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?
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 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.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.
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.
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.
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
Is Debian unstable really unstable or is just like… Ubuntu?
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.
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.
However, mind that it’s not supported and they do not pay attention to security fixes.
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.
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.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 :)
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 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
deleted by creator
Snap isn’t that bad
Ubuntu is fine
People are notSnap 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
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.
Course Fedora does literally the same thing and doesn’t get any hate for it so idk. It’s just a meme.
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.
Going for Wayland default is also another example (I can think of).
Fedora devs do listen to their users, tho.
Well they also effectively control development of gnome. Not the exact same way Ubuntu did unity but still comparable.
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 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.
*buntu doesn’t even deserve threads like this.
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 😅
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?
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.
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 run <package.name>instead 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
flatpak run io.neovim.nvimYou can create an alias for that command
alias nvim='flatpak run io.neovim.nvim'And then you can use the nvim command as normal
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.
Pretty much this, they don’t deserve hate but i won’t recommend them either
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.