Ubuntu anomalies on Power

[MauryG5]

Hello to the whole Oper Power community, for some time I have installed Ubuntu in one of my hard disks and immediately afterwards to use my RX 5700 XT Navi 10 card, I compiled a kernel specifically. Using Ubuntu and checking the various features with respect to Fedora and Debian, I realized that unfortunately this distribution has various criticalities. I had also noticed it when I just bought the Blackbird, I tried Ubuntu first and unfortunately I saw that these critical issues are still present and they are bothersome as well. Specifically, I refer to the Firefox bookmarks for example, only on Ubuntu this browser gives this perennial error, since I installed version 19.04 and now that we have reached 20.10, the problem persists. It says there is probably a problem with the security software that an Ubuntu does and therefore there is a conflict but how come they still haven't solved it after years? I also tried to do what the guide says, eliminating directories that he himself indicates but the problem persists. Another very strange thing is the connection to the network. The system is regularly connected to the network but the icon at the top right indicating the connection is partially cut off, for him it is as if there is no network, press the connect button but nothing happens, yet the system is regularly connected to the internet. Problem that has also existed for years and has never been solved by the Ubuntu team. Another anomaly resides in the numeric keypad, the numbers are inverted, instead of starting with the number 1 from the bottom left, it starts with the same from the top always to the left and therefore instead of the number 7. 7,8,9 become 1, 2,3 ... Another anomaly occurs when using the Gnome software center, Ubuntu does not have it by default like Debian or Fedora and so I downloaded it, when you try to install an application after selecting it, he puts waiting without ever starting to download ... Honestly it is a shame that it has all these critical issues because as an optimization it is perhaps the best on Power, it is more fluid even than Fedora at the moment ... a real shame, if anyone knows how to solve these critical issues would be a really good thing ...

[cchinicz]

Hello to the whole Oper Power community, for some time I have installed Ubuntu in one of my hard disks and immediately afterwards to use my RX 5700 XT Navi 10 card, I compiled a kernel specifically. Using Ubuntu and checking the various features with respect to Fedora and Debian, I realized that unfortunately this distribution has various criticalities. I had also noticed it when I just bought the Blackbird, I tried Ubuntu first and unfortunately I saw that these critical issues are still present and they are bothersome as well. Specifically, I refer to the Firefox bookmarks for example, only on Ubuntu this browser gives this perennial error, since I installed version 19.04 and now that we have reached 20.10, the problem persists. It says there is probably a problem with the security software that an Ubuntu does and therefore there is a conflict but how come they still haven't solved it after years? I also tried to do what the guide says, eliminating directories that he himself indicates but the problem persists. Another very strange thing is the connection to the network. The system is regularly connected to the network but the icon at the top right indicating the connection is partially cut off, for him it is as if there is no network, press the connect button but nothing happens, yet the system is regularly connected to the internet. Problem that has also existed for years and has never been solved by the Ubuntu team. Another anomaly resides in the numeric keypad, the numbers are inverted, instead of starting with the number 1 from the bottom left, it starts with the same from the top always to the left and therefore instead of the number 7. 7,8,9 become 1, 2,3 ... Another anomaly occurs when using the Gnome software center, Ubuntu does not have it by default like Debian or Fedora and so I downloaded it, when you try to install an application after selecting it, he puts waiting without ever starting to download ... Honestly it is a shame that it has all these critical issues because as an optimization it is perhaps the best on Power, it is more fluid even than Fedora at the moment ... a real shame, if anyone knows how to solve these critical issues would be a really good thing ...

Hey Maury, I use my Blackbird as a desktop.  I mean, browser (chromium and firefox), email client (thunderbird) and open office. I use it with Fedora and KDE Plasma. What difference would it make for a user like myself if the OS is Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora?

[MauryG5]

The differences are there my friend, the distributions are not all the same, both for updates they have available and for any bugs present. I also use Fedora as the main S.O on Power because it is the best in my opinion. Except that I also wanted to have some alternatives every now and then I realized that as an optimization, Ubuntu is even better than Fedora and I wanted to use it without these annoying little problems that limit its use unfortunately ... Debian for its part is terribly old and stagnant, they haven't updated certain parts for a long time and I honestly don't understand why, now certain things like the desktop Gnome higher than version 3.30 that they use, have been tested for a long time, absurd that they continue to stay at that. Just as it is absurd that the Kernel remains anchored to version 4.19, ultra old too ...

[MPC7500]

Hey Maury, I use my Blackbird as a desktop.  I mean, browser (chromium and firefox), email client (thunderbird) and open office. I use it with Fedora and KDE Plasma. What difference would it make for a user like myself if the OS is Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora?

Here is a brief overview of the differences between distributions.

Distributions have different philosophies. This is also the reason why e.g. Debian uses older kernel versions.

One point that is not mentioned in the article are the repositories. The packages that are available on a distribution. At least from my point of view a big difference on ppc64le.

But all in all every distribution (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Devuan, Gentoo, Void) works very well on POWER.

[MauryG5]

Yes MPC I do not say that they do not work well, indeed Ubuntu from the point of view of the fluidity and general movement of the whole system, is also superior to Fedora. I just don't understand why it must continue to have these critical issues that have not been resolved for years now apparently because I had already seen them identical in version 19.04 and all this seems a bit grotesque to me honestly. Maybe no one has made any bug reports and they have never seen anything, I don't know what else to think. As for Debian, it is not normal for me that we have to remain anchored to very old and outdated things, when the world of computers travels by itself at an impressive speed and that what came next is also tested well and works well so in my opinion there is no reason ...

[MPC7500]

There are no critical issues on Ubuntu. Last time I tried Ubuntu 19.04 or 19.10. And Debian didn't use a outdated Kernel.

[MauryG5]

Sorry MPC, doesn't a 4.19 Kernel seem obsolete to you ?!  We are at 5.11 forwarded in stable version, I am using 5.12 rc1 compiled by me on Fedora, 5.13 comes out in June and the Debian Kernel is not obsolete ?!  I don't know what you mean but for me it is all right ... For Ubuntu, if I have some pictures of what Firefox does or the icon of the network connection and I will show you the critical issues I am talking about ...

[Borley]

Just taking an uneducated guess but try disabling the Firefox apparmor profile.

[MauryG5]

Hi Borley, ok I can prove this thing you tell me, I just have to find where it is first ...

[MauryG5]

Guys good evening sorry, I can't compile Kernels 5.11 or 5.12 on Ubuntu. I think I lack the various libraries and files that these new kernels need now but I don't know which libraries and files they are. When I compiled the Fedora 5.12 Kernel, he made the requests to me himself but with Ubuntu it doesn't work like that and I don't know which ones to install. Can you give me a tip? Thanks always

[MauryG5]

Guys I can't compile the Kernel on Ubuntu anymore and I can't understand why.... It seems to be missing something but it doesn't tell me things and I've searched the web and I've installed everything that I found written but nothing, it gives me errors to install modules. These are the screenshots that I get when I try to install the modules and when I try to install the Kernel at the end ... Is it possible that I can not find all the necessary files or understand what I'm missing in order to install it correctly? Do any of you understand what's going on? Thanks

[MauryG5]

No guys the mistake was mine of a silly at the end ... When giving the module installation command, I gave sudo make install and instead the correct one was sudo make_install ... For a trivial error like this I could no longer compile the kernel on Ubuntu ... poor me ...

[MauryG5]

Hi Borley, I tried to disable the part you told me about security but unfortunately the Firefox problem persists ... I also found problems with Thunderbird, the preferences to configure the program do not open.  Apparently the problems are mostly focused on Mozilla products ...

[MauryG5]

Guys, I see that there are few who use Ubuntu on Power, nobody intervenes and so I suppose we are not many unfortunately ... In any case, regarding the anomalies found, that of the network connection has a bit of the incredible I would say. I mean, in the installation he sees the usual network port and loads that like every Linux distro does. Upon checking the connected network when you are inside Ubuntu in desktop mode, you notice that it does not see the network connection. The great thing is that if you open a browser it regularly browses and goes to the sites but when you see the connection, it tells you that that port is not connected and it does not even come out in the list of network ports. The first 2 of the Blackbird come out, which as we know are not connected and the one that is regularly connected does not come out ... All this is quite absurd I would dare to say because the network connection is regularly present and he saw it at the time of installation of the operating system ... Even if you give the command on the terminal he lets you exit all 3 ports and tells you the connected one, but in fact he does not see it ... I would define this as paradoxical ...

[MauryG5]

Greetings to the whole Power community, for now I see little activity on the forum so I try to write myself every now and then at least when I have some little good news. I finally managed to fix Ubuntu's age-old network connection problem on Power. I spoke directly in the Ubuntu community, where questions of all kinds are asked, the site can be found by writing "askubuntu" on Google and from there they finally gave me the solution. The problem was fortunately not a bug as it appeared to me up to that moment but it was simply a conflict between the 2 software that manage the network on Ubuntu. I had read something about it but it was not clear enough in the places where I had read it and various information was missing. Explaining the problem in detail, the Ubuntu guys replied immediately asking me for output from Netplan and Network Manager and from there I began to understand that there was some possible conflict. The problem arises on Ubuntu simply because Ubuntu, unlike Fedora or Debian, for the server version, for some years now has decided to use Netplan, while it has left Network Manager unchanged on the Desktop version. It follows that if you can choose to install server or desktop, everything is fine because he installs the manager based on the version, if instead like us at Power, you are forced to install the server version, when you manually add the part desktop, the system does not know that it must deactivate 1 for the other obviously and installing Network Manager as well, it sends both into conflict and the result is the defect of the network I had. They immediately made me make the change with commands that deactivated Netplan and left all the network management to Network Manager and from that moment everything went fine.