Monday, May 7, 2018

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.

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