awk can match patterns

The common pattern of grep X | awk '{...}' can sometimes be shortened to awk '/X/ {...}' instead. I'm not super clear on the details of awk vs. grep regex syntax, but relatively basic patterns work unchanged.

For instance, when trying to print the names of packages on the system that have been removed but left their config files behind (they are in "residual config" state), this snippet embeds the subcommand:

dpkg -l | grep '^rc' | awk '{print $2}'

Moving the pattern into awk to avoid running grep, we get:

dpkg -l | awk '/^rc/ {print $2}'

I know I shouldn't worry about system calls and "extra" processes being forked, but some old habits die hard.

Ubuntu Paper Cuts: 22.04

I installed Ubuntu 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish” as a guest in VirtualBox.  Some observations on the installer itself:

1. The default BIOS boot yields an 800x600 screen that does not fit the installer’s window. The progress bar is hidden from view.
2. EFI boot yields a better 1024x768 screen, but the graphics updating is very bad. (This could be VirtualBox’s fault—it looks a lot like the VirtualBox UI when it forgets to draw stuff until mouseover. Also, the resulting desktop in EFI works fine.)
3. The so-called minimal installation produces a full installation, then removes packages with the package manager, bloating the size of the VDI file backing the VM and placing unnecessary wear on the physical medium.
4. Even normal installation installs “everything,” then removes the other language packs.

Booting into the system reveals the following:

1. [edited to add] The loading animation disappears fairly early during EFI boot, leaving only two static logos (Ubuntu's, and one from the firmware) showing.
2. Asking the installer to download updates didn’t avoid having “Updates Available” immediately appear on the desktop.
3. Installing the updates didn’t avoid having Software show a dot (for 3 more Snap-related packages) on its Updates tab immediately thereafter.
4. Following that, Software had yet another dot on the Updates tab, but no updates.
5. Software doesn’t have an icon for the Health and Fitness category; it looks more like the “Windows default EXE” icon than anything.
6. The main page of Software had, as its top/largest app, an ad for Slack, in which some of the black text of the description overlapped the dark purple background of the Slack icon, rendering it partially unreadable.

All this, and I hadn’t even done anything yet.