen (like f.lux and maybe Ubuntu Budgie)

    Except that isn't exclusive to Ubuntu Budgie...I was literally the person that implement the disable Night Light on fullscreen functionality, not them. Go to Budgie Desktop Settings -> Windows.

    don't get the point of some notifications when they can't be clicked to action anyway. Nice enough with alerts from reddit, youtube and such but else...

    Actionable notifications are planned for Budgie 11.

    can't open folders from desktop (never use it, some may)

    You can though. So long as the entry is in ~/Desktop, can even be a symlink, you can click and open it (it will open Nautilus).

        Regarding the screenshot shortcut: It seems to only work occasionally for me. Some days it does what it should, other days it gives me the error sound when pressing "PrintScreen".
        I worked around it by just setting a new hotkey calling "gnome-screenshot" and setting that to "PrintScreen". Works every time now.

          Justin Yeah, I have the applet too, and love it, but it doesn't serve all my use cases (e.g. quickly making a screenshot of a fullscreen video, especially in the case of web players that display a huge Play or Pause button in the middle of the screen when you stop the video)

            5 days later

            Thanks for going through the list Josh and thanks again to team Solus & Budgie for all the great work done.
            Replies below, pick up whatever you want or find relevant or not. No big bugs to be seen.

            korbendallaskoop shortcuts for all, window or area screenshots never took any pictures here

            JoshStrobl Odd, mine show up in /Pictures/

            Staudey seems to only work occasionally for me...worked around it by just setting a new hotkey calling "gnome-screenshot" and setting that to "PrintScreen"

            Checked it again. PrintScreen *all (=desktop(s)) to file do work, as does *area, but not with shift+Print (as set in keyboard settings) rather with ctrl+print, *window doesn't work with any modifier key.

            Double checked with different keyboard layouts. None of the copy to clipboard shortcuts works.

            Not sure if it's local, I'm switching between keyboard layouts with xmodmap and may have messed up some .gnome .session .xkb .somewhere .somehow. but xev outputs the correct keycode and symbol so where the signals get lost isn't clear.

            korbendallaskoop adding a Microsoft account didn't seem to do much, maybe because I use Thunderbird? No OneDrive in Nautilus either

            JoshStrobl I'd suggest mentioned that to GNOME, since they're the ones which develop GNOME Online Accounts and GNOME Control Center.

            Microsoft accounts connects to mail and documents acc. to GnomeOnlineAccounts.
            I had a look at their gitlab/issues and decided to leave them handling more important issues for now. Dropping a line to the team just to check though, it could be a killer feature holding some Windows switchers back (OneDrive free was 30gb once, depending on device purchase).

            korbendallaskoop can't find the entry for autostart, ie. apps that launch at boot, chose some way back but not sure where

            JoshStrobl Budgie Desktop Settings -> Autostart. Can also check your /.config/autostart folder.

            Thanks, maybe the point I was trying to make was that the Budgie Desktop Settings entries isn't filtered through Budgie Menu.

            korbendallaskoop backup / image recovery

            JoshStrobl We have loads of file syncing and backup software in the repo.

            It was just a note to self, didn't get any system backup tools going in this round but am using Nextcloud already and a bit of syncthing, thanks for those.

            korbendallaskoop Nautilus column for media files meta info, resolution and bit rate f.ex.

            JoshStrobl I would suggest filing a feature request with the GNOME / Nautilus developers.

            It appears VAD did it, 10 months ago, we might not need be hopeful as a dev wrote in another that Fancy views (music albums, revision timeline, disk usage, phylo tree, movie collection, ...) belong in other apps.

            One that caught my eye in their queue was opened 13 years ago, Show common information when selecting multiple files in nautilus

            Waiiit for it.

            korbendallaskoop disable night light for fullscreen (like f.lux and maybe Ubuntu Budgie)

            JoshStrobl Except that isn't exclusive to Ubuntu Budgie...I was literally the person that implement the disable Night Light on fullscreen functionality, not them. Go to Budgie Desktop Settings -> Windows.

            Thanks! Seeing the light. The fullscreen switch isn't working here though, for any app so far (Firefox, Chrome, mpv, Videos, nope). Not a biggie at all.

            korbendallaskoop can't open folders from desktop (never use it, some may)

            JoshStrobl You can though. So long as the entry is in /Desktop, can even be a symlink, you can click and open it (it will open Nautilus).

            There may have been some rogue user action involved that somehow deleted default /Desktop folder and then pushed some files and folders from / to appear there. Files are clickable, folders are not. Doesn't matter for now.

            Have a nice weeekend everyone 🙂

            /note to future self and psb DE user:
            workspaces, KDE style (as in open a session with certain apps on certain workspaces)
            expose/alt-tab to switch between open apps from all workspaces