Episode: 2740
Title: HPR2740: Pop!_OS 18.10 (quick) review
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2740/hpr2740.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 16:04:54

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This is an HBR episode 2740 entitled Pop exclamation OS 18.10 quick review.
It is hosted by Anik and is about 7 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is in this episode, Anik done a quick review on Pop OS 18.10.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
My name is Janik, I'm the French guy from Switzerland and in this episode I'm going
to do a quick review of Pop OS 18.10.
Prequared before we begin this episode, it was first recorded on December 17, 2018, and
it was first published on Toxjam episode 71.
So if you want to learn more about Toxjam, head over to Toxjam.otherside.network.
So on with the review.
Pop OS is published by System76, a USPC manufacturer that builds high-quality disc tops and laptops.
Their OS is a derivative of Ubuntu and it includes all the drivers needed for System76's
machines.
However, it is perfectly usable on any PC.
So I got the ISO from System76's website, I bunded it onto a USB key and booted my PC.
I was prompted with a language selection and then the country selection and then the keyboard
layout and that's where I encountered 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 drive, I didn't bother with partitioning, there is the possibility
to fully encrypt the disc 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 user name or password,
didn't ask for my network settings, etc.
So I waited and indeed once the OS was installed a message said after you reboot you will be
able to set up a new user, so I rebooted.
Once restarted the installation went on, I was able to select my Wi-Fi network which
worked perfectly despite using this very cheap Wi-Fi dongle.
I was presented with an option to turn off geolocation, which I did.
Of course it was 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, via manager, the terminal,
the pop shop software center and the application menu.
Talking about applications, popOS comes with a LibreOffice 6.1 for all your office needs,
Geary 0.12 for managing emails, Firefox Quantum 63 for browsing the web, and all the usual
tools that come with GNOME shell.
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 go to the terminal and see you up to install my applications.
On the front page of pop shop you will find an interesting choice of feature applications
called poppix, which includes Steam, Signal, Telegram, Slack, along with code editors
like Visual Studio Code and Atom.
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 a flat designer,
with bright and colorful icons, although there are some discrepancies between some icons
in pop shop and ones used by the desktop environment.
As part of the first things that I always do when I set up a GNOME based desktop 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 other story.
So I did install GNOME tweaks and dash to dock, and that went flawlessly, absolutely
no problem installing those extensions.
So once I had the desktop setup the way I liked it, I did use popOS for about two weeks.
And even though my machine, my test machine is not very fast, it's an old Dell workstation
from around 2012.
The desktopOS runs very smoothly, as long as I didn't run big 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 installing my usual stuff.
That's Python, Qt Creator, GCC, etc., etc., Visual Studio Code for editing code.
So I installed 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 dialogs,
that are not translated in French, even though they are translated in French on Ubuntu
16.4LTS.
The regional 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, I had 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 regional 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 ago, I'm pretty sure
you won't be disappointed.
And that concludes this quick review of popOS.
If you want to get in contact with me, you can send me an email at Yanik at Frenchguide.ch
or leave a comment on the HPR website.
I will certainly record an episode sometimes in the near future, so in the meantime, take
care of yourselves, cha-chao!
This episode is released on the Recreative Commons non-commercial biotribution license.
The sound used in the opening and closing sequence is speaker X-clash by Daniel H, released
on the Recreative Commons non-commercial biotribution license and available on Jemento.
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