Pop!_OS 風味指引

Pop!_OS.md

Why I am writing this

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.

Some tips on Pop!_OS

Look and feel

1. The shortcut to call out a terminal is Super+T instead of most DE's Ctrl+Alt+T. Also, you may want to enable the top-left corner in dconf.

2. 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.

3. If you want the dark theme, remember to also set the corresponding shell theme. This requires a few steps:

   1. Install gnome-tweak-tool.
   2. Install the extension User themes. Along the way you are likely to need an additional browser extension.
   3. 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).

4. 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.

   1. Install plymouth-theme-pop-logo.
   2. 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.
   3. Regenerate bootstrap image: sudo update-initramfs -u, to take effect.

5. (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
   

6. (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 if pop-plymouth-theme is installed, you also have to rewrite the file /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth-pop to point to the new file.

Packages you might want

Pop!_OS comes with a minimal set of packages.

1. How do I get HTML5 h.264 Video working on Firefox?: ubuntu-restricted-extras.
2. Software updates: software-properties-gtk.
3. 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.

Minor issues

1. Change the grub config to show the menu, required for dual-boot: timeout-style Pop!_OS now uses systemd-boot.

Will be updated as I use it more :)

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