more bionic stuff

I copied this shot from the OMG! Ubuntu! website; looks like a live session of Ubuntu 18.04, with Nautilus opened up:

The modified GNOME Shell desktop they're using has a dock along the left side, and that includes an icon at the bottom left for the Apps Menu.

Note the Amazon web launcher on the panel. Bleh.

(See: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/04/ubuntu-18-04-download-release-features)


If I installed Ubuntu 18.04, I'd probably end up running

sudo apt install vanilla-gnome-desktop

and then logging into the vanilla GNOME session, since that's what I'm used to from Debian Stretch.

Also, I'd run:

sudo apt purge ubuntu-web-launchers

That gets rid of the Amazon launcher, and I think it should get rid of these associated files:

/usr/share/applications/com.canonical.launcher.amazon.desktop
/usr/share/applications/ubuntu-amazon-default.desktop
/usr/share/doc/ubuntu-web-launchers/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/ubuntu-web-launchers/copyright
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/128x128/apps/amazon-store.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/amazon-store.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/52x52/apps/amazon-store.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps/amazon-store.png
/usr/share/ubuntu-web-launchers/amazon-launcher

See:
https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-remove-the-gnome-amazon-launcher-package-from-ubuntu-18-04-bionic-beaver-desktop
https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/all/ubuntu-web-launchers/filelist

My understanding is that the ubuntu-web-launchers package is not installed if the Minimal Installation option is chosen. Good to know.

This Amazon crap bugged me enough that I decided to quit using Ubuntu, so I haven't installed the latest release. But I think that overall the LTS releases work out quite nicely, especially after the first point release. The ubuntu-web-launchers package isn't included by default in the 18.04 releases of Ubuntu "flavors" like Kubuntu and Lubuntu; one of those might be better options for users who want to take advantage of the Bionic repos but who don't want to run the main distro.

quick glance at helium

The Stretch-based BunsenLabs "Helium" was finally released last week. I took the live session for a spin. I wrote the image (bl-Helium_amd64+build2.iso) to a flash drive and booted up my "test" computer with it. The boot menu presents the following options:

Live (amd64)
Live (amd64 failsafe)
Live system (load image to RAM)
Install
Text based install
Advanced Options >

Under that submenu at the bottom, I found:

   Expert installer (text)
   Expert installer (GUI)
   Rescue mode (text)
   Rescue mode (GUI)
   Hardware Detection Tool (HDT)
   Memory Diagnostics Tool (memtest86+)
   Back to main menu <

Interesting. Well, I went into the live session and browsed around. Things seemed okay. There's a Welcome window that pops up at first boot:

Helium's live session ships with Firefox, Thunar, Geany, Terminator, Catfish, Mirage, xfce4-screenshooter, scrot, VLC Media Player, Xfburn, LibreOffice Writer, Gnumeric, Galculator, Evince PDF Viewer, Synaptic, GParted, and lots more.

I could access my computer's partitions with no problem via Thunar. However, when I opened GParted, I got the following message:

I clicked "Cancel" and GParted came up, but I figured it would be a bad idea to use GParted, and wasn't sure if I should attempt an installation. I'll hold off on that thought for now.

I didn't much care for the new default theming, although it does look nice enough. I prefer the old CrunchBang-style black and white, like what we got with BunsenLabs "Deuterium":

Also, I don't like that (on the tint2 panel, at the far left) the launcher icons for the web browser, file manager, text editor, and terminal emulator don't match the taskbar icons of the running apps (Firefox, Thunar, Geany, and Terminator). And, here's an instance where, even though I've got all four of those apps running, the taskbar icon for Thunar is missing:

And I don't see the point in renaming those apps -- why "BL File Manager" and "BL Text Editor" instead of "Thunar" and "Geany", for example?

Well, I've been eagerly awaiting this release ever since Debian Stretch came out last year. Not so excited about it today. I still have BunsenLabs "Deuterium" and SalentOS "Neriton" installed on my "test" computer; I think I'll keep those for now and maybe install "Helium" sometime later. Or not.

For more info, see: https://www.bunsenlabs.org/