What distros have you tried and thought, "Nope, this one's not for me"?

case_when@feddit.uk to Linux@lemmy.ml – 240 points –

I've been using Linux Mint since forever. I've never felt a reason to change. But I'm interested in what persuaded others to move.

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Admittedly, it's been a few years and I'm coming due, but let's see what I can remember...

  • apt will brick itself if it gets interrupted mid transaction with no clear recourse apart from a total reinstall, so try not to get greedy and Ctrl+C if it looks like dpkg is hung
  • trying to install any software that isn't already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you're quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile
  • snapcraft, need I say more? Firefox takes several minutes to start up, we don't talk about disk usage, installing a package with apt will sometimes install the snap version anyway requiring a Windows-registry-edit-esque hack to disable, and the last time I checked in, the loop devices it creates didn't even get hidden in the file manager.
  • I've also definitely encountered my fair share of bugs and broken packages which are always fun to fix
  • apt will brick itself if it gets interrupted mid transaction with no clear recourse apart from a total reinstall, so try not to get greedy and Ctrl+C if it looks like dpkg is hung

You can dpkg -r the package you tried to install then apt won't complain about missing dependency packages for your app as it won't be marked for to be installed

trying to install any software that isn't already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you're quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile

There isn't a big global community repo per say like aur but anyone can host their own repos with PPAs, you just need to add them to your lists

Most apt quirks are there with Debian too, not just an Ubuntu thing. The rest of the things you mentioned are fair.

Well there is this one thing where ppas break updates.

  • trying to install any software that isn't already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you're quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile

In fairness it does have the PPA system which predates the AUR and does provide a good job of providing third party amd semi-third party software.

But you're right that Ubuntu has sold out on building snaps for software instead of ppas.

The PPAs weren't that useful. I mean they worked fine for the purpose, but if you used too many of them you'd eventually get your system into a dependency hell. That meant packages were stuck without updates and also blocking others from updating.

The other thing was that even if you kept clear of PPAs it was anybody's guess if you could upgrade to the next release. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't and you'd have to reinstall from scratch.

Put together it meant after a while you didn't bother upgrading period, or upgraded only major releases but by reinstalling from scratch every single time (and preserving /home). It was a chore and I resented it and kept putting it off.

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That Ubuntu would install the snap version of certain apps when I installed them directly in the terminal was the main reason I left Ubuntu after a few years. So annoying!

What do you recommend for ubuntu alternative? I want to leave for something else, but I also want all my programs to install and work fine. If an app supports ubuntu, would it support debian as well?

You can start by trying Linux Mint, it's based directly on Ubuntu but with most problematic bits of Ubuntu removed. Mint comes in several sub-flavors that mostly change the way your desktop looks and acts, start with the Cinnamon edition as it's the safest bet.

Or just use Debian. Ubuntu is based off it

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