So Ive been using basic LAMP stack VM's for a few years (which use Debian) for dev work, which have been great, but otherwine use Windoze.
I was given an old Intel NUC with a Celeron N3060 CPU (8GB RAM + SATA SSD), which i'm going to use to run Kodi... so due to CPU decided Linux would be better than Windoze. I'm already running Kodi on 2 other machines - a home built HTPC running Windoze & a Raspberry Pi 4 (running Raspian OS).
So I first installed Debian 12.4 on the NUC, and discovered that Gnome is a terrible GUI (Gnome is terrible like Win8 was a terrible UI). Played around with it abit, but was having issues with Terminal when trying to do just the simple;
sudo apt install kodi
it would prompt for (username) password, but would reject it... i also tried password for root, but that would also be rejected as i would expect.
So then i'd just su root, get prompted for root password - that gets accepted and then was able to install kodi.
I thought this was very weird behavior.. its requesting user password, but rejecting user password, as apparently the user password isn't valid for the user in terminal?
When i initially setup the Debian OS i also set it up to auto-login (or did the options for it), but it never would auto login.
Anyway, after abit of playing around with Debian abit, i thought id wipe the NUC and try out Ubuntu Mate (as i had the impression it was abit more lightweight), and thought id see if i have the same issues with it (Mate is also a way better GUI than Gnome).
So anyway (trying things out), i thought instead id use the Package Manager "Software Boutique" to install Kodi... but that installed "Kodi for Debian" (from a Debian repo) - and it installed an old, broken version of Kodi (it installed version 18, when current is version 20 - and it was broken because it couldn't install any 'official' kodi addon's - as in the repo didn't exist).
So i removed that by the Package Manager, and just went to terminal to sudo apt install kodi.. and had the same problem, the user password couldn't be used for the user in terminal.
So i thought id play around with it some more - i changed the user password, to be the same password (via user management), go back to terminal - and now the user password is accepted when i try to sudo install kodi. So apparently when the OS installs - Terminal has no association with the user password, until you reset the user password?? I was also having the same issue with Ubuntu Mate as Debian - it wouldn't auto login as configured.
I then setup some mappings for all the media for Kodi (the media is stored on a Win Server), enter all the login details for that, tell it to 'always' remember the password, but alas - on a reboot it no longer has the password for the Media on the Win server.
I then discover "Passwords & Keys" (under Accessories) in the Mate GUI menu, and read abit about Keyring on Debian (and also Ubuntu obviously).. as when ive used the Linux LAMP VM never had a need for any of this. So i discover Password isn't storing any passwords, discovered its using a 'default' account - which isn't based on the user account & i don't have access to the default account. A suggestion i found on the web, suggested deleting the 'default' account from Passwords, and setting your user account as default - so i did that. Ubuntu Mate now auto login's (doesn't prompt for password) when booting up, i can see its also now storing the password for the mapped drive with my media content - but im now being prompted to unlock the keyring store - and then the mapped drive passwords work... because apparently the user keyring store isn't associated with the logged in user.
Sorry for the long rant - but im wondering if other people have these issues surrounding passwords\keyring on Debian\Ubuntu Mate? Are these known issues which just haven't been fixed?
Like i mentioned at the start, Im using Raspian OS (Debian) on the Raspberry Pi and it has no issues with Passwords or Keyring at all... it all just works. But it seems in the latest versions of Debian & Ubuntu Mate its all horribly broken.
