Pop!_OS 21.04
A desktop distro that offers a different way of working… Neil Bothwick spends a night on the tiles with Pop!_OS.
A desktop distro that offers a different way of working… Neil Bothwick spends a night on the tiles with Pop!_OS.
Distros based on Ubuntu are ten a penny – well, cheaper than that because they are free, but you know what we mean. Ubuntu itself is pretty good, not to mention rather popular, so any remake of it needs to offer something special. Pop!_OS is slightly unusual in that it is developed by a hardware vendor, System76. While it is the default OS on their hardware, thanks to the joys of the GPL any of us can download and use it. Pop!_OS is based on Ubuntu, but is it sufficiently different to stand out from the multitude of Ubuntu respins?
Pop!_OS uses the Ubiquity installer from Ubuntu. Apart from the colours the installation experience is the largely the same as installing Ubuntu – easy and quick, with one significant addition: there is an option to encrypt the filesystem. This is not the directory-level encryption some distros offer, but full block-device encryption using the kernel’s dm-crypt layer, with a passphrase being required early in the boot process to unlock the disk. This gives some indication of the target market for Pop!_OS: those that want to use the computer for more than personal emails and web browsing.
The focus on productivity and creativity continues with the Gnome desktop, as it uses a tiling window manager. This writer has tried tiling window managers in the past and never been a fan, but we persevered for you dear reader. It’s a good way of working, as long as you are not too deeply stuck in your old ways, and is well worth devoting some time to getting to know it. Other advantages of the tiling system are that everything can be controlled from the keyboard. It is also possible to stack windows together, like tabs in a web browser – we used this feature in KDE4 and really missed it when it was removed. However, if you don’t like it, the tiling function can be switched off with a click on the top menu bar, giving the overlapping windows that we dinosaurs prefer.
The default desktop appearance is a little cartoony for our tastes, but it is clear and easy to find your way around, and we prefer it to the somewhat drab Ubuntu look. It is only a default and a couple of tweaks in the settings made it much more suited to our tastes. This may sound like a minor niggle, but for an OS intended for creative use, it is likely to be in use for extended periods and the ability to easily adjust it to your needs becomes more important with every passing hour.
Pop!_OS has access to all the software made available through Ubuntu’s repositories. If that is not enough, the Pop!_OS Shop (or package manager to you and me) also supports Flatpak packages for those occasions you need something they do not provide.
The support section of the web site contains a number of documents, although no single manual. A clue to the target market for Pop!_OS is that there is an article on switching from macOS to Pop!_OS, but no corresponding document for Windows users. One glaring omission for a distro aimed at those that use their computer for more than recreation is that there is no backup program installed by default. Yes, the support site has some information on setting up DejaDup, but we would expect this to be standard on a so called professionally used computer!
Despite the initial impressions, this is actually a distro for serious users and keyboard warriors. The tiling window manager and comprehensive keyboard controls take some getting used to, but once you get the hang of them your productivity will improve greatly. This, and the option to encrypt your hard drive when installing, set it apart from Ubuntu. It really is a different distro, not just a paint job.