Just have got annoyed since Ubuntu decides to drop Unity. I can't get a "clean" GNOME desktop since then. Pop!_OS is an excellent alternative, but as its developers have different guidelines, there are some caveats one needs to get noticed of.
-
The shortcut to call out a terminal is
Super+T
instead of most DE'sCtrl+Alt+T
. Also, you may want to enable the top-left corner in dconf. -
To have proper display of the "colon" (U+2236) in the clock for the lockscreen and the top bar, install the package
fonts-canatrell
and adjust its configuration:/etc/fonts/conf.d/31-cantarell.conf
:Diff (obsolete)
- <edit name="family" mode="assign" binding="weak"> + <edit name="family" mode="assign" binding="strong">
The built-in theme indeed uses this font, but you need to install/configure it manually to get it recognized by fontconfig.
(2023/12/24) It seems that this file has been removed. You should now create a file instead, with
mode=append
matching "Fira Sans". An exercise to the reader. -
If you want the dark theme, remember to also set the corresponding shell theme. This requires a few steps:
- Install
gnome-tweak-tool
. - Install the extension User themes. Along the way you are likely to need an additional browser extension.
- In GNOME tweak tool -> appearance, choose both "Pop-dark" in application theme and shell theme. It has some little glitches so far (18.04 rev. 32).
- Install
-
Pop!_OS had an exclusive splash screen before, but it is no longer installed by default (maybe to reduce boot time?). Follow the steps to install this plymouth theme.
- Install
plymouth-theme-pop-logo
. - Select the new theme:
sudo update-alternatives --config default.plymouth
. In the following prompt, select the one/usr/share/plymouth/themes/pop-logo/pop-logo.plymouth
. - Regenerate bootstrap image:
sudo update-initramfs -u
, to take effect.
- Install
-
(2020/5/2) If you want to rebuild the theme, remember to turn on "gresource" building or nothing would apply.
meson build -Dgnome-shell-gresource=true # THIS LINE cd build ninja sudo ninja install
-
(2023/2/24) The auto hinting did not work well on Fira Sans. As a result, I recommend replacing the UI font Fira Sans shipped with package
pop-fonts
from OTF to TTF.
To do this, remove the files from/usr/share/fonts/opentype/fira/FiraSans*.otf
manually, and replace them with, for example, files from Google Fonts.
Note that ifpop-plymouth-theme
is installed, you also have to rewrite the file/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth-pop
to point to the new file.
Pop!_OS comes with a minimal set of packages.
- How do I get HTML5 h.264 Video working on Firefox?:
ubuntu-restricted-extras
. - Software updates:
software-properties-gtk
. - The default GUI package installer is Eddy instead of GDebi (@launchpad), which I personally prefers. Eddy is both elegant and feature-rich, but you might like to install GDebi back. The package name is
gdebi
.
Change the grub config to show the menu, required for dual-boot: timeout-stylePop!_OS now uses systemd-boot.
Will be updated as I use it more :)
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