August 11 2024

Welcome back to the Linux saga! As any of you that's been keeping up with this (which is probably zero let's be honest) might know, I switched to regular Ubuntu from Xubuntu because it was utter crap and I was pushed to my limit with the weird and unstable problems I was facing with the OS.

And what a difference one day made, huh? Immediately upon returning to Ubuntu, the desktop environment (GNOME) was much, much more stable. It also had more eye candy to it and smoother animations. I can't fault Xubuntu for having the DE that it has, obviously, but this one was meant to work perfectly with vanilla Ubuntu. This is THE Ubuntu, so it makes sense to have a more seamless environment.

Don't get it twisted: I'm still having some problems, but it's all been fixable and they're not nearly as weird as before. I decided instead of using wine for windows programs, I would just use a virtual machine to do my stuff on. I still finished my EP on my original windows partition due to some VSTs not working mysteriously (probably missing some Visual Code runtimes), but by the next album (which will probably be further into next year because I'll be gone until like February) I may make the decision to work on it entirely in the virtual machine. I'll either do that, or use my original windows installation any time I want to work on it. That's not what I want to do because it's slightly inconvenient, but I'll keep the option open because you never know.

I don't like how I still have to repair my external hard drive's filesystem often. It's not inconsistent like it was on Xubuntu, however. What causes it now is when I mount the hard drive to my virtual machine and then mount it back to my OS. As far as I know, it's not causing any actual data corruption, but it is flipping some switch somewhere that both Ubuntu and Windows dislike because they both pick up on how the drive needs to be repaired. Funnily enough, the virtual machine for windows does it and not my baremetal windows. It's weird, but since I know what causes it, it's alright. It's just a minor inconvenience.

To conclude, it's good enough. I should've used normal Ubuntu in the first place. There are still some problems to iron out, but it's in a more tolerable and stable environment.

MY RATING:

3.5 out of 5. It's better. As far as operating systems go, Ubuntu is probably the most solid Linux distro of its kind. Emphasis on "of its kind."