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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
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Ubuntu is just getting worse and worse. I was pretty happy running Ubuntu server for years after moving from Gentoo; I jag lost interest in spending time taking care for that server and wanted something easy.
I went to Debian half a year ago and it's been great. Should've done it earlier.
I never understood why people run Ubuntu on servers. It's madness. Ubuntu is a fork of unstable Debian packages. You don't want unstable on your server!
Ubuntu on Desktop I can understand. Back in the days the Debian release was really long so much software was a tad outdated after a couple of years. But Debian had a much faster release cycle now, and had pretty much incorporated all the good stuff from Ubuntu and left the bad behind.
Ubuntu is a fork of unstable Debian packages. You donβt want unstable on your server!
Unstable does not mean crashes all the time. What makes them unstable on Debian is they can change and break API completely. But guess what, Ubuntu freezes the versions for their release and maintains their own security patches, completely mitigating that issue.
There are other reasons you might not want to use Ubuntu on a server but package version stability is not one of them.
Ubuntu is a fork of unstable Debian packages
And where do you think debian stable packages come from exactly ?...
it's basicaly the exact same thing. In both case :
We should be clear on our terminology here. Debian Unstable is called that because the package βversionsβ are not stable ( change ). It is not really a comment on quality although more frequent change also implies more opportunities for issues to be introduced. In Unstable, Debian may introduce disruptive changes either to configuration or even to the package library itself.
Regardless, taking a snapshot of Debian unstable and then separately supporting those packages completely eliminates these issues. That is what Ubuntu does.
Ubuntu LTS now offers up to 10 years of support without having to upgrade a release. This is far more βstableβ than anything in Debian, including of course βDebian Stsbleβ. In fact, it exceeds the stability of Red Hat Enterprise.
I have not used Ubuntu in many years but I have been considering using it again for some server use cases precisely because it is now so βstableβ. I still do not like Ubuntu on the desktop and do not like snaps in particular. I do not think snaps impact any of the server packages I would use though and I do not expect Canonical to introduce them during the support lifetime of a particular release.
For personal use, the 10 years of support is entirely free. That is pretty compelling.
Ubuntu on Desktop I can understand.
Not anymore. A whole extra, unneeded, proprietary, locked-in package system. Ads in the default install.
There's Mint, Pop!, and plenty of other options that actually respect the user.
I get it.
I don't love Snaps either.
However, a thing I try to remember and wish others would as well is simply this: Canonical is a company. Their goal is to make money. They are not out to create the ultimate free as in freedom Linux distribution.
This does (to my mind) not make them evil, and ESPECIALLY doesn't make the folks who work there evil. It makes them participants in the great horrible game that is Capitalism, and expecting anything else from them is going to lead to heartache, as you've seen.
If you want a Linux distro that shares your preferences and won't try to jam snaps down your throat, you might consider giving Debian a whirl as many others have.
Continuing to ride the Ubuntu train and raging against the dying of the light when it continues chugging in the direction it's been headed for YEARS seems ... futile :)
Agreed.
For any (k)ubuntu refugees, do as I did and switch to Debian!
It's astonishing.
Fedora introduced a whole new distro where you can't install anything with dnf anymore and people love it. People love using flatpaks instead (yes I know of all the shortcomings, but you can always choose another install method for that broken package). And ubuntu users just hate ubuntu for what they do. The difference may also be that fedora gives a choice to the user and does not directly force it
There are reasons why Flatpaks are better, both technical and social.
On the technical side, Snaps add to boot up time, as all of them are mounted on boot, which can make the machine several seconds slower to boot in my experience. I don't need Thunderbird before I've logged into my account, yet Thunderbird is already mounted and partially decompressed the moment I see a login prompt.
On the social side, you can easily host your own Flatpak server. Don't trust flathub? Set up your own website! Users can add your repo with one command and you're good. Users even get a prompt on package conflicts so they can pick which repo to use. On Snap, there are no alternative stores. The backend is hardcoded to use Canonical's infrastructure, the alternative repos need to be installed as Snaps, and Oracle charges a hefty sum to those wanting to maintain a repo.
I wouldn't be very upset if Canonical migrated to snaps had they implemented their system in a reasonably open design. There are advantages to Snaps over APT packages, for sure, and even though I'd rather see them use Flatpaks instead, a fully integrated Snap environment seems to be working just as well.
Canonical did a lot of things right. Mir was a good idea, for instance. AppArmor is much better than the SELinux tooling that Red Hat ships. They have some excellent dev tools for things like k8s (running on Snap, ironically). Plus, they have one of the best server distros out there.
Mir is not a good example of distro engineering, because it's an extreme case of NIH syndrome. Unlike what it is today, the original Mir was an alternative to Wayland.
The story started when Canonical decided that X isn't good enough and they needed an alternative. They chose Wayland first, exciting the entire Linux desktop community. But then they dropped Wayland in favor of the new in-house Mir project, citing several drawbacks to Wayland. The Wayland community responded with several articles explaining why Canonicals concerns were unwarranted. But in typical Canonical style, they simply neglected all the replies and stuck with Mir.
This irked the entire Linux community who promised to promote Wayland and not support Mir at all. This continued for a while until Canonical realized their mistake late, like always. Then they repurposed Mir as a Wayland compositor.
Now this is a repeating story. You see this with Flatpak vs Snap, Incus vs LXD, etc. The amount of high handedness we see from Canonical is incredible.
@[email protected]
The difference with Fedora Atomic, which I think you refer to, is that it's totally open. For example, people started using the OCI containers differently than Fedora intended, which resulted in uBlue and stuff like Bazzite.
Also, no one forces you to use Flatpak. You can still use Distrobox and use Pacman/ APT/ DNF/ whatever you prefer and export your apps that way. It's just that Flatpak "won" and doesn't have many drawbacks, and is very convenient. I mostly like them.
And, most importantly, Fedora is the fronteer of innovation.
There were many projects and ideas that failed, but many more succedded (Wayland, image based distros, etc.), and Project Atomic is just one more "testing ground" that is well thought out imo. Therefore people are expecting to "test out" new generation Linux stuff, it's just part of Fedora. If you don't like that, use Debian instead.
I can recommend you to give Fedora Atomic a chance, it's an extremely nice family of distros (e.g. Bluefin/ Aurora, Bazzite, etc.)!
Edit: one more thing is that Fedora is, in contrast to Ubuntu, not controlled by a company. RedHat doesn't have nearly as much influence as people think, it's mainly community driven, and therefore choices aren't (in theory) influenced by $$$
It is absolutely a different situation if it is opt-in. If Ubuntu made Snaps opt-in, people might not like them but it'd be a minor critique instead of fleeing the distro.
Well there is immutable, which you probably refer to with Fedoras new distro, and then there is Canonical pushing their shitty snap format, and kinda non-sideloading. Can't wait for the day when apt only ever allows to install snap packages.
Fedora Silverblue is in an entirely different ball game. You can't use dnf because it's an immutable image based system where you can't make direct changes to the Root system without making use of the rpm-ostree & VCS mechanisms. You're making a conscious choice by using Fedora Silverblue, and the pros out way the cons for most people making that choice.
In contrast Fedora Workstation allows you to use dnf just as normal because it's not an immutable image based system.
Ubuntu doesn't make use of any such system so their reliance on containerized user-space apps isn't a technical one.
Ubuntu has long suffered from NIH syndrome, constantly inventing its own non-standard components (snaps, Unity, etc) and trying to make them "win" by forcing them on their own users. Reminds me of Microsoft with its non-standard Internet Explorer, its own non-standard version of Java and others.
The lesson is to use a Community distro, not a Corporate distro. When the distro's goals align with its community's, even a distro based on Ubuntu will usually be better than straight Ubuntu. For example Mint keeps the good things about Ubuntu (in Mint's opinion of course), removes the bad things like Snaps, and adds other features that the community wants that Ubuntu won't (like built-in Flatpak support among other things).
The lesson is to use a Community distro, not a Corporate distro.
Okay, but you don't see these kinds of complaints with Fedora or SUSE. While I don't necessarily disagree with your core point (community is better), this doesn't seem like an issue with corporations so much as an issue strictly with Canonical.
Someone being enraged about snap on behalf of Windows users was certainly a take I didn't know I needed.
I could barely make out the straw man hiding between the ads. The author is working hard for them clicks!
It's 2024, use an adblocker
Baah. KBIN just ate my reply.
Point form since I forgot to save to clipboard first.
Tried mint - booted to black screen
Tried ubuntu - got silly crashes like in the post trying to install stuff. It also wanted me to sign up for some sort of support package with 5 free devices to get updates or something. Also, trackpad scrolling was uncontrollable. Would scroll up half a screen or more as I lifted my fingers off.
Tried fedora - only 100% and 200% zoom option, and no right click.
Managed to fix the fedora issues with some command line found on Google and a gnome customising addon.
n00b here, just playing. Can't migrate fully as I need VBA and Playit Live etc.
Disappoint is a sober word here. I am actually pissed at the casual arrogance of Ubuntu and its parent company Canonical.
I'm actually baffled that this would come as a surprise to people. Canonical has been like this for a long time and you'd have to have blinders on to not see it. They are hell-bent on doing things their way and ignoring the wider Linux community and even their users. That is, of course, their prerogative and to some degree I even welcome their attempts at differentiating their distro from others. As a user though you should be aware of their history and the apparent direction they're heading.
I just wish they'd stop stalling and went all-in on snaps already, since that's pretty obviously where they're headed.
This along with other things is another reason why i will continue to recommend noobs start with pop os and more advanced users to use bazzite.
I do wish pop os would change their name to cosmic os though. Their current name is too close to poop os π
Don't forget the random punctuation mixed in. It's like the title of a kids' tv show.
never thought of "poop os" but I think Pop!_OS is a stupid name, it's the only reason I avoided it and chose Nobara instead lol
Idk, I probably haven't used Debian derivatives long enough, but isn't installing random .deb-s somewhat of a bad practice? I mean, repos exist for a reason (ignoring the fact they usually have like 3 packages in the official repos)
But even if it is, it shouldn't prevent installing released debs you find for example on GitHub repositories.
Some things we would want to install aren't in the official repos. Downloading the deb file is a solution to that for newer users.
"I understand that Canonical has every right to make the decision about their product."
That seems fair. There are loads of distros available so why not try something else if you don't like Ubuntu?
Linux and other mainstream Unices such as FreeBSD or OpenBSD int al (that's not something I ever thought I'd be able to say a few decades back) are not Windows or Apples or whatevs. You do you and not them!
If Ubuntu fails to scratch your itch then move on. Debian is the upstream for Ubuntu so you'll probably be fine with that instead. There is loads of documentation for Debian via the wiki etc and of course most Ubuntu docs will apply as well.
Give a shot for Fedora!
Does this mean you have to use apt-get to get the deb version again? Or is there an even more complicated command? I'm wondering what happens for the other Ubuntu flavors. I'm usually running Kubuntu.
Even apt is deliberately broken:
"[If] You use 'sudo apt install chromium', you get a Snap package of Chromium instead of Debian"
This was where I rage quit. Who in the hell thought it was a good idea?
Same here, it's the reason why I kicked Ubuntu off my laptop. They removed any way to choose and made it such a pain to get around the Snap bullshit. I'm on Linux because I want to choose what I do with my system.
Seriously? Wow. That moves the whole thing into asshole territory. I'm glad I went with a distro that prioritizes not being shitty.
Canonical even patched apt a bit so it prefers to install snaps first.
It is about installing .deb that you manually downloaded from somewhere. You can't install them by double clicking on them, you have to install from command line.
The sheer audacity and arrogance of giving me something for free and not caring* about me.
* "Not caring" presumably means "not doing something about my pet issue", but I'm not going to take the clickbait.
It's about not being able to install .deb packages through the installation GUI.
The whole snap issue is hardly a pet peeve. Let alone in an LTS release.
Ubuntu user here. You can/could install .deb packages with the UI?
TIL
as far as I remember I could always double click the .deb and the GUI would let me install it, pretty handy. Aaand it stopped working some time ago. I'm not using ubuntu outside of work and there's not much system package installing in work environments so I'm out of touch now, but it was handy at the time.
giving me something for free
What are you talking about? It is not even "for free", they get a lot value from the community.
They're nothing without the users, it's not that they would be making it if nobody uses it anyways. Users used to love them, they trusted them, they went on spreading their system, reported issues, created tutorials, flavors, videos, tools, and so on, they helped Cannonical become what it is now.
I don't think they're giving us anything "for free."
I dont mind snaps but blocking deb installs by default on file clicks is a bad look.
That's precisely I changed to MX Linux. I won't use ubuntu for a long time I guess.