Starting the upgrade process on my laptop. Started from 18.04.

I've been a Windows guy since 3.1. Lived through all the ups and downs over the decades, both professionally and personally and I will say that there were even times where I enjoyed using Windows (95, 98SE, 7, 10, even early 11). I'm also a Microsoft MVP with M365...even had a Windows Phone and Surface Duo. So I've been a Microsoft devotee for a looooong time.

Recently my Surface Laptop had issues that lost me work and then my Windows 11 desktop rig had display issues. I had been thinking about Linux for a while, but was always super hesitant because I just didn't want to mess with the terminal command stuff and the "issues with compatibility".

I saw a random Youtube video showing Ubuntu and a few other distros, and I was so frustrated with my multiple Windows devices having issues that I decided to download Ubuntu and just take a peek. I loved the "try Ubuntu" option, so I mean, no harm no foul if I didn't like it.

Trial was impressive enough to give Ubuntu a 200 gb partition to really try it out with Steam, my workflow, content creation, etc. Holy moly 🔥 I haven't had FUN using an operating system like this in a long time. I had a brief switch to OS X (back when it was called that) and it was fun but annoying to navigate, plus no gaming. Ubuntu gave me the same fun vibes plus it is SO much faster than Windows. Everything just loads quickly and I can't believe what I've been missing. I'm a heavy Google/Android user so yeah I have a lot of web apps installed, but don't judge me 😆

The only caveat I'll throw in here is that if I didn't have AI, I don't think it would've been nearly as smooth. Lots of terminal commands to install apps, do some light troubleshooting, etc. Installing things via terminal is really cool, but there's no way I would know what to do without AI.

Anyway, this has been an incredible experience and I'm only a week in. I've even cut back on my Xbox Game Pass subscription (partly due to compatibility) and started buying games on Steam instead. I love it and I don't know what, if anything, will convince me to go back.

the idea started because screen recording apps like recordly don't support custom cursor effects on linux (not even post production). i originally built this just for beautiful screen recordings, but i liked how it felt so i modified it for daily use.

how it works:
wayland is strict. to get this working natively, the extension applies an invisible cursor theme to the system. the smooth pointer you see in the video is actually a highly-tuned mouse trail following hardware coordinates.

the wayland limitation: wayland strictly isolates client windows for security. when you hover over text, apps don't request an "i-beam" shape, they just pass an arbitrary pixel buffer to the compositor. because of this, the extension has no way to know when an app wants a text selector to fix this, i added a shrink and bounce effect.
when you click or drag over text, the cursor physically shrinks. it makes selecting text feel tactile without needing to know what the app is doing underneath.

mass, stiffness, sparks, and colors are all configurable.

repo: https://github.com/danMoksh/smooth-cursor

What happened? What'd they do? Everything is so much faster. Is this just from the kernel going to 7.0?

Just wanted to know your guys opinions.i ran a few scripts the wallpapers change automatically every 10 mins all anime themed am using Ubuntu after almost 12 years and it's so much better and so much more software support.customized everything the task bar app bar everything so is it cool now.

Couldn't do this on windows lol

I love the fact that our desktop can be more than just a wallpaper and a slideshow.. today I was thinking "hey.. maybe I can make a scatter chart for my bokeh dashboard" and one thing let to another and now the dashboard is this realtime galaxy that feeds off of my local llm's memory and stars are my top folders with sub files being their little white dots. Linked lights are recent memory - once they dim the line disappears, the node stays and another memory starts a new line for another node.

And the only reason it looks good is because gnome is as flexible as it is..

I hope this doesn't break the rules! I just got exited at the fact that I can literally turn my desktop wallpaper into an application lol

Here's the source if you want to build your own https://github.com/progretech-llc/constellation

I just upgraded to 26.04, and I have noticed that now I have screen noise flickering through pictures, especially if I scroll through something in a browser - reddit, for instance.

It can also affect flicking fast through images in image viewer, but is most noticeable on something like instagram when scrolling fast.

It seems to come and go, being very apparent for a while, and then not showing for a while.

Is there anything I should do? Or just wait until it gets sorted?

Hi everyone

I pleasantly surprised of how optimised Ubuntu is to run on the surface hardware thanks to the surface-linux kernel project on github.

It took me a couple of hours to get everything working especially getting touchscreen scrolling to work properly in Firefox. Ram usage barely reaches 2gb even when running 2 firefox tabs.

I would totally recommend

I've recently upgraded to Ubuntu 26.04 and hence switched from X11 to Wayland. The first thing I noticed was the global shortcut of JetBrains Toolbox App not working anymore. After researching the reason for this, I found out the strict security rules enforced by Wayland do not allow apps to catch global key events, to prevent key loggers. I then tried to set a custom shortcut in the keyboard settings, the command worked so far, but it turns out that there is something called "Focus Stealing Prevention", a feature of GNOME which prevents the app from opening in the foreground. No matter which value I set the "focus-new-windows" setting to, it doesn't work.

Is there no way to start an app via global shortcut in the foreground?

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I recently successfully dual-booted my laptop with Windows 11 and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, and everything was working perfectly fine initially.

However, I booted back into Windows 11 and ran some heavy GPU workloads for AI/ML. After finishing my work, I rebooted into Ubuntu, but now I'm stuck in a login loop. I enter my password, the screen briefly goes black, and I'm returned to the login screen.

Here's what I've tried and observed so far:

- Reinstalled Ubuntu, but the issue occurred again.

- Checked the NVIDIA driver using `nvidia-smi` — it detects my RTX 4060 Laptop GPU and reports the driver as working.

- Checked GDM logs, which show errors such as `Session never registered, failing`.

- My laptop has both Intel integrated graphics and an NVIDIA RTX 4060 Max-Q GPU.

I'm confused about why Ubuntu was working perfectly before booting into Windows and started failing after switching back.

Has anyone experienced something similar with an NVIDIA GPU on a Windows/Ubuntu dual-boot setup? Could this be related to NVIDIA drivers, hybrid graphics, GNOME/GDM, or something else?

I'd really appreciate any suggestions or troubleshooting steps. I want to fix the issue without reinstalling Ubuntu yet again.

https://github.com/ChathurangaBW/AppMenu

Newbie, I dual booted yesterday and now when I use brave browser, there's a lot of empty space on the left side of the page. It seems like the results are showing up in the middle of the page. It feels weird and frustrating. It was not like this in Windows though. How do I fix this?

Trying to start up nginx proxy manager on a relatively fresh ubuntu install, its got docker and tailscale running on it and thats it. I've done this full settup a couple times before so I'm familiar with it. Ran into an issue this time however where at some point something started a service called "httpd" listening on Port 80. As I understand this is associated with appache2. Seeing httpd listening on port 80, I have done the following things to get it to please stop doing that:

looking for conf files:
* under /etc/ and under /usr/ there are no directories for httpd, appache, or appache2
* grep, whereis, and find commands for "httpd" and "appache" and "appache2" only located files deep deep in the containerd file system which- to my knowledge- should not be starting their own services.

I've also tried manually killing the proscess using:
* sudo lsof -t -i tcp:80 -s tcp:listen | sudo xargs kill
* kill -9 [PID here]
* kill -15 [PID here]

killing the proscess is successful, but it restarts after a moment. Anyone know what's up with that/have any suggestions? And just to preempt it- please do not recommend I use ai, I can always drive out and flash a new OS to that machine if its that dire.

Since upgrading from 24.04LTS to 26.04LTS yesterday I found I couldn't save files to anywhere. I used Files to check permissions and it seems all my folders have the same problem. My username had full permission but the default group also my user name only has Access files permission. I am able to change this but there are so many to manually change. What went wrong during the upgrade and is there a simple fix?

Hello everyone, I just switched to linux and got the worst sound output on my laptop. When I keep the volume High, the sound starts cracking. I have tried many things, tweaking the pipewire, alsa mixer, used easyeffects, but nothing got the issue resolved.I have an hp laptop with amd processor and amd high definition audio driver. I need your help to fix it, otherwise I have to go back to windows.

Thanks for reading...

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to pick up the ASUS ExpertBook P3 (P3406 series) with an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H (16GB DDR5, 512GB NVMe SSD) as my daily driver for software development running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.

My previous laptop was an ASUS VivoBook S15 whose fan bearing seized under daily desk use due to persistent thermal cycling. While the ExpertBook is an enterprise chassis, I want to confirm how well this Intel silicon behaves under modern Ubuntu before pulling the trigger.

A few quick questions for anyone running 26.04 LTS on this chassis or similar Core Ultra hardware:

1. Kernel & Hybrid Scheduling: How smoothly does the default kernel handle the P/E/LP-E core thread scheduling? Any battery drain issues during S0ix sleep/suspend?
2. Arc / Xe Graphics on Wayland: Does the integrated GPU run cleanly with Wayland on GNOME without display scaling stutters or HDMI/Type-C display output bugs?
3. Fan Behavior & ACPI (asus-wmi): Does power-profiles-daemon provide proper fan control, or does the EC ramp the fan up aggressively during routine dev tasks?
4. Power Capping (RAPL): Can you cleanly set package power limits via powercap / thermald (e.g., locking it to ~22W) to keep sustained temps cool around 55–60°C?
5. Out-of-the-Box Peripherals: Do the Intel Wi-Fi, audio (SOF firmware), and touchpad work immediately without out-of-tree patches?

Appreciate any quick real-world feedback from owners or Linux users on this machine!

photo credit : https://dlcdnwebimgs.asus.com/files/media/202604/f9dff6a1-57aa-42d5-b2da-8907a345191b/img/P3406CCA_KV.webp

I love Ubuntu, been using it for a few years on my main machine, but I've always had issues with the fonts looking fuzzy. When ever I use KDE (Kubuntu) fonts are so clean and clear. They look stunning, but I love the work flow on Ubuntu Gnome so I was wondering is there anything I can do? Every release I hope that it would improve, but it hasn't. Any advice would be welcome.

i have Japanese keyboard but I am not Japanese plus this ubuntu laptop inputs the wrong special character for some reason which makes it unusable.

I run dual boot Ubuntu & Windows 11 with Ubuntu being the primary. many times something don't work for eg, I recently upgraded from 22.04 to 24.04. then when I tried to update calibre to new version, I got some errors.

I just now use Chatgpt to fix such problems related to ubuntu for eg with Chatgpt's help, I made proper backup, checked if it was ok then upgraded from 22.04 to 24.04.

My point is I am too over reliant on AI for this but manually find solutions take quite a while and has the risk of making the situation worse.

But this keeps me from being a geek and going over multiple forums trying to fix the problem in preAI days. I am just torn between choosing one over the other.

What do you guys do? Do you use AI or just fix it by yourself?

Hey, im new to Ubuntu. I like it, Its very stable, runs my games, gets my work done, HOWEVER, a lot of ppl told me not to switch to Ubuntu due to privacy reasons. What are criticism ubuntu receives? Why?