Gihan Jayatilaka : Blog : Dump

I recently updated to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS from 22.04 for a bunch of reasons. Here are a few tweaks I did to make it look more like Ubuntu 22.04.

• Getting the "tab" for active app on the top bar

  1. sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager
  2. Extension Manager > Browse > App menu is back

• Getting the full bottom panel (I cannot remember if this was the default for Ubuntu 22.04 or if I set this up because I wanted Ubuntu 22.04 to look like an older version)

  1. Settings > Ubuntu Desktop > Panel Mode (ON), Position on Screen (BOTTOM)

• Getting the "Activities button" (I don't think this is very important for me. Please drop an email if you know a good fix.)

I generally want to use a version of Ubuntu (or any OS) for as long as possible. However, I had to upgrade from 22.04 to 24.04 because of the following reasons.

1. I strongly prefer apt/dpkg to snap/flatpak. I totally acknowledge the utility of snap for servers (which have to be very stable) or PC users who would rather pick bloat over having to tinker. Personally, I'd rather fight all the dependency issues rather than putting up with the bloat and duplicates that come with snap or flatpak.

2. When I try to install some software, the right version of libc6 was not available for Ubuntu 22.04. The workaround for this would have been to either install the snap version of the software (no!), use distrobox/docker kind of container with Ubuntu 24.04 with the new version of libc6, find a version of the software that works with older libc6, or try to compile the software with the older libc6 by myself. I decided to go to Ubuntu 24.04 and do none of these.

3. The irony of going to Ubuntu 24.04 to avoid snap is not lost on me.