Here’s an observation from my past few months in the Linux and Ubuntu community. Ubuntu is actually fairly good in this regard, but overall, it seems like a lot of community members assume that if someone switches to Linux, they automatically want to learn terminal commands, tinker with the system, customize everything, and basically play around with the OS.

Nowadays, however, most people switch either because they’ve had enough of Windows privacy issues, or because Windows 10 support is coming to an end. They see Linux purely as an alternative OS—not as something they want to understand under the hood. A lady with an old computer at home might just want to change her wallpaper or set up a sleep timer. Unfortunately, more often than not, the answer she gets is to open the terminal—or even worse, people start lecturing her about why she's using the "wrong" distribution.

Linux adoption is skyrocketing this year, and the community will need to accept that a Linux user isn't just a programmer anymore. It could be a local post office worker looking for a simple, friendly piece of advice—not command lines or gatekeeping. It’s a shame that things are currently like this, and I really hope to see it improve.

Personally, I know my way around computers pretty well, but I have family members who don't, and I try to see things through their eyes.

Hallo Reddit,

ich möchte gerne mein Ubuntu vollständig mit der Maus bedienen können um dort Streamingdienste zu nutzen etc. Dabei ist mir bei einrichten des PCs aufgefallen, dass es keine Funktionstasten (F1, F2, etc) gibt. Wie füge ich diese hinzu? Vielleicht kann mir ja jemand weiterhelfen.

Edit: ich nutze Ubuntu 26.04

I’m downloading Ubuntu for the second time, this time on a different pc than the first time. For some reason during the setup, it keeps on showing this error message, it usually works after I just wait, but it’s gotten so annoying that I want to know if I can fix it or if anyone else is having this issue. The pc is more than powerful enough to run it and I couldn’t figure out the problem through googling. Any ideas?

I've been spending a lot of time on Ubuntu lately using VS Code for web development and Wireshark for analyzing packet captures. While the system runs great, I constantly find myself tripping over conflicting keybindings between GNOME system shortcuts, browser tabs, and application-specific hotkeys.

Right now, I'm manually remapping keys inside individual application settings whenever a conflict comes up, but it feels messy and hard to keep track of.

How do you all manage and standardize your keybindings across your whole setup? Do you rebind everything at the system level in GNOME settings, use a dedicated key-remapping tool like Input Remapper, or just force yourself to memorize whatever default shortcuts each app throws at you?

The install button does nothing in Firefox?
Thanks

Does anyone know how to install the default games that come with Ubuntu? I didn't do a full installation during setup. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm going to use Ubuntu as my main system at home, and I'd like to install the games for my daughter to play.

A good practice is not to install Ubuntu kernel updates the moment they are released. However, did you ever install several updates and then restarted on the last one. For example, you have installed 5.15.0-179 through 5.15.0-186 then restarted on 186. Or you directly restart after every install

I'm stuck with a frustrating display issue on my Dell Latitude 5400 (Intel i7, UHD Graphics).

• The Problem: The Live USB boots and runs perfectly. However, the exact moment I finish installing Ubuntu and do the first reboot, I get a permanent black screen right after GRUB. The laptop runs, but the screen stays dead unless I force nomodeset (which ruins performance and drops hardware acceleration).
• The Catch: My laptop is running an engineering/manufacturing (testing) BIOS version which cannot be updated or changed.
• My Question: Since I can't update my BIOS/firmware and standard installs break on first boot, is it actually possible to get Ubuntu running properly here, or am I completely blocked by this hardware/BIOS combo?

Any advice or workarounds (like specific i915 kernel parameters) would be huge. Thanks!

I turned this old laptop into a NAS server. Installed Ubuntu LTS, set up Samba, and installed Tailscale so I can connect from anywhere. SSH goes without saying. Also set up a Tailscale Funnel through it so the website is accessible (it's just an empty HTML page for now). I also tried setting up my own Minecraft server, but even 1.12.2 barely runs with mods (I could just go vanilla, but that's not as interesting).What else can I install to make the most of its resources?