Ubuntu 25.04 desktop review and apps to install

Ubuntu 25.04

This new version of Ubuntu installs without a glitch in my ThinkPad X1 and Yoga 920, I setup this device with dual boot with windows 10, see install ubuntu on yoga 920

On this version of Ubuntu the touch screen works flawless. Both my Logitech K810 keyboard, M557 and M720 mice work great with Ubuntu. On the M557 even the mouse windows key works, My HP LaserJet M209 DW was detected and prints great. My external usbc monitor also works fine.

Fn+Space - turn on the keyboard light with 2 levels

 

Sound, wifi, hdmi, Camera and special keys work well on both laptops, without problems.

Track pad, Track pad lock button, Windows Key, Vol Mute/Up/Down , Airplane plane mode, WiFi, Bluetooth, Camera button, Lock Screen, Brightness buttons, PrtSrc, Power button, Camera recording works all works out of the box.

I normally install Signal, Spotify and Chromium all available on Ubuntu software store app installed by default.

 

I also normally install Slack, Zoom, Skype to allow me to work, these apps are great if you work on a corporate environment and you needed it for your work.

I never took time to setup the finger print scanner on the Yoga 920, but out of the box is not working.

The "Gnome Boxes App" that allows you to run virtual machines in Ubuntu is more user friendly to use in this version, you can create a VM in seconds, it downloads the Operating system for you and boots right into the OS.

For Windows you need a ISO image and some drivers but is also pretty easy too, I have a blog-post describing the process here.

Touch Screen for Yoga 920

Gnome is a great interface for touch screens, it works really well, if you use a mix between keyboard mouse and touch screen actions the default setup works really well.

Firefox the default browser is great when using the mouse and keyboard, but is terrible when using a touch screen, so if you need a finger friendly browser you need to install chromium. Chromium works really well while using your fingers.

If you use laptop in tablet mode, you should enable the accessibility mode in the settings, allow you to enable the on screen keyboard, but is should be activated automatically, in most cases.

HIDPI

If you have a HIDPI laptop like the Thinkpad X1 and Yoga 920 that can do 4k, Ubuntu also supports fractional scaling. This allows you to tune the fonts and windows scaling a bit more at the expense of CPU/battery.

I normally run my Thinkpad X1 and Yoga 920 at 4K with 200% scaling, but using 1080p is better to save battery. If I'm editing images or watching some videos in 4k I would keep it at 4K since you get more pixel details area for the images.

 

With scaling at 125% and 200% some apps like spotify, signal-desktop, chromium, vscode that are electron apps have problems resizing windows, where the resizing operation with the mouse is really slow to update. You can use the flag --ozone-platform-hint=auto but that creates other problems, but the resizing speed is fixed. This is not a problem if you run at 100%.

Chromium

Somehow chromium is not running with wayland by default, make the change below to Preferred Ozone platform to Auto. You can also run it on cmd with chromium --ozone-platform=wayland

 

Things todo after install is finished

Open "App Center" App and select the applications you like the best.

Here is a list of Apps that I like to install in my laptop

HP printer

 

Install Hp printer configuration tool, from HP.

 

sudo apt install hplip-gui

Gnome new tools

sudo apt install gnome-console gnome-shell-extensions gnome-tweaks gnome-text-editor

 

Add tray Icons support 

 

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-appindicator gnome-browser-connector

Video/Images

obs-studio - screen recorder

kazam - screen recorder

peek - screen recorder

mypaint krita pinta gimp - Image editors

Inkscape - vector images editing

blender - 3D modeling

kdenlive - Video editor

pitivi - Video editor

flowblade - Video editor

handbrake - multi-threaded video trans-coder.
flameshot - take a screen shot
shotcut - Video Editor

Rawtherapee - Image Editor

Sound

audacity - Sound editor
audacious - Audio player

soundconverter - Sound Converter

rhythmbox lollypop - Music Player

 

Games

sudo snap install steam 

sudo snap install geforce-now-desktop

Tools

stacer - System analysis

htop - System analysis

 

Office

sudo apt install libreoffice fonts-ipafont-gothic fonts-ipafont-mincho fonts-wqy-microhei fonts-wqy-zenhei fonts-indic libreoffice-lightproof-en openclipart-libreoffice mythes-en-us 

Vpn

sudo apt-get install network-manager-openvpn-gnome

Proton Vpn How to

 

https://protonvpn.com/support/linux-openvpn/

Games

steam - game engine, game store tons of games available.

For codecs needed for Video and Sound Install

sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras

To run other Linux Instances or windows vms [and see my other blog post how to setup windows].

sudo apt-get install virt-manager gnome-boxes

Install Apps command line

sudo apt install mypaint krita pinta shotcut blender kdenlive pitivi flowblade audacity kazam stacer htop flameshot gimp steam audacity audacious handbrake soundconverter obs-studio peek

Open App Center

Configuration:

Install GNOME Tweaks

Messenger:

Install Spotify

Install Signal

Install Slack

Install Skype

Install Discord

Install Telegram

Video Calls:

Install Zoom

CMD Line:

sudo snap install signal-desktop

sudo snap install telegram-desktop

sudo snap install discord

 

Firefox Plugins

Disable all tracking Cookies - https://privacybadger.org/

Firefox private Network VPN - https://fpn.firefox.com/vpn