Is Ubuntu deserving the hate?
Long story short, I have a desktop with Fedora, lovely, fast, sleek and surprisingly reliable for a near rolling distro (it failed me only once back around Fedora 34 or something where it nuked Grub). Tried to install on a 2012 i7 MacBook Air… what a slog!!!!! Surprisingly Ubuntu runs very smooth on it. I have been bothering all my friends for years about moving to Fedora (back then it was because I hated Unity) but now… I mean, I know that we are suppose to hate it for Snaps and what not but… Christ, it does run well! In fairness all my VMs are running DietPi (a slimmed version of Ubuntu) and coming back to the APT world feels like coming back home.
On the other end forcing myself to be on Fedora allows me to stay on the DNF world that is compatible with Amazon Linux etc (which I use for work), it has updated packages, it is nice and clean…. Argh, don’t know how to decide!
Thoughts?
I am not in the mood for Debian. I like the Mint approach but I am not a fan of slow rolling releases and also would like to keep myself as close as upstream as possible, the Debian version is the only one that seems reliable enough but, again, it is Debian, the packages are “old”. Pop Os and similar are two hops away from upstream and so I’d rather not.
Is Snap really that bad?
Edit: thank you all for sharing your experience !
I avoid Ubuntu because Canonical has a history of going their own way alone rather than collaborating on universal standards. For instance, when the X devs decided the successor to X11 needed to be a complete redesign from scratch companies like RedHat, Collabora, Intel, Google, Samsung, and more collaborated to build Wayland. However, Canonical announced Mir, and they went their own way alone.
When Gnome3 came out it was very controversial and this spawned alternatives such as Cinnamin, MATE, and Ubuntu's Unity desktop. Unity was the only Linux desktop, before or since, to include sponsored bloatware apps installed by default, and it also sold user search history to advertisers.
Then, there's snap. While Flatpak matured and becoame the defacto standard distro-agnostic package system, Canonical once again went their own way alone by creating snap.
I'm not an expert on Ubuntu or the Linux community, I've just been around long enough to see Canonical stir up controversy over and over by going left when everyone else goes right, failing after a few years, and wasting thousands of worker hours in the process.
You're not wrong, but there's also value in exploring different ways to do similar things. That's what's great about Linux.
Some of Canonical's efforts may lead to failure, but that doesn't mean they are a waste.
One thing is to explore different ways to do things, like many projects do, but ubuntu goes further and FORCES people to use their experiments, as if they're some sort of testing ground, not as if they're the most used family of linux distros and the one a lot of people rely on.
Edit: Sorry if my tone was excessive, I think I'm getting grumpy with age.
Haha, I get it. No offense taken.
I don't disagree. But for better or worse, most people don't think that much about their software.
Folks like us who do? We can make informed decisions.
Folks who don't? Canonical's experiments are probably still better than dealing with Windows 11 or macOS.
Like snaps. They are different then flatpaks. You can use them for cli apps don’t think flatpaks can be.
Flatpaks can also be used to run CLI programs, but it requires using
flatpak runinstead of using the apps standard CLI command. But you can create an alias and should work mostly the same way.For example, I have neovim on my Debian laptop via flatpak. So in order to run it, you have to do
You can create an alias for that command
And then you can use the nvim command as normal
Pretty much this, they don't deserve hate but i won't recommend them either
To give credit where it's due: Mir was pretty neat, actually. It had features that modern Wayland still lacks or has only recently gained. Ubuntu got an X replacement up and running in record time, but the rest of the ecosystem stuck with Wayland, so they cancelled their solution.
And you know what? Snap does solve some issues in interesting ways that Flatpak doesn't. Unfortunately, the experience using Snap is rather inferior (and that goddamn lowercase snap folder in my home directory isn't helping), but on a technical level I'm inclined to give this one to Snap.
Developing and maintaining Ubuntu costs money and unlike Red Hat, Canonical isn't selling many support contracts. Their stupid Amazon scope and the focus on Snap are part of that, they just want to give businesses a reason to pay Canonical.
They're trying very hard, but it just doesn't seem to take off. Their latest move, pushing Ubuntu Pro to everyone, seems like a rather desperate move. I think Ubuntu is collapsing and I think Canonical doesn't know how to stop it. I don't know about you, but I've never paid for an Ubuntu license and I don't know anyone who does, either.
People dont hate on ubuntu cause its inherently bad. They hate on it because its a corporate distro and they do some questionable stuff sometimes. The OS runs fine.
Why not debian unstable? Its better than ubuntu in pretty much every way imo. Somewhat less user friendly i guess.
Is Debian unstable really unstable or is just like.. Ubuntu?
Debian unstable is not really unstable, but it's also not as stable as Ubuntu. I'm told that when bugs appear they are fixed fast.
I ran Debian testing for years. That is a rolling release where package updates are a few weeks behind unstable. The delay gives unstable users time to hit bugs before they get into testing.
When I wanted certain packages to be really up-to-date I would pin those select packages to unstable or to experimental. But I never tried running full unstable myself so I didn't get the experience to know whether that would be less trouble overall.
It's unstable in the sense that it doesn't stay the same for a long time. Stable is the release that will essentially stay the same until you install a different release.
Sid is the kid next door (Iirc) from Toy Story who would melt and mutilate toys for fun. He may have been a different kind of unstable.
Neither is unstable like an old windows pc.
Unstable is pretty damn stable, feels arch-y to me, and arch rarely has issues. If there are issues they're fixed fast.
Testing is the middle ground. Tested for a bit by unstable peeps but thats it.
IIRC packages have to be in unstable with no major bugs for 10 days before migrating to testing. It's a good middle ground IMO.
Of course, you could always run unstable and be the one to report the bugs :)
It's not actually unstable, more accurately it's tested and verified as much as Debian stable, meaning it's fine for desktop use but I wouldn't use it for a server or critical system I plan on running 24/7 without interruption, both since it may have bugs that develop after long term use and gets more frequent updates which will be missed and render it out of date quickly if it's running constantly.
It's relatively alright for something that's called unstable. There is also testing which is tested for at least 10 days. And you can mix and match, but that's not recommended either.
I wouldn't put it on my server. And I wouldn't recommend it to someone who isn't okay with fixing the occasional hiccup. But I've been using it for years and I like it.
However, mind that it's not supported and they do not pay attention to security fixes.
I used to run Debian testing on my servers. These days I don't have much free time to mess with them, so they're all running the stable release with unattended-upgrades.
To be clear, it can still get security updates, but it's the package maintainer's responsibility to upload them. Some maintainers are very responsive while others take a while. On the other hand, Debian stable has a security team that quickly uploads patches to all officially supported packages (just the "main" repo, not contrib, non-free, or non-free-firmware).
Thanks for clarifying. Yeah I implied that but didn't explain all the nuances. I've been scolded before for advertising the use of Debian testing. I'm quite happy with it. But since I'm not running any cutting edge things on my server and Docker etc have become quite stable... I don't see any need to put testing on the server. I also use stable there and embrace the security fixes and stability / low maintenance. I however run testing/unstable on my laptop.
It's a dumping ground for new packages. Nobody makes any guarantees about it. It's supposed to be used only as a staging area by developers.
It may happen to work when you install it or it may crash constantly. You don't know.
Use MX Linux instead, I will never go back to something else
What are the advantages in your opinion?
Side question on this, why are people suggesting Debian, a stable but “old” distro, but never mention RHEL / Rocky? They are on par with stability (and quite possibly RHEL wins on it). Did you know that you can get a free licence if you register as a developer?
If we pretend the issue is just the corporate aspects of Ubuntu/Canonical, Red Hat and RHEL have all of those and then some. People just try not to think about that because Fedora is so nice.
As for Rocky: The status of that is pretty much in massive flux since Redhat bounce between tolerating it and wanting it to be even deader than CentOS depending on the day.
The thing is R Hell can't legally block rocky from using their source, unless they break GPL or stop publishing their images to iron bank.
Are we really back to the 00s? Are we going to start calling it Micro$hill next?
And "Legally it can't be stopped" doesn't really bode well for long term support in the context of contributors and so forth. It won't prevent me from using Rocky (I actually really like it for servers I will likely re-image sooner than later) but it also means I am not going to recommend it to people looking for a distro.
When looking at the 8.x and 9.x releases Rocky is the most popular distro for enterprise Linux. Even more popular than R hell, and yes I'm still bitter about what they did to centos.
Technically they have to give the code to people who use their product. And the general public is not it. Except I guess the free license one would be problematic. Unless their is something in the license for your use.
You do not have to sign a licensing aggreement when you pull the image from Iron Bank, or spin up cloud VMs. In both of those cases you will get access to their source.
As the other reply said, Fedora and RHEL harbor the same problem as Ubuntu in terms of corporate backing.
They're all as stable at it gets when it comes to linux distros; all those "server distributions".
I guess people recommend debian because that's what they know. It's got the biggest community, so the most support.
Nothing against Rocky, but i wont recommend it if i've never used it.
Doesn't Debian still ship with X11 by default? For my desktop use, I can't go back from wayland.
Havent installed debian with a desktop environment in a long time. If its still default then its just that, default... meaning you could change it
I prefer software with defaults that are in line with my preferences. I rather have sensible defaults and a nice OOTB experience, instead of fighting my distro and it's packages.
Thats fair. I've jumped that ship a while back.
I checked and they seem to use wayland by default on gnome at least
Don’t think so. I mean it has X11 but I’m running Wayland can’t remember if it was installed by default though.
Snap has a locked and proprietary store, even if the client is FOSS. There is no reason to "hate" Ubuntu but there are better choices.
What are those better choices then (for those who currently use the non-LTS Ubuntu releases and don't want to move to rolling releases or LTS-only releases)?
You pretty much described Fedora. Non-LTS stable 6-month release cycle with 1 year of support for each release.
Never touching Fedora again. It’s a corporate distribution. As much as people might say otherwise redhat has a lot of pull over it. Look at the lawyers getting involved over pulling out the codecs.
Your loss, it's a great distribution and if you spent even a couple of minutes in our forums you'd see that the RedHat pull is due to them actually collaborating and being and active part in the community.
I was an Ubuntu person for a long time, and when reading criticism about the inability to upgrade versions, I realized that had been my entire experience. I decided to give a rolling release a chance, and it's been amazing.
I use arch(installer)btw. 🐧 AURs are pretty ingenuous, which is just pulling and compiling a git. Maybe a little less secure, but look at what happened to the snap store this year.
If you want to try a rolling release but didn't want to use Arch, there's always Fedora, & OpenSuSE Tumbleweed.
Outside of that, for non Ubuntu distros you could do OpenSuSE regular, or for true LTS use Rocky. Or take the red pill and go with Hannah Montana's Linux.
It's pitched as a open source operation system, yet the snap store is closed source and vendor locked, one of the reasons some of us use Liniux is because we prefer open source (and there are rational justifications for that).
Hate is a strong word, but there is legitimate criticism, I also think the closed source nature of snap led to the fact that it has no volunteers and that eventually caused malware to appear on the snap store multiple time, it never happened on flathub as far as i know.
Today for beginner i think opensuse and linux mint are better.
Regarding debian having old packages , i use nix but it is fairly immature, flathub should also work.
Snaps are centralised packaging, a'la Apple App Store or Google Play. Now if someone forked snapd, added third party repo and made It so you could select which repo is the main one, that'd be a start.
But as long as Canonical commits to a centralised form of distribution with no third party support I'm going to advise desktop users to stay away from Ubuntu.
It's more than just centralized control.
They have the ability to arbitrarily push out Snap updates.
That's right! Your production server is getting patched without your knowledge or consent. Thankfully they magnanimously decided to let admins delay it by a few weeks.
Linux is about control. I decide what my machine does. When it updates. What it updates. The feedback from Canonical regarding Snaps was so tone dead and condescending it made Steve Balmer look sane. It boiled down to, don't worry your pretty little head off. We know what's best.
What deranged donkey is using snaps for infra?
If you run Ubuntu on a production server, you better having snapd disabled.
They've embraced Wayland, pipewire, gnome and what not, but snap is really questionable, particularly in the Linux ecosystem.
I gather it can be somewhat annoying to contend with (I.e. some apps on Ubuntu may only be available as snaps?)
Snap is a steaming pile of excrement. So much of the crap on the Snap Store is obsolete and out of date. Anyone and their monkey can post a snap on snapcraft, and.. they do. Canonical is just as bad. They took it upon themselves to package up a lot of commercial-level open-source software 3 or 4 years ago... and then have done fuck all with it ever since. Zero updates to the original snaps they put there in the initial population of the Snap store (yes they do maintain a select few things, but only a small percentage of the flood of obsolete software in the Snap store). The result is people looking to install apps who poke the Snap store, go "oh hey, the application I want is there", install it, and then get all pissy with the vendor... who looks about in surprise wondering how a potential customer managed to find such an old version (happened with at least 2 of my employers, and I've come across many more). Go search Reddit (or Google) for obsolete snap discussions. There's no shortage people pointing at the same issue.
I wasn't aware of this situation, that's really good to know.
I'm not keen on the snaps being centralised behind a proprietary server. I don't really get why anyone would put up with that in light of Flatpak.
This doesn't seem to be a problem with snap. Canonical probably tried to show vendors a way how to distribute software commercially. But vendors are on the level of cavemen and don't know shit about Linux even after serving a solution. Or they simply don't care about building up a market opportunity.
I don't want to defend Ubuntu. I don't like Ubuntu especially, but it might be a simple explanation.
It's a problem with Canonical. They stepped up and created the snaps and then abandoned them instead of maintaining them. They still maintain the core that they include with the distro... it's all the extras they created to pad out the store... and then abandoned. "Look the snap store has so many packages"... yeah... no... it doesn't.
Why would a company who makes a commercial level open source package want to add snaps to their already broad Linux offering? They typically already build RPM (covering RHEL, Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, etc.) and DEB (covering Debian, Ubuntu, all Ubuntu derivatives, etc.)... and have a tar.gz to cover anything they missed. Why should they add the special snowflake snap just to cover Ubuntu which is already well covered by the DEB hey already make?
Sure, show vendors what's possible, but if Canonical stepped up to make the snaps, then they should still be maintaining them. It's not a business opportunity... its more bullshit from Canonical that no one wants.
I wouldn't call it hate, more like disapprobation with Canonical's choices. No one have to use Ubuntu, we have tons of distro to choose. If someone wants LTS, you can always go pure Debian way, it's not hard to install as it's used to be (for beginners), or there is Linux Mint Debian Edition. You can easily use flatpaks with these and keep your software up-to-date.
TIL a new word. Thanks, stranger! 🙂
I gave up on Ubuntu before the snaps became a thing. Here's what I hated :
Upgrading between Ubuntu lts releases never fully worked for me either. Something always broke or went wrong....
I also used it and dropped it years ago because it tended to break a lot in updates.
That, their poor kde support, their constant reinventing the wheel (poorly) drove me away.
Now I run opensuse as a rolling distro that's always up to date and just never breaks even when there are 6000 packages to update. It's boring and safe.
I also have had trouble during upgrades in the past.
I'll have to disagree about the purple and orange theme though. I'm personally a big fan.
Use whatever you want, why do you care about what feelings other people have towards Ubuntu?
Validation
Yes.
Install Debian, then install all the software you might need using Flatpak. There you go, solid and stable OS with the latest of with little to no effort. Bonus extra security.
or, you know, use testing or sid. Or just stop lamenting for old packages and just enjoy stability while making something productive :)
I'm not the one lamenting old packages, I run on stable perfectly happy. No issues there.
It's because Ubuntu is a company-backed distro consistently wants to go their own way. Not just snap but they've done it before with Unity and Mir (and probably others idk).
Course Fedora does literally the same thing and doesn't get any hate for it so idk. It's just a meme.
Personally I don't like Ubuntu because they didnt go far enough into their own ways but thats just me.
When have fedora gone their own way ¿? What have they shipped that is not standard on Linux¿? Closest thing I can think is using selinux and firewalld instead of Apparmour and ufw.
Well they also effectively control development of gnome. Not the exact same way Ubuntu did unity but still comparable.
Going for Wayland default is also another example (I can think of).
Fedora devs do listen to their users, tho.
Ubuntu is a tough one. I don't like it. I don't like snaps, but more than that I don't like their direction in general.
But I have some respect for them too. I think they played a pretty significant role in Linux being as popular (relatively speaking) as it is, and I don't feel like they have any ill intent.
So I don't personally care for it but I'm glad it's around I guess is my point?
There is no "supposed to" when it comes to distro preferences. Use whatever you like, other people's opinions do not dictate your behavior. If Ubuntu works for you, use that. If anything, that's the freedom of FOSS. You can take other people's views in to account when choosing a distro, but in the end it is your decision. I dislike Ubuntu for a few reasons, but I don't get to dictate to anyone else what they use and why.
If you like rolling release, you could try Debian sid/unstable. I hear it's quite stable and reliable and, of course, isn't Ubuntu.
Dietpie is a lightweight debian not ubuntu. And debian is still one of the top choices (if not the) for servers.
Ubuntu is just debian with extra bad decisions.
Ubuntu attacted a lot of control freaks because Shuttleworth was originally splashing some money when it started and a bunch of nerds saw dollar signs. As a result they have a culture of "not invented here" syndrome where someone just has to reinvent the wheel in only the way they see it and they don't work well with others or accept their input because they want all the credit.
Personally, I got sick of it having been pretty involved early on in the project. It's easier and saner to just use a distro based on what everyone else is doing.
In a nutshell, Ubluntu is trying to take user control off its users. And the users are mad because of it.
And yes, I'm talking about snap.
Most of the problems I've experienced with Ubuntu recently were caused by Snap. I really hate that they insist shipping that buggy mess.
I use Ubuntu for work and have no issues with it to be honest. I install everything via apt, I think a few things are via snap but nothing that I've installed directly. It's stable and I can get on with stuff. I definitely am not a fan of the move towards snap and the app store: if I was to choose I'd go vanilla Debian.
I'm daily driving Ubuntu and my experience aligns with this.
My only gripe is snaps can break copy/paste and prevent me from saving files where I want. This might make Ubuntu unusable for people using Linux for the first time and makes no sense if you dont understand how snaps are sandboxed and how permissions work. The solution is install with apt.
The installer, system configuration programs and UI experience is really good. I argue it is a much superior experience to Windows and arguably better than OS/X. A lot less garbage being shoved down customers throats.
I checked on my machine, and out of all the packages I had on snap, only Inkscape, VLC and Slack were also available on apt. Spotify, Whatsdesk (a WhatsApp client) and Signal were among the most commonly used missing.
Oh word! I forgot about Signal. I use the snap for that. It works well. I think copy/paste works with it.
I used apt for Firefox, Krita, ffmpeg, Blender and Ksnips
I think the big commercial programs I use were installed with vendor scripts
I don't hate Ubuntu, and it was my distribution from nearly 20 years. Meaning since it was first released until recently. I loved it for a long time because it was based on dpkg which was much better than rpm at the time AND it was way more user friendly than the others. Even as a software developer I like my distribution to move out of the way to let me focus on using it, not babysitting it.
But I moved away because of Snaps. Currently on Fedora and it's pretty good. I know it's possible to get rid of Snaps or use a derivative but I prefer to stay close to stock for whatever distribution I use.
If Ubuntu works for you and you don't mind snaps, then just use that!
So if
Same. The idea is to have a machine to code, not to babysit
Snaps pushed me to mint on one and endeavour on the other box.
For anything lower-spec (like, <4Gb of RAM), Ubuntu absolutely CHUGS because of Snaps. Flatpak has no such issue.
Ironically, Lubuntu (a lightweight Ubuntu fork) worked the best for me while I was using it. No slowness, but I installed pretty much everything using Apt (didn't know about Flatpak back then).
I ended up having it lock up and freeze on the sign-in page though, so I moved on to the slightly heavier Linux Mint.
I'm pretty happy using Ubuntu. Its got a decent UI and works well enough with little fuss. As much as I enjoy tinkering, I use my Ubuntu machines for work and I really only need something simple that works out of the box.
Also, while the applications I use can be installed on other platforms, they're only supported on Ubuntu.
I loved Unity. Also, I would argue that both Snap and Flatpak are bad. That said, be happy with whatever works for you. Ubuntu always gives me problems, whereas Fedora runs smooth. That said Ubuntu can read my old Passports, Fedora can't. They each have the benefits.
Flatpak is good because I don't need to check whether the program is available for my distro.
Before: click Linux icon. They offer a .deb and maybe .rpm
Now: click Linux icon, they tell you how to get it on flathub
And it's probably available on my distro too, but why bother? Didn't even search it
The beauty of Linux, at least for me, is that there's inter-dependability and so you can run apps using less space than you would on Windows. Linux is like a metaphor for society, if your neighbour has something you need, they should share and vice versa. But alas, some twats with a Windows fetish decided to introduce the likes of Flatpak and Snap 🤮
Then you don't use it, THAT is the beauty of Linux
Yeah I guess it really comes down to that.
Snap is terrible. If you have a bunch of snaps on your system, it becomes very slow and sluggish
I don't mind it, but I don't really use it for any of its features. I use i3 over Unity, I think Snaps (and flatpaks, appimages, etc) are dumb as shit.l, and don't even get me started on how garbage Nautilus is - drives me nuts trying to type a filename in to jump to it only to have Nautilus run a search instead... No idea who thought that was a good idea, but they need to fix that crap already.
I'd probably get by just fine with a full Debian setup tbh.
I still think Ubuntu is the best option (particularly if you want to use the non-LTS releases)
Having said that I do hate snaps and also dislike flatpaks. So what I do is just use the Firefox deb package from the PPA and the chromium package from Linux Mint. Oh, and I have actually replaced ubuntu-advantage-tools with a no-op dummy package.
Ubuntu is fine it's just a more bloated Debian geared towards being as user friendly as possible. Nothing wrong with that.
Ubuntu is nice. Apt/DEB works as they should. Some default apps, mostly browsers, are snaps now, but this does not bother you at all. You were getting them from your distro anyway.
Flatpak and AppImages work just fine if you need them.
The Ubuntu desktop (any flavour) just works. Others are different, but nothing is bad about Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is trying new things, proprietary to their ecosystem, e.g. Unity or snap. On the big picture, those are experiment. Ubuntu is still Linux.
The community reaction to snap is overblown. So Canonical developed something you don't like? Ignore it. This has mostly been a waste of time for them.
(Yes, maybe that dev time would be better spent on flatpak or open-source apps. But that's their time. I'm not paying Ubuntu developers, so can I really complain?)
They tried Unity and gave up for Gnome 3 - however they ship a heavily customized Gbome 3.
Now they're trying Snap. How long before they give up and use flatpak like every other distro?
What's the point of this?
Well, I'd file this as innovation. Innovation is trying and failing. It's an experiment. And I'm okay with this.
Is it wasteful to have KDE and Gnome? Why don't they give up and merge with each other? Did we really need systemd? Or docker? And why Wayland when every single distro is on X and every single application is on X?
Ubuntu started as a Gnome-based distribution and it is was better than the competition on the desktop at the time. Or good enough. It got popular.
Personally, I wasn't a big fan of Unity or Gnome 3, but it worked. I found snap totally weird and against how things should be on a Linux system. But snap updates (while still annoying) have solved problems with deb-based updates of browser ("Quit all running firefox or you'll experience problems").
Maybe I'd like Debian more. After all I came from Debian to Ubuntu. But it's not worth to make a fuzz.
I don't think it's wasteful to have both KDE and Gnome. It's healthy competition and as you say, innovation.
However the job of a distribution is to gather upstream software into a meaningful OS, and rewriting everything that should be an upstream software shared with other distributions is a distraction.
So Unity was unnecessary "not invented here" syndrome. Just like Snap is.
Or just use Debian sid, which effectively is Debian in a rolling variant. 🚀
Personally I don't really hate Ubuntu, but I tend to find that everything it does, there's something else that does it slightly better.
For example, it's supposed to be a good 'beginner' distro or good for something that 'just works', but IMO things like Mint or Pop!OS do it a little better these days. Snap is supposed to be a nice simple way to manage packages without worrying about dependencies, but Flatpak does it better and so on.
So yeah I don't hate it, I just don't see any particular reason to really use it. Opinions may vary though of course.
Long time since I used Ubuntu,, remember updates breaking network twice.. Peppermint OS, Debian(and devuan if you don't like systemd) based. all the important bits (not arch level) but nothing more. Rolling, Runs on 1 GB ram. Haven't distro hopped anymore since I found it.
Stable base , extra on top
“Everything you need and nothing you don’t."
Is it based on debian unstable or testing?
Bookworm stable. https://peppermintos.com/about/
I've run Ubuntu Server frequently on VMs for work, but I could kinda go either way on it. The majority of people who have issues with Ubuntu have philosophical differences. I'm inclined to agree for my personal stuff (in principle I'd rather not get my packages from a single source that works on their own whims, in practice I never use anything but Flathub unless I need a package with deeper permissions) primarily because I believe that Linux should be as open as possible. That said, I already mentioned that my principles there only apply to machines I own, so I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite 😅
i heard all this shit about linux and nvidia
i installed Ubuntu and EVERYTHING WORKS
You don't have to use Snap (except for LXC, I think?). It's not enabled by default, but you can enable Flatpak and everything will work fine. Flatpak has Firefox and Chrome and all the other applications thst Canonical foolishly moved from their apt repos to their Snap repos.
There are some frustrating things about Snaps (loading all of them at boot time rather than at runtime, for quicker app start but slower boot, for example, and that stupid snap folder that can't be moved) but honestly I don't really see what the fuss is about as an end user. Nobody sets up a purely Snap based system anyway.
The problem with Snap is an ideological one. If you don't care who runs your software store and if you don't care about having the ability to add more software stores then the default, you'll be fine with Snap. If you're ideologically driven towards Linux, you'll probably dislike the way Snap is set up.
Like it or not, Ubuntu is still one of the best supported distros out there. If you want drivers from any manufacturer, you get to pick between drivers tested for Ubuntu or Fedora. Every other distro repackages those drivers using their own scripts and compatibility layers because nobody over at Intel is going to spend company time specifically getting Garuda to work when its customers don't sell hardware with it preinstalled.
Software like Discord and VS Code having the ".deb, maybe .rpm, or you figure it out yourself" approach of official distribution is pretty standard, I'd say, for better or for worse. It also helps that a lot of entry level Linux questions and answers online are about Ubuntu. Askubuntu may not be as vast and up to date as the Arch wiki, but at least the askubuntu people aren't going to tell you off for not knowing advanced Linux stuff.
There are upsides and downsides to any Linux distro. You're not "supposed" to think anything, try it out, keep an open mind, and pick what works for you.
Thank you for the through answer, really put things in perspective
I recently got a workstation class desktop for my home server and I had so many issues with Debian that I have to search an alternative, Ubuntu supported the hardware natively and I even got a firmware update. I think the hate is really unfounded. Of course there is corporate decisions, but so far it has never get in my way. I have it with a lot of docker containers and a lot hardware integrations. Even the secure boot with nvdia card is easy. I only installed virt-manager via snap, the other things were directly with apt. I did enable the live patch and that’s a nice addition to don’t need to restart a lot.
I think you should give it a try, so far it has worked for me.
If it works for you then use it, however if you want the latest packages you'll have to NOT use the LTS releases in which case be prepared to do a FULL REINSTALL every time a new version comes out.
Or use the LTS but use Snaps for those applications that you want to have the latest versions of. Snaps are getting better and I think eventually you won't notice the difference between them and native apps, except for the space they just up. But that goes for Flatpak too.
Personally I use Linux Mint Debian Edition because I'm not happy with the way Canonical is going. In most cases the "old" apps are fine for me, but if I felt need the newest version I'll use a Flatpak.
Another rolling option is OpenSuse Tumbleweed however, being a Mac which uses proprietary WiFi drivers, your WiFi will break with kernel updates, which can be irritating, unless you have ethernet.
This is just wrong. You can update the LTS release to the next non-LTS release. You only have to unchecked "LTS only". You can also wait for the next LTS release.
You never need a full install. I haven't done such a thing for a decade.
Really? I wasn't aware, or I'd forgotten. Can you go from non lts to lts in the same way?
Well, from non-LTS, you can always go to +1, the next release. If this happens to be an LTS, sure, you will automatically be on LTS. (Then you can change your settings to say on LTS or keep tracking non-LTS release).
I think a lot of people dislike Ubuntu because of Gnome and Snaps, which is weird to me. You can fairly easily change desktop environment and most Snaps have apt or Flatpak alternatives.
I'm simply not going to support a distro that creates a proprietary service and ships it as the default source of software. I will support and use distros that open source their code so that everyone can benefit from it. Whether workarounds or alternatives exist is unimportant, my prime issue with Ubuntu and Canonical is with their principles, not Ubuntu's quality as a product to be consumed by me.
It's just simpler to pick a distribution that matches your choices out of the box, rather than hacking a distro. And I'm talking about Snap in particular.
Yes you can, afterall its based on debian. But its manual labor, and not to mention telemetry data sent to canonical.
I'm quite happy with Linux Mint Debian Edition. I think it is the future of Mint. It's on a very recent kernel, and more and more software I use nowadays is in Flatpaks anyways. I don't feel like I'm missing out on much new stuff, but maybe I'm just not aware.
How different is it from regular Debian? Like if I'm very experienced with Debian, does that equate to being able to easily use Mint Debian Edition too?
I found normal Debian to be a little unpolished for my liking. Even using the Cinnamon DE, it was lacking some niceties that Mint brings. I don't think you'll have any trouble using Mint.
*buntu doesn't even deserve threads like this.
There is some stuff that I hate, but I tend to come back to it for my home server just because of livepatch, which is nice to minimize the amount of reboots necessary and having a patched kernel for all my LXCs makes then also automatically protected.
What if you just use distrobox in the future? You can use debian/ubuntu with it on whatever system you use. On my fedora silverblue installation almost everything is seperated from the OS. I barely touch the OS. It doesn't really matter if I'm on silverblue, microos or vanillaos. I want to switch to microos because it comes with firefox as a flatpak ootb and other minor things. It's jist not worth it anymore to switch the distro
Is nixos very upstream? I kinda like the idea of creating an immutable script that assembles my os just how I like, configured installed and ready with flatpaks for apps so they're all sitting securely in their respective boxes. I think this is also Chris Fishers preference as well ;)
I've tried running guix for a while and it was pure pain.
For example, a small change that would take adding a few lines in a single file, becomes a week long brainfuck of modifying the system configuration and rewriting package definitions.
It's incomparably more smooth to just use it as an extra pm instead of a whole distro.
I used to use Ubuntu before unity and switched to Debian 👑 in 2012. I still have to use Ubuntu for work and I just get on with it. It could be worse.... I could have to use windows.
Anyway my main gripes with Ubuntu are snaps and how they keep swapping packages in apt to be installed as snaps .
I dont hate it, its a tool and in most cases I can use it and there is no problem if not there are other options.
IMO snaps aren't bad enough to choose IBM instead
If you want something user-friendly, use Linux Mint. There's really no reason to choose Ubuntu over this. And for any other use it's outclassed by other distros, it does not fill a niche. And I personally think that GNOME is crap and quite hideous.
Snap isn't that bad
Ubuntu is fine
People are not
Snap is that bad when it doesnt work on network home directories, and both firefox and chromium (included in tbe distro) have been moved to snaps... So the included browsers can't even open.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1884299
Lol a bug report from 2020