Pop!_OS (Linux)

Hey folks.

Many moons ago when Lemmy was just getting started, I saw this community and started learning about Pop! OS. It seemed to offer a very strong set of positives:

• Major vendor support (System 76)
• Robust integration of Nvidia video drivers
• Gaming-friendly

Somewhat neutrally, it's based on Ubuntu, which seems to be almost univerally the most popular distribution to customize. There's a lot of software available through the Pop! OS shop, and through Ubuntu and various .deb packages, so that's probably a net positive.

I installed on my HP Omen (10th gen i7 and Nvidia 2060), and struggled almost from moment one, and it was all about video support. Supposedly, I had the System 76-packaged Nvidia driver for Pop! OS, but the Nvidia video was often not detected, even by games/tools that claimed to support it (various Ubuntu & Debian utilities dedicated to reading video specifics kept telling me I had no Nvidia card).

I downgraded the Nvidia drivers, it seemed to fix a lot of problems, except now I was running the 400-series drivers instead of the 500-series.

With both drivers, any kind of power saving mode -- video off, sleep -- would COMPLETELY crash the Nvidia video card. I mean, it required a cold shut down to bring it back; it stayed dead through both logout and OS restart. I eventually turned off the power save modes.

Lots of Googling suggested that Pop and the Nvidia drivers had issues with various specific power saving modes, but I had no idea what those modes were or how to tell the OS to stop using them.

I struggled along for about a year. Games were hit or miss. Old games like Armagetron froze the system solid more often than I'd like to admit. Steam Linux games seemed to work mostly OK, when the Nvidia card was behaving.

I was making USB sticks of various Linux distributions for a friend recently (Ubuntu main, Mint, Pop! OS) and got to thinking how much I used to like Mint. So I backed up my home directory and decided to wipe my machine and start over.

And folks... that was all she wrote. Mint pops a beautiful little video menu in the task bar that lets me select Intel graphics, Nvidia graphics, or dynamic switching. The Nvidia settings app was pre-installed and it actually works, not just sometimes. And my machine can wink the screen off or go into sleep mode without completely wedging the Nvidia card, and killing the external video.

I can't really explain why Pop! OS had so many problems for me. I'm sure System 76 regressions tests against their own hardware, and I'm sure they have it working right. But, not for my HP OMEN.

Thank you for making such a wonderful desktop environment! Wish you all the best and looking to see more developement soon!

I looked up specifically examples of this and didn't find answers, they're buried in general discussions about why compiling may be better than pre-built. The reasons I found were control of flags and features, and optimizations for specific chips (like Intel AVX or ARM Neon), but to what degree do those apply today?

The only software I can tell benefits greatly from building from source, is ffmpeg since there are many non-free encoders decoders and upscalers that can be bundled, and performance varies a lot between devices due to which of them is supported by the CPU or GPU. For instance, Nvidia hardware encoders typically produce higher quality video for similar file sizes than ones from Intel AMD or Apple. Software encoders like x265 has optimizations for AVX and NEON (SIMD extensions for CPUs).

Im installing lutris from .deb package And when im done,pop shop wants to downgrade it When im doin sudo apt upgrade its also want to downgrade it I have not this problem with other distros(ubuntu based) Whats it? How to fix it?

or no, due to holiday?

Every time I use Super + T to open a terminal window, it's much smaller than I prefer. It's also centered on screen but I prefer it to be slightly off center to the right a bit.

Is there a way I can make new windows open to my preferences every time?

now i cannot use virtio graphic for COSMIC vm.

hi there, hope this is okay to post. I also hope this isn't too complicated a fix. essentially I am having trouble updating through Pop!_Shop and I am getting the following error:

Failed to update "Operating System Updates" This may have been caused by sideloaded or manually compiled software, a third-party software source, or a package manager error. Manually refreshing updates may resolve the issue. Details: E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.

the good news is, I think I know exactly what manually compiled software this is in reference to. this issue first cropped up a few days ago after I manually installed the Mullvad Browser using the following commands outlined on their installation page

the commands listed on the link, which I followed exactly are: Download the Mullvad signing key sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/mullvad-keyring.asc https://repository.mullvad.net/deb/mullvad-keyring.asc

Add the Mullvad repository server to apt echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/mullvad-keyring.asc arch=$( dpkg --print-architecture )] https://repository.mullvad.net/deb/stable $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mullvad.list

Install the package sudo apt update sudo apt install mullvad-browser

I have since manually uninstalled the browser, but the problem remains, any help is greatly appreciated. apologies for my perpetual beginner status.

edit: I should add that when I run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' as the prompt suggests, the next line of the terminal appears immediately and the Pop!_Shop notification remains unchanged.

Is Cosmic Store supposed to work on Arch at this point? I can make it to list&search apps, but it doesn't install any app and gives different error message each time.

I even tried to follow the error message and install the missing packages manually but error message persists even after reboot.

I like gnome apps. They are modern looking, simple to use with not many opcions and work realy well. I cant say enough good about them. So im wandering will they work on this new desktop.. I like pop os a lot and im waiting for new release of cosmic but it wouldnt be great if i cant use gnome apps anymore. 😐

I found these instructions but I wasn't sure if they would mess with the default setup. I'm running pop 22.04. Thanks in advance.

This has been killing me in Cosmic as I daily drive the alpha--the Alt-Tab functionality up until now has not cycled through most recently focused apps--rather, it has used a static list in the launcher that seems to be based on app launch order.

Not any longer! Two PRs will soon land from wash2, which continues the work of wizznokes (who started on this feature nearly 6 months ago), making recency-based alt-tab work!!

You'd think it's an easy task, but there are, afaiu several subtle things involved, including the need to create a protocol for cosmic-comp for active workspace combined with active app, so cosmic-launcher would be aware of and able to switch among workspaces, depending on circumstances of the most recently focused app.

• https://github.com/pop-os/launcher/pull/249
• https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-launcher/pull/225

I just pulled the branches behind these PRs and compiled and tested. What a beautiful sight to behold! Thank you all who were involved!

While I'm not involved directly with development, if I were to make a guess, I'd think these will reach the staging servers and be released this coming week if you're following popdev master (sudo apt-manage add popdev:master).

they display a white screen without any content. This happen to several flatpak I have.

before the encryption password input, there is a splash screen.

pop!_OS

Pop!_OS recovery

Reboot Into Firmware Interface

how can I disable it?

I had wanted to ask about certain things and look up if similar questions have been already asked, such as 1. the progress of a "start menu" applet that would function like a Linux Mint start menu with a full apps list along with logout and power options, 2. Alpha 3 does not seem to disable the laptop display when the laptop is closed, which is problematic if you use a docking station with monitors attached because you have to manually disable the display, and if you forget to enable the display before unplugging the laptop is unusable until you plug it back in again, 3. installed PWAs don't have independent icons in the app tray and so can't be pinned to it 4. would it be possible to have a system for managing and organizing .appimage apps so that they can be launched like an installed app? 5. when right clicking the desktop the dialog menu is obscured by an open windows in front of it, it should open overtop all other windows 6. installed PWAs don't have an icon. 7. if the panel is positioned on the left side or right side of the screen the date and time applet breaks.

That's 7 questions alone, if I posted them separately I would likely get blocked for being annoying, and they would be quickly buried so no one could see them. it would be the same on reddit. is there a better place for them?

i can sudo apt install gnote

however, i cannot find it in the cosmic store, or the pop shop..

yes theres a flatpak, but i am interested in the deb

How safe it is to upgrade to Pop!_OS 24.04 by manually editing /etc/apt/sources.list (or whatever it was).

I tried doing it and running sudo apt update, and nothing suspicious seemed to appear. I used the Ubuntu 24.04 repos.

It is worth nothing that I have ran sudo apt remove with the --allow-remove-essential flag; I did it long ago to remove some "bloat".

I want to upgrade; 22.04 is so old Debian stable is more up-to-date. There are also bugs with Sway and Mangohud that I am interested in getting rid of.

I am uninterested in the Rust desktop.

I'm on a Legion Lenovo Slim 5. The webcam shows too much area around me during video calls (the browser based teleconferencing tool that I use doesn't have settings to adjust this).

I tried the cameractrls app, but it doesn't offer any way to crop or zoom in. Any other suggestions?