Updated: July 24, 2024
In my Kubuntu 24.04 review a few days back, I asserted that the distro does not have a GUI driver management utility, and that this is probably the worst aspect of this system. As it turns out, I was wrong, but for all the right reasons! Now, this wee fiasco actually allows me to write an important article that addresses basic usability in Linux distros. I find it a bit weird to be writing this, in 2024, but hey, the Linux desktop has not really progressed much in the last decade, and even regressed a lot in many aspects.
Let me show you how things went, and why I came to my wrong conclusion, and then how, the over-nerdiness can actually lead you down the wrong path. This article will be useful, as it's going to highlight a dozen cardinal problems with how Kubuntu (and Linux in general) manages basic user-facing stuff. Let's commence.
No driver tool shows in system menu
This is what actually threw me off. I searched for driver in the system menu, and nothing came up. I assumed, based on this finding, that there isn't anything available. The same issue affects Kubuntu 22.04 and KDE neon, which shows you that 1) no one cares 2) Linux nerds do their stuff on the command-line and/or do not use proprietary drivers and associated hardware 3) QA ain't being done properly.
Discover & System Settings
What compounds the problems further is a set of factors - any accident is always a chain of small mishaps. In the past, Discover used to offer proprietary drivers through its interface. Not anymore. This gave me further "proof" that things aren't a-okay. Now, if you look in the System Settings, carefully, you will find the relevant entry. But this is merely a stub for launching a third-party application, the old and familiar tool, yup.
This things looks like it hasn't been updated in a while, and it's in fact an Ubuntu tool - including its look and feel. Notice the font difference. In a way, the entire thing - and the process - feels like an afterthought, especially since even Kubuntu's own menu won't let you tell this program exists!
Here's the entire sequence of problems that made me make a mistake of assuming that there is no GUI way to install my Nvidia drivers, and thus led me down the wrong path:
- System menu shows no "driver" entry - even though the tool is called kubuntu- driver-manager.
- Discover has no driver management functionality - which it had in the past.
- Discover should manage drivers - as we're talking about software installation, and this should not be fragmented or delegated elsewhere, especially since Discover also lets you set up backends for snaps and Flatpaks, plus it also manages firmware. Going via System Settings only to invoke a non-searchable third-party tool that doesn't even say Kubuntu in its window title (but does in its binary name) is weird and convoluted.
Doing the nerd thing
Provided you were as misled as I was above, if you "ask" the Internet what to do about proprietary drivers, you will probably get a suggestion to run the ubuntu-drivers tool (on the CLI, of course). I am familiar with it, and have used it before. The familiarity lulled me into complacency. I ran the tool, with its "recommended" auto-install option that borked my system. This brings up a few important questions.
- Why isn't ubuntu-drivers associated with kubuntu-driver-manager in some way?
- What happens if you use these two tools in parallel? Do they reflect the same data and changes?
- Why did the "recommended" option destroy my system?
- I was able to run the tool before doing a full system update, why was this possible? What consequences can happen as a result?
- What is the actual difference between the "recommended" option, which does not work, and me manually installing Nvidia drivers? Obviously there is some major difference, as the former killed both my network and the display. How or why, go figure.
My display after using the recommended driver set - also, no network.
Doing the "sensible" thing
I manually installed the Nvidia drivers, and things were fine thereafter. But then, I have tons and tons of fresh questions in this regard:
- Ubuntu used to do (and probably still does): install third-party drivers as part of the installation process. Alas, Kubuntu no longer uses the Ubuntu installer, it uses Calamares, which is a very nerdy and not-that-great installation wizard, so perhaps, as a result of that, there are no proprietary drivers on a fresh install. Regardless, I wonder why not give the user an option to install the relevant drivers during the installation process and avoid any hassle later on? Even the desktop tour wizard would be a fine starting point.
- Nouveau didn't really behave - why offer a solution that doesn't work well, and which offers only marginal performance in comparison to proprietary drivers, especially on older systems? This only creates problems and antagonism, and the user gets a bad, slow experience. That does not help Linux, at all.
- Why not introduce safety or sanity checks to prevent mistakes?
Conclusion
So, here we are. This little incident illustrates the general "approach" in the Linux desktop world quite well. Lots of partial solutions, all thrown together, without cohesion, without cross-checks, without any real attention to a higher goal: user experience. For twenty years that I've been using the Linux desktop, this has been an issue, bigger or smaller, but always present, always there. Someone makes a utility that install drivers. Great. It does a bunch of task-specific checks. But the problem is, the tool has no awareness of the system, no integration. Every nerdy tool does its own thing, and not always as well as it could or should. The dev-centric approach only works for the tiny, thin stratus of ultra-enthusiastic hardcore users, and no one else really.
My first failure was in relying on system output - clearly wrong as the utility is there, just the search could not find it, which is a major problem, but hey. My second failure was relying on the quality of provided utilities to satisfy the requirements without, let's face it, totally wrecking the system. My third failure was not anticipating the convoluted approach to a simple, cardinal need: third-party driver management. Hey, if anything, this is probably the most important element of the desktop usage. Drivers. Hardware. People don't buy expensive kit to have it run at 1/5th its capacity because of ideology. That maybe works in isolation, in idyllic scenarios, not in the real, cruel, pragmatic world. Anyway, you have everything now. My admission of error, a tutorial on how to get past the issues, and a wealth of functional bug statements that could be translated into making the desktop experience significantly nicer, friendlier. We can only hope. See you around.
Cheers.