This is a great summary. Thanks!

It looks like you are running XFCE instead of GNOME (the normal Ubuntu desktop). I’m not sure how that happened… but you an always just install another desktop.

For instance, you can try to make sure you have the ubuntu-desktop or ubuntu-desktop-minimal metapackage installed:

sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop-minimal

After that, the login manager should allow you to select the Ubuntu session rather than the XFCE one.

Still using mutt after two decades (with isync for fetching).

Yes, based on the diagrams on their blog, it looks like this only impacts Snaps.

From the Discourse Blog:

The Linux desktop provides XDG Desktop Portals as a standardised way for applications to access resources that are outside of the sandbox. Applications that have been updated to use XDG Desktop Portals will continue to use them. Prompting is not intended to replace XDG Desktop Portals but to complement them by providing the desktop an alternative way to ask the user for permission. Either when an application has not been updated to use XDG Desktop Portals, or when it makes access requests not covered by XDG Desktop Portals.

Since prompting works at the syscall level, it does not require an application’s awareness or cooperation to work and extends the set of applications that can be run inside of a sandbox, allowing for a safer desktop. It is designed to enable desktop applications to take full advantage of snap packaging that might otherwise require classic confinement.

So this looks like it complements and not replaces the XDG Desktop Portals, especially for applications that have not implemented the Portals. It allows you to still run those applications in confinement while providing some more granular access controls.

I used to use VLC for music, but these days I use Symphony to play local files on my phone. VLC tended to struggle when scanning or indexing large folders (which it did all the time…), while Symphony is a bit better at that. That said, I still use VLC for video and for casting things from my DLNA server (VLC supports Chromecast).

For ebooks, I’ve used Librera FD and that has been mostly OK. I’ll checkout the two you mentioned though. Thanks!

I think you meant Pop!_OS (is developed by System76). TuxedoOS is developed by Tuxedo Computers, which is a European Linux focused hardware company.

That said, the point stands… there are hardware companies making Linux supported devices.

Not a bad list. Off the top of my head, I would say it is missing two things:

1. Discrete Math (formal logic, sets, probability, etc)
2. Theory of Computing (not just algorithms, but things like Turing machines, NFAs, DFAs, etc.). These may not be strictly the most practical courses, but I think a Computer Science degree would be incomplete without these.

The “Introduction to Operating Systems” link no longer works (redirects to “Autonomous Systems” courses). Instead, I would recommend using Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces, which is the textbook I use in my OS course.

Finally, something like The Missing Semester of Your CS Education would also be a nice extra.