This in HPR episode 2740 entitled Pop Exclamation OS 18.10, quick review.
It is posted by Anik and in about 7 minutes long, and Karimak Lean flag.
The summary is in this episode, Anik and Akwik review on Pop OS 18.10.
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Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of HPR, my name is Janik, I'm the French
Galaxy from Switzerland, and in this episode I'm going to do a quick review of Pop OS 18.10.
Quick word before we begin this episode, it was first recorded on December 17, 2018, and it
was first published on Tux Jam episode 71.
So if you want to learn more about Tux Jam, head over to Tux Jam.otherside.network.
So on with the review.
The OS is published by System 76, a USB-C manufacturer that builds high-quality disc tops and
laptops.
There are OS is a derivative of Ubuntu, and it includes all the drivers needed for system
76's machines, however it is perfectly usable on any PC.
So I got the ISO from System 76 website, I burned it into a USB key, and booted my PC.
I was prompted with a longwatch selection, and then the country selection, and then the keyboard
layout.
That's where I uncontrolled my first problem.
I spent sometimes trying to locate the Swiss French layout, I couldn't find it, and
that was because it was hidden under the Swiss German layout as a sub-option of that, why
I have no idea.
So then it was possible to either use the live CD or install the OS, so I chose a full
installation on the whole driver, I didn't bother with the partitioning.
There is the possibility to fully encrypt this or just the partition, or nothing at all,
which is what I went with, and then the installation started.
I thought I had missed something because it didn't ask for a username or password, didn't
ask for my network settings, etc.
So I waited, and indeed, once the OS was installed, a message said, after your reboot,
you will be able to set up a new user, so I reboot it.
Once we started the installation went on, I was able to select my Wi-Fi network, which
worked perfectly, despite using this very cheap Wi-Fi don't go.
I was presented with an option to turn off geolocation, which I did, of course it was
then unable to find my time zone, so I had to specify that, then came the screen where I
could connect my online accounts, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, you name it, and finally
I was able to set up the main user for the machine, after that I was automatically logged
in into a GNOME session.
So to any GNOME user, this would be a very familiar territory, the usual top bar with the
Activities menu item, opens up the dash on the left side of the screen, by default,
this dash presents icons for Firefox, FireFox, FireManager, the terminal, the pop shop
software center, and the application menu.
Talking about applications, PopOS comes with a LibreOffice 6.1 for your office needs,
Geary 0.12 for managing emails, FireFox Quantum 63 for browsing the web, and all the usual
tools that come with GNOMEShell.
The software center looks as far as I can tell, like the default GNOME software center,
but I was never a fan of those things, I always got to the terminal and see do apps
installed my applications, and on the front page of pop shop, you will find an interesting
choice of future applications called PopPixel, which includes Steam, Signal, Telegram, Slack,
along with code editors like Visual Studio Code and Atoma, and also Ultimaker Cura for
those of you who have a 3D printer.
On the UI front, PopOS is very modern, the default theme is flat, as in the flat designer,
with bright and colorful icons, although there are some discrepancies between some icons
in pop shop, and one is used by the desktop environment.
As part of the first things that I always do when I set up a GNOME is this top environment,
I installed a few extensions, mainly because I'm not a big fan of the dash on the left
hand side of the screen, I guess it reminds me too much of Unity, which I never liked,
but that's a whole whole story, so I did install GNOME Tweaks and dashed to dock,
and that went flawlessly, absolutely no problem installing those extensions on.
So once I had the desktop setup the way I like it, I did use PopOS for about two weeks
on, and even though my machine, my test machine is not very fast, it's an old Dell
workstation from around the 2012, PopOS runs very smoothly, as long as I didn't run
a bit graphical applications, however I did run GIMP, and it was usable, it was not very fast,
but it was usable. As it is based on Ubuntu, I really had no problem studying my usual stuff,
that's Python, Qt Creator, GCC, etc, etc, visual studio code for editing code.
Also, I installed the SnapD and a few snaps, just to check that they were working properly,
and again, no problem running those apps on PopOS. Now besides the keyboard layout section,
there were a few other things that didn't go as well as I was expecting.
First, there are a few places, whether it's application names or options in some dialogues,
that are not translated in French, even though they are translated in French on Ubuntu 1640, yes,
the original settings were wrong for the clock, it was using a MPM instead of 24 hours,
also I think the elements of the date were in the wrong order, and I had difficulties
using Netflix on Firefox, hired to install a package name Ubuntu restricted extra,
which is as far as I know not installed on Ubuntu proper, prior to installing this package,
I did install Google Chrome to try Netflix on it, and even though it didn't require any additional
package, it was all jerky and barely watchable, so once the package was installed,
there was no change in Chrome still very jerky, but Firefox did a wonderful job,
and streamed the video on my non-optimized setup very smoothly.
So to conclude this short review, I'm very pleased with PopOS,
being based on Ubuntu and GNOME, it feels very familiar to me, and once I had fixed the original
settings and installed the missing package for Netflix, I didn't have any trouble using it,
as if it was my main machine, it also seems to be running faster than Ubuntu proper on this
very slow test machine, so if you like GNOME Ubuntu and flat design,
definitely give PopOS a go, I'm pretty sure you won't be disappointed them, and that concludes
the discrete review of PopOS, and if you want to get in contact with me, you can send me an email
at yannickatferenceguidedch, or leave a comment on the HPR website, I will certainly
record an episode sometimes in the name of future, so in the meantime, take care of yourselves,
cha chao!
This episode is released on the recreative commands non-commercial by attribution license,
the sound used in the opening and closing sequence is speaker xclash,
by Danielle H, released on the recreative commands non-commercial by attribution
license, and available on jamendo.
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