My Journey Back to Ubuntu: Embracing Change

May 3, 2023

When I first dabbled in the world of Linux, Ubuntu 6.04 Dapper Drake was my go-to choice. As a young tinkerer, I reveled in the challenge of compiling my own WiFi drivers and spending countless hours setting up Compiz. Ubuntu was my daily driver, while Windows remained for gaming and macOS for occasional use. Despite this, I always had a special place in my heart for Ubuntu.

When Canonical made the switch from Gnome 2 to Unity, I was impressed by their groundbreaking work. But the transition to Gnome 3 left me feeling a bit... off. And so, I made the leap to Fedora, which I've been using ever since, even sharing my setup experiences in blog posts.

However, change has a way of calling to us, and I recently found myself yearning for something different. Despite some negative press surrounding snaps, I decided to give Ubuntu another shot. To my delight, I've fallen in love with it all over again!

After a bit of tweaking, I've settled on three key changes that have made my Ubuntu experience even better:

1. Always auto-hide the dock

I set the Ubuntu dock to auto-hide instead of intellihide. I appreciate the dock's functionality, but I prefer it to remain hidden when not in use. To do this, I run:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock intellihide false

2. Fixing scaling on the login screen

I adjusted the login screen to 2x scaling. With a 4K monitor, I find it visually appealing to maintain the same scale during login as I have on my desktop

First, I edit the configuration file for gschema by opening it in nano:

sudo nano /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/org.gnome.desktop.interface.gschema.xml

Then, I edit the Window scaling factor section and change it to 2 <default>2</default>
Finally, I recompile the schemas

sudo glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas

3. Install restricted extras

Then I set up restricted extras, it's mainly for microsoft fonts to fix things like the ugly font in the steam snap and the font in the microsoft sso login screen, but comes with a few other things as well.

sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras

And that's it! Comparing this to my post about setting up fedora, I can see that it's more aligned out of the box with what I'm looking for. I'm excited to see what the future holds for Ubuntu. I'm also looking forward to sharing more of my experiences with you in the coming months.