Even better would be to automatically install vlc-plugins-all for people upgrading, so that it preserves the existing behavior.

If you need to restore it, back it up.

How do you plan to restore if the whole drive dies?

I’d say you want Linux from Scratch then, but even then the Linux kernel maintainers are making choices for you.

But Linus is very firm in that they never break userspace, so you should never see an issue like this when updating the kernel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment

Someone should inform whoever made that change. If a package is split in a new release, the initial state should match the final as closely as possible, in this case by installing the new optional dependencies automatically. (Although I’m not sure why they’d want to split everything out like that anyway; no other VLC distribution does that, so splitting is itself a violation.)

Maybe Manjaro might be an alternative? I haven’t personally used it. I don’t like this kind of surprise, so I stick to boring distros like Debian. I used to use CentOS but it was too boring.

Never say never.

If you’re buying used you’re not directly funding Google.

A Chromebook?

Firefox will get HDR on Firefox?

You can probably disable it entirely by changing the kernel boot options.

I’ve had some top scores on some hardware. Usually because I was the only one who had run it on that exact model of server CPU, but still…

Tl;dr:

The Gwangju Uprising was a series of student-led pro-democratic demonstrations that took place in Korea in 1980. These protests are known to have been violently suppressed by the military, resulting in a massacre of civilians, but the mod depicted protesters as armed and violent criminals (according to YNA), thus framing the military regime’s brutality as justified.

Destroyed, never to be seen again.

Well maybe virtualbox could be spun out first.

The best way?

Get rid of all the connected stuff entirely, delete all your online accounts, get rid of your cell phone and similar devices, start paying cash for everything. Close your bank accounts and keep your money under your mattress. Move into the woods, grow your own food, and don’t talk to anyone.

System76, Framework, even Dell officially supports Ubuntu in limited cases.

I’d just try a couple different distros and see which one has the fewest issues for you. If you like, you can pay for official support from Dell or Canonical. If you do identify an issue in a supported scenario (Ubuntu version + device model) they will actually help you troubleshoot and resolve the issue. RHEL is the same if you want to pay a bit more.

Yeah that might be it. Sddm is a display manager, you might be using it for your login screen.

You might be able to work around it by just setting the service to restart automatically, so that it comes up properly once a display is attached. But if you can, I would try reproducing it on a fresh and fully updated install, and open a bug report to the maintainers if you can. Linux developers generally try to make really sure their programs don’t crash like that.

Boot log/kernel/dmesg, X/Wayland/kde primarily. Been a long time since I’ve had to troubleshoot something like this so I don’t know the new kids on the block. Maybe upstart or dracut? Whatever manages the boot process now

That seems strange. What’s in the log?

So what does it have to do with Linux?

Believe all you want, reality doesn’t care.

I would recommend not touching system apps unless you have a very good reason for doing so. And be willing to risk breaking your device.