POP_OS! 21.04 Review: Year of the Linux Desktop?

Jay From Learn Linux TV POP OS 21.04 Review
• Pop!_OS 21.04 Full Rev...
Connecting With Us
---------------------------------------------------
+ Hire Us For A Project: lawrencesystems.com/hire-us/
+ Tom Twitter 🐦 / tomlawrencetech
+ Our Web Site www.lawrencesystems.com/
+ Our Forums forums.lawrencesystems.com/
+ Instagram / lawrencesystems
+ Facebook / lawrencesystems
+ GitHub github.com/lawrencesystems/
+ Discord / discord
Lawrence Systems Shirts and Swag
---------------------------------------------------
►👕 lawrence.video/swag
AFFILIATES & REFERRAL LINKS
---------------------------------------------------
Amazon Affiliate Store
🛒 www.amazon.com/shop/lawrences...
UniFi Affiliate Link
🛒 store.ui.com?a_aid=LTS
All Of Our Affiliates that help us out and can get you discounts!
🛒 lawrencesystems.com/partners-...
Gear we use on Kit
🛒 kit.co/lawrencesystems
Use OfferCode LTSERVICES to get 5% off your order at
🛒 lawrence.video/techsupplydirect
Digital Ocean Offer Code
🛒 m.do.co/c/85de8d181725
HostiFi UniFi Cloud Hosting Service
🛒 hostifi.net/?via=lawrencesystems
Protect you privacy with a VPN from Private Internet Access
🛒 www.privateinternetaccess.com...
Patreon
💰 / lawrencesystems
⏱️ Timestamps ⏱️
00:00 POP_OS! Version 21.04
01:42 POP_OS! Naming Scheme
02:55 Whois system76
03:32 What is POP_OS!
04:33 Navigating & Customizing the POP_OS! Desktop
12:44 The Pop Shop and Linux Applications
14:27 When Linux is not the best solution
#Linux #POP_OS! #System76

[@mawortz]

after dual booting for many years, I finally moved 100% to linux

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Congrats!

[@mawortz]

@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS not gonna lie, switching full time to Linux has not been easy.

[@6500s1]

@@mawortz I was just learning stuff for multiple months on and off, and then completely switched from win10 to Manjaro few months ago, really worth it, excellent new user experience. It just works, and does it well. :D

[@notsure7874]

I've been off Windows for almost 6 years, daily driving Linux. I haven't run a Windows machine of any kind since before 10 came out. For most use cases, Windows just a better daily driver than Linux TBH, and I LOVE Linux (obviously, I daily drive it right?).

[@gamerneversleep4200]

I USE ARCH,BTW

[@HisLoveArmy]

Long time windows user here, been trying to learn more command line and Linux stuff and with listening to more privacy and security podcasts I thought it would be a good time to ditch Windows and try Linux as my daily driver. I have been using POP OS for a few weeks now and have been so surprised how well it works and how the UI is so user friendly. I use Office 365 web version for Outlook and Onedrive so that was easy to do. Signal and an RDP app later I pretty much am good to go! I am happy to say I will make the switch to Linux!

[@VioletDragonsProjects]

i love linux

[@Mikesco3]

I like PopOS however I mostly run Manjaro on btrfs, I've been super happy with it. I previously ran Linux mint as a daily driver, but Manjaro solved the issues of having to upgrade distro's every now and then plus needing a PPA every time i wanted to run something a bit newer

[@heikokraemer2735]

Man, thanks for explaining what a flatpack is. 👍🏻

[@Dillinger86]

I bought a System76 Laptop & I don't anything about Linux, no idea what a KDE or gnome is. I love having complete control over my device.

[@misomicro]

Loving that aption of a dack on papOS. Thanks Tam.

[@Tw3akst3r]

Either this is a joke I do not get (maybe an accent reference?) or you need to get the letter O fixed on your keyboard, it keeps typing A a lot of the time.

[@misomicro]

@@Tw3akst3r yes, a little play on his pronunciation, with no offence intended (what we here in the UK would term banter)

[@craigiedema1707]

This video shows how nice Linux desktops are, it also shows why Linux is still not something that is suitable for enterprise desktops. You can configure it how you like is a training and support nightmare. Homogeneous is also a lot cheaper than everyone does what they like. (and no MS Office). Also Windows does many of things POP OS (like remembering desktop layouts and multiple deskops). I've moved a bunch of Desktop use back to Windows from Linux and MacOS. Yes I'm aware of the caning that this comment is likely to bring.

[@nevinkuser9892]

No caning, it's just realistic to use windows for work while linux is more for tinkering.

[@jakelong484]

I installed this on my spare laptop I use for watching youtube and other things ;) I like it so far

[@Lucidexplore]

I also use it for other things 😊

[@byzhiphop]

I got Pop_OS running on a Surface Pro 2, hilariously enough. It works surprisingly well, though I have an older version. The only major annoyance with it was that the display scaling kept resetting through reboots.

[@rsinistic]

Idk. I've been flying garuda for the last few months and have to say, it's great.. Not sure I'll be changing anytime soon.

[@overbese]

Running Pop_OS on a new build. I'm here because of Steam, gaming was the last holdup. Very happy so far.

[@HaddaClu]

I tried PopOs on my Dell 7567 laptop over this last week and while I did enjoy the improved snappiness of the os over windows on the system; I did end up switch back to Windows in the end. It's good for productivity, but I also do like to game after work and I noticed that games (using lutris / steam etc) could only run for so long before the system started to massively over heat and drop frames. Windows never had issues like that, and I get that this partially an issue with Dell's baked in Bios fan system and I did try to fix it with the various terminal program fixes that over ride it - none of which really helped just postponed how long till I had to stop the game from running.

[@alanmiguelrocha5780]

Try a dual boot, windows for gaming, pop os for work

[@TomClaessens]

I really enjoy PopOS however it's still a dual boot system. I can't part from Lightroom, CaptureOne and Photoshop. I know people will say that there's Shotwell, GIMP and Darktable but perhaps from a technical standpoint they're on par, GUI wise and user friendly they're not. It's one of the reasons why I stick to Windows for these tasks. That's why I "love" MacOS so much. It actually bridges the two philosophies. I know it's too much of an ecosystem for any free software advocate but their ecosystem works really well. Their BSD base gives you all the power you need, if you want it. Developers take the additional time to meet their strict requirements (most of the time) to GUI design, resulting in beautifully crafted apps that are easy to use or should I say user friendly/UX was on the forefront, not some afterthought. So unless any of these companies decide to make their software available on Linux, but I doubt they'll ever do so, I'm happy with my dual boot setup (windows/linux) on one machine, and using MacOS on my laptop.

[@itsbea3859]

You can get an addon-extension-thing for gimp so its ui is literally just photoshop's

[@byzhiphop]

Wish they also made "lite", server editions. I would love to use something like that for home servers, Canonical's recent BS is very disappointing.

[@mackm45]

Does it go with rye . I have hired a tech to load POP OS on a Expancion drive so I can test it first see if I can learn to use it for my business online. I also want to use tings like FB and what ever VIOIP can be used . Also do videos to use on websites does POP os make those things more problematic?

[@wannabsexy]

Completely unrelated to Linux but can you please review a firewalls Been looking into them a little and the company was actually founded by cisco engineers

[@jonirish323]

So this is a rather silly question, but how do you enable the Pop!_OS ASCII art in your bash shell (shown at the 10 second mark in the video)? I would have thought that it would be default from the install, but it wasn't in my case. I looked at their web site for the .bashrc code to do this, but I didn't see it. Can you share it here, or can it be enabled within the gui settings? Again, this is purely cosmetic, but I do like the looks of it.

[@beepboopbeepboop190]

look into neofetch and similar options

[@jonirish323]

@@beepboopbeepboop190 Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for!

[@eddas5175]

Super + / also opens the launcher, if anyone wants to bind Super to one of the other two functions.

[@WorkBundle]

Do you have any clients that uses Linux distribution as desktops for everyday use? If you do how do you manage those desktops, and setup parameters for those desktops?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

none

[@Shinta0SaINt]

Hey Tom, patiently awaiting wire guard tutorial sir, great content as always! Regards Shane from Trinidad 🇹🇹

[@HisLoveArmy]

Tom what app do you use on Pop OS to RDP into Windows boxes? I have been using Remmina but it crashes all the time now.

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

I very rarely need to because we use ScreenConnect for our clients. If I do need windows things I have a Windows VM running in VirtualBox I use.

[@felix954]

I tried PopOs exclusively, for 3 months. I liked it, but had too many issues and bugs with the 3rd party apps I needed to use. I'm switching back to windows right now.

[@nevinkuser9892]

Thanks for your insight. Just do what works best for your needs.

[@QuantumDrift-u5k]

Are you going to do an updated pfsense wireguard site to site video now that is back in 2.5.2?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Eventually

[@QuantumDrift-u5k]

@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS Thanks! Previous one was really informative when setting it up - look forward to it!

[@Airbag888]

Linux is almost there but not quite.. I've been waiting for decades for this to happen and it seems that either progress on Linux desktop dev slowed down or evolution of hardware was too much. Ex: I likely tried 20 distros and could not find one that would standby my 2 monitors just fine.. All of them would standby and immediately turn on meanwhile no such issues on windows. There's other quirks to get over too like pop os booting into initramfs for no reason. Haven't had a boot up issue with windows since win 98 I think. I also managed to lock-up the whole computer twice in a week And finally where has hibernate mode gone?? That's a must have! So much is good on Linux desktop right now but some base stuff needs to really be done and work stably.

[@forfluf]

How a bout fist! Fix the bugs in POP_OS 21.04 M'kay

[@marcusone1]

How is upgrading from 20.04 LTS to 21.04 non LTS? And you don't appear to worry about LTS?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

I don't worry about LTS. All the upgrades have gone well and I like being on the latest version.

[@kabloosh699]

Windows is super hard to beat in the enterprise environment. With being able to administrate thousands of clients through the use of active directory is something I just do not see or know of in the Linux/Unix world at least out of the box. Windows though is becoming more and more "linuxy" in its own design and I'm getting the feeling we will see more of that with Windows 11. For home use one of the biggest things that make it hard for me to try to switch away from Windows is the fact that it is just so familiar and it just works. I personally have little to no issue running windows with reliability issues for years. I've had more trouble trying to adopt a Linux deskstop environment and at this point I just do not see the value. For servers I definitely see the value though. Much more light weight and obviously free. The whole security argument I think is moot. Windows these days especially if you harden it a little bit you are pretty well off. For instance, just running a standard user account and creating an admin account and just typing in separate credentials for when you can to escalate privileges goes a long ways. You download something weird it can potentially jack up your user profile but the rest of the system is going to be pretty secure.

[@HisLoveArmy]

Does the POP Shop only put in trusted / vetted apps?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

Yes

[@jerryfaircloth]

If Adobe Lightroom Classic was supported on Linux I would switch in a second. But running Windows and Linux is just too much of a pain. Maybe someday

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

I used to run Photoshop & Lightroom in a Windows VM until I finally took the time to learn Gimp and Darktable. No, they are not exactly the same in terms of features, but they get the job done.

[@TheDrunkenAlcoholic]

Im pretty sure Lightroom Classic works fine under wine

[@jerryfaircloth]

@@TheDrunkenAlcoholic Only the ancient versions AFAIK. I'm pretty sure Adobe will never officially support the subscription version on Linux. I can keep hoping though.

[@elliotthanford1328]

after running both 20.04 and 21.04 i prefer the previous super functionality, even though it can be restored

[@iblackfeathers]

had issues with pop os. whatever was broken works right out of the box with ubuntu. in theory pop os has the same base of ubuntu so you would think it would work the same but personally found this to not be the case. so switched to ubuntu because it just works. troubleshooting is a time suck and i don’t have time for trivial issues that pop os introduced. pop os is not for everyone. and this was on a system 76 machine with back and forth with their support team.

[@andremartins2831]

What were you trying to do that ended up causing issues?

[@MarkConstable]

I got a S76 Oryx Pro 17" to set up and tried POP for half an hour then immediately installed Manjaro/KDE testing. POP looks clean, but I couldn't stand the layout and work flow.

[@anssilehtimaki3841]

Running Linux 100% of time and running pretty much all games without problems. I don't play fps games that do not support anti-cheat on linux

[@seths1997]

I wasn't impressed that 21.04 includes adobe flash player. Otherwise it is fine for a newbie just learning.

[@MattMcCullough]

PopOS is awesome

Unfortunately no one is building software for viewing CCTV cameras. All major developers only support Windows and Internet Explorer. It's a huge blow for security. Why can't they support the most secure SO in existence? 😒

[@mrfrenzy.]

Lots of professional CCTV software runs on Linux. Axis Camera Station, Milestone, Luxriot. If you want small business stuff the webinterface of Dahua NVR is quite good and runs completely without plugins, then there is Blueiris for example.

@@mrfrenzy. I work with Dahua, Safire and Hikvision and none of them work well with Linux based browser. They all need to have windows and IE installed for some reason.

[@mrfrenzy.]

Dahua NVR5232 works fine in Firefox under Ubuntu. Live view, playback, edit IVS rules etc.

[@RK-kn1ud]

Have you looked into Zoneminder?

[@awstott]

I'm running it on an old Thinkpad T500. I'm impressed how well it runs on there. Granted it's got an SSD and 8 gigs of ram in it. Resolution on the display is the big drawback.

[@Marvelly84]

Hi there, what about Zorin Linux?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

I don't use it.

[@Marvelly84]

@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS I think you should try! It is an amazing system. It looks very much to Windows. For those that don't want to let it go 100% lol

[@UpSaraWorld]

System 76’s Cosmic is garbage - at least as of 21.10. Instead of using one key to access my workspaces, apps, search, now I have to use multiple or mouse. What kind of shit is that!? Oh, and that dock is hilarious.They should have stick with Gnome40 which is truly phenomenal.

[@JuanLopez-db4cc]

Bash that like Button!

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

yup!

[@TheRealFrankWizza]

Next year though.

[@anunconventionaluse533]

Thanks for the review! Checking out Pop now. Please check out the correct pronounciation of 'Ubuntu'. It's 'Uh-boon-tu', not 'Uh-bun-tu'. ;)

[@jimbo-dev]

- ”I’m open source advocate” - Uses Chrome What 🤯 (Meanwhile there are so many google free chromium based alternatives) But nice video anyways!

[@kuro68000]

I found Gnome pretty hopeless for 4k displays.

[@DroidBen]

Worked pretty well for me with 68.6cm (27 inch in unga bunga units) displays... Did you enable fractional scaling?

[@merlingt1]

Gnome 40 working great on my 32" 4K monitor.

[@kuro68000]

@@merlingt1 it only offers 100%, 200% and 300% scaling. 150% or 175% would be ideal for a 27" monitor. Also it doesn't scale everything. I installed Debian, opened XTerm and it was microscopic. Windows fixed this well over a decade ago. Another issue is slow mouse wheel operation. There is no preference to speed it up. Scrolling speed depends on the app, there is no system setting. Plasma is better but still doesn't get basic stuff like that right.

[@DroidBen]

@@kuro68000 with fractional scaling enabled there are 25% increments between 100% and 200%

[@kuro68000]

@@DroidBen why can't you select them from the UI? We used to laugh at how Windows needed registry hacks to make it less annoying but Gnome is just as bad.

[@AkashDas-ch1zg]

Can nobody notice the stuttering minimize/maximize animation, it's been there for a long time and nobody even bothers to fix or even talk about it

[@nevinkuser9892]

I've been noticing it although it might be my low refresh rate 4k monitor.

[@ecu4321]

short answer to your question, nah. it won't be. it's been speculated for decades but it all remains the same.

[@cliptopia3609]

Can't believe you are you are using Chrome lol Have not heard of Brave or is this an informed decision you are making?

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

I use Chrome for my business.

[@netjac]

I use MacOSX & Win on a daily basis for various reasons. A year ago I bought a LeMeur Pro with Pop OS and now loving it. Using Linux for almost all things I can. However, Linux still can't beat in anyway MacOX when i comes to Final Cut Pro and as well as some Adobe products I regularly use for now.

[@rajindermadaher5745]

Fastest os out there

[@miped0707]

Only two Windows machines left for me to support. I told my friends and family either you buy a new machine and keep using Windows or I install Linux on this and it will perform again. Most choose Linux and it works for them. But it all depends on what people use. Most I know just needs a browser (apparently OR they are too cheap to care) One of them I installed a virtual Windows machine to support some finance software for her business

[@4n0nmann5]

do you support these machines for your family, or it's a job? I always wonder what people mean by "I advice my client to use linux instead of windows", I can't imagine what type of a job is this.

[@miped0707]

@@4n0nmann5 for family and friends (some are friends/family of friends)

[@0M9H4X_Neckbeard]

All of this is neat but works just the same on Windows (launcher, workspaces, searchable windows/application switcher ...) and for me to switch Linux (PopOS) needs to actually be BETTER than windows not just "somewhat close and almost good enough" - as long as that's the case I'll just continue to use Winodws which is always improving as well though so I don't see a catchup anytime soon as far as user experience goes

[@rinkukhamari]

I hate GIMP , Photoshop is stopping me to switch back to Linux. 😭😭😭

[@LAWRENCESYSTEMS]

I used to run Photoshop in a Windows VM until I finally took the time to learn Gimp.

[@pw1187]

In my opinion Gimp and probably blender are the stars of Open Source and free software unfortunately gimp has a very strong learning curve but once you learn it it's awesome and I won't go back to photoshop But Kdenlive is mediocre at best and honestly that's why I use my Mac to edit my husband's videos it's 50 to 60% faster Linux seriously needs a good video editor

[@rhb.digital]

you cant effin' minimize via the dock.. wth.. otherwise perfect.

[@lsdude4205]

Install Gnome Tweaks from the store and you can bring back the minimize and maximize buttons. That is my only gripe with pop os, the default behavior of Gnome is quite short sighted actually.

[@TheDrunkenAlcoholic]

open terminal and type: gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock click-action 'minimize' now you can minimize through the dock, this sets the click action to minimize the application that's shown in the dock that currently open,

[@rhb.digital]

@@TheDrunkenAlcoholic Thanks

[@kuro68000]

The lack of a taskbar makes window management hell. Plasma FTW.

[@5133937]

Pop really needs to simply their name ffs. Nobody can remember whether it’s “PoP!_OS” or PoP_OS!” or “PoPOS” or something else. Leave the underscores and punctuation marks for the actual code, not the name. Terrible name, but as they say, naming things is hard for programmers (along with cache invalidation, off-by-one errors, etc).

[@ewenchan1239]

I use a mixture of Windows, MacOS, Linux, and even Solaris (yes, still!). Here's my summary of your video: 1) Some of the keyboard shortcuts and gestures = the same kind of stuff that MacOS has had since....gosh....I can't even remember when. The MacBook Air that I am typing this on is a 13-inch, Mid 2013 MacBook Air, so since at least back then. (Probably even earlier than that if I were to count my 2010 MacBook Pro.) There's nothing new about doing that in and of itself. What IS new is that it is coming to Linux. Finally. At least 11 years later. (Which, in some ways, I think that it's still better than Windows, because I am not sure how much of that Windows can do. I think that some of that, you can do in Windows 11.) 2) I say this about fanbois of anything - being a fanboi of anything is stupid. I personally pick the best tool for the best job at the time. There are a lot of Windows applications that still won't run in Linux (for HPC/CAE) and yet, there are also a lot of things that either don't/can't run in Windows/Mac that is a lot easier/faster to deploy in Linux. 3) re: the comment about the OS being less and less relevant as more and more applications are moving to "the cloud". Somewhat. Sort of. OneNote is really good. Deploying on Linux with P3X is a bit of a mixed bag. (I got it working originally, and then broke it and it hasn't worked for me since I broke P3X and haven't been able fix/resolve it. Such is Linux.) The one thing that I love about Windows that I don't have a problem, but it's a rampant problem in my Linux deployments is the whole compatibility thing BETWEEN different versions of particular dependencies. Software that's built in Linux with a specific version of a dependency MUST use THAT version and ONLY that version of said dependency, whereas in Windows, if you update it, the newer versions will still be able to support the stuff that requires the older version. Yes, it can lead to legacy stuff being carried along for a ride for a really long time, but it's a heck of alot easier than trying to keep like 15 versions of libjpeg because different applications require the specific version that it is dependent on. If you want a quick way to toast/bork your Linux install - force-install multiple versions of a dependency. You'll be confused as will your Linux install and then EVERYTHING will stop working because of that. Yay Linux! (If you can't tell, I've ran into this kind of a cross-compatibility BETWEEN different versions of a dependency before.) So yeah... Pop! OS 21.04 - doing some of stuff that you've been able to do with a Mac since as early as 2010. (I used to use the keyboard shortcuts with older versions of Windows, but now, it's actually faster for me to just click on stuff.)

[@mysticsilent]

Still struggeling to switch away from windows. Its just a habit like i can't switch from Android to iOS. Why is it so difficult? I know for sure that Linux meets all my needs for a computer but still something is witholding me..

[@nevinkuser9892]

Because switching to Linux means you're going to spend mindless hours droning around learning stuff that may not be very important or beneficial.

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

Extension fest for the win... 🙄

[@yuhaz]

Videocard drivers sucks at Linux not Linux itself

[@TechySpeaking]

First

[@MagicalCritical]

just hate seeing that terminal info thing. you dont know your computer? such a mofo trend............

[@nynros31415]

Maybe Debian would be an alternative

[@gaborm4767]

Linux, especially Fedora getting worse and worse. Now It is required to reboot for all system updates even if that is a minor update.