Bye Bye Ubuntu, Hello Manjaro. How Did We Get Here?(hackaday.com)
hackaday.com
Bye Bye Ubuntu, Hello Manjaro. How Did We Get Here?
https://hackaday.com/2023/06/08/bye-bye-ubuntu-hello-manjaro-how-did-we-get-here/
241 comments
I've been running Arch for about a decade now and it's only seriously broken a few (low single digits) times. Here are the main failure modes I've experienced:
The biggest one seems to be something related to the package mirrors only partially updating, or updates of common dependencies not being atomically applied to all packages - something like that. If you do a pacman -Syu in the middle of the critical time period, the system will fail to work with some core libs (libc, libicu) not being compatible. Booting into a recovery session and doing pacman -Syu again fixes it. However, it's been years since I experienced this - maybe they've taken some steps to eliminate this failure mode?
The other big (but still rare) failure mode is bugs in the kernel. The fix is simple, keep linux-lts installed alongside the standard linux kernel, so you can always boot into lts from the bootloader if the regular kernel doesn't work.
User software can have bugs in newer releases, but they're usually minor - you'll still be able to get work done without much disruption. And that's not really an Arch issue. Unless the bug is reported & fixed very quickly, Ubuntu/Fedora are likely to also get the buggy versions, just later.
Aside from the first failure mode, the OS itself doesn't fail. I've had bad experiences with upgrading between major releases of distros like Ubuntu. They're bloated to begin with, and accumulate more cruft over time and major upgrades. Arch just works. Plus, there's lots of software in the official repos, and the AUR / package build system is also excellent - far superior to the whole PPA mess on Debian/Ubuntu, and the equivalent on Fedora.
The biggest one seems to be something related to the package mirrors only partially updating, or updates of common dependencies not being atomically applied to all packages - something like that. If you do a pacman -Syu in the middle of the critical time period, the system will fail to work with some core libs (libc, libicu) not being compatible. Booting into a recovery session and doing pacman -Syu again fixes it. However, it's been years since I experienced this - maybe they've taken some steps to eliminate this failure mode?
The other big (but still rare) failure mode is bugs in the kernel. The fix is simple, keep linux-lts installed alongside the standard linux kernel, so you can always boot into lts from the bootloader if the regular kernel doesn't work.
User software can have bugs in newer releases, but they're usually minor - you'll still be able to get work done without much disruption. And that's not really an Arch issue. Unless the bug is reported & fixed very quickly, Ubuntu/Fedora are likely to also get the buggy versions, just later.
Aside from the first failure mode, the OS itself doesn't fail. I've had bad experiences with upgrading between major releases of distros like Ubuntu. They're bloated to begin with, and accumulate more cruft over time and major upgrades. Arch just works. Plus, there's lots of software in the official repos, and the AUR / package build system is also excellent - far superior to the whole PPA mess on Debian/Ubuntu, and the equivalent on Fedora.
>User software can have bugs in newer releases, but they're usually minor - you'll still be able to get work done without much disruption. And that's not really an Arch issue. Unless the bug is reported & fixed very quickly, Ubuntu/Fedora are likely to also get the buggy versions, just later.
And this is the thing people ignore when they say they have no issues with cutting edge (not necessarily rolling release, which can be stable) distributions. Note that I'm not egging on you, if you're happy with the way your system works and manages software updates there's nothing wrong with that.
The software that makes up the distribution is as critical as the distribution itself. When you use cutting edge software you roll along with the issues new software introduces as soon as they're introduced. This has a plethora of effects including temporary breakage, feature removal that gets later reconsidered, config files that no longer work (or do different things) from one day to the next, and similar things.
While stable distributions do eventually inherit the software anyway, they generally do so at a later patch release. They'll go from 2.3.6 to 2.3.7 while waiting for the newest 2.4.0 release to get itself together. When necessary, downstream patches are used to apply fixes from newer releases without directly upgrading to a whole new version. This makes for a much slower rate of change in general, and as such a much slower rate of breakage. One can work around a specific set of bugs, but when that set of bugs changes every other day, that's harder and more time consuming to deal with.
Personally I prefer this latter approach, mostly as it allows me to choose when things may break (i.e. when upgrading between releases). Gentoo is currently the distro that provides me this choice, allowing me to pick between stable and bleeding edge releases on a per-package basis, hold back updates without causing library linking issues, and allowing me to install packages without syncing the entire repository and upgrading everything. This allows me to set some time apart to upgrade my system and be able to deal with whatever broke this time.
My system's most recent breakage came in the form of adwaita-icon-theme removing all the remaining non-symbolic icons, causing some programs to now lack their icons.
And this is the thing people ignore when they say they have no issues with cutting edge (not necessarily rolling release, which can be stable) distributions. Note that I'm not egging on you, if you're happy with the way your system works and manages software updates there's nothing wrong with that.
The software that makes up the distribution is as critical as the distribution itself. When you use cutting edge software you roll along with the issues new software introduces as soon as they're introduced. This has a plethora of effects including temporary breakage, feature removal that gets later reconsidered, config files that no longer work (or do different things) from one day to the next, and similar things.
While stable distributions do eventually inherit the software anyway, they generally do so at a later patch release. They'll go from 2.3.6 to 2.3.7 while waiting for the newest 2.4.0 release to get itself together. When necessary, downstream patches are used to apply fixes from newer releases without directly upgrading to a whole new version. This makes for a much slower rate of change in general, and as such a much slower rate of breakage. One can work around a specific set of bugs, but when that set of bugs changes every other day, that's harder and more time consuming to deal with.
Personally I prefer this latter approach, mostly as it allows me to choose when things may break (i.e. when upgrading between releases). Gentoo is currently the distro that provides me this choice, allowing me to pick between stable and bleeding edge releases on a per-package basis, hold back updates without causing library linking issues, and allowing me to install packages without syncing the entire repository and upgrading everything. This allows me to set some time apart to upgrade my system and be able to deal with whatever broke this time.
My system's most recent breakage came in the form of adwaita-icon-theme removing all the remaining non-symbolic icons, causing some programs to now lack their icons.
I use arch for my personal machines and work gives me debian. Yes, there are bugs, i usually see them (a lot of them are obvious in KDE) on arch from month 0 to month 1, then if I'm unlucky (depending on when the bug appeared) I'm stuck with them from month 6 to month 12 on my work machine. Very "stable" indeed, it just means I get to see some bugs for much longer and on a delayed time table. It's very rare that anyone goes back and fixes minor bugs like these in the delayed debian packages. Just because something is released on a slower cadence with a bigger delay to release doesn't mean it has fewer bugs.
On the other hand, I had way more instances of a broken system and broken packages (where synaptic/apt just refuses to install anything) on my work computer that has debian than I ever had with arch.
On the other hand, I had way more instances of a broken system and broken packages (where synaptic/apt just refuses to install anything) on my work computer that has debian than I ever had with arch.
Are we the same person? Haha small world. I thought the broken icons were a thing I did while changing some XDG paths
Many people don't realize that Arch is basically just providing the latest stable release from upstreams, nothing more and nothing less.
Most projects do testing before making a release of course, and for lots of software releases are very reliable. The kernel is an example of this, where Arch packages the most recent "stable" kernel rather than sticking to an LTS version. There is nothing "unstable" about this, in the sense of "unstable" meaning unreliable or buggy.
The key thing is that "stable" and "unstable" have practically nothing to do with the quality or reliability of the distro. Unstable only means that the packages may update in non-backwards compatible ways, so you need to be prepared to make changes to accommodate that. Normally it's something like updating a configuration file, or passing different flags to a command line program, or something along those lines. Maybe you run some sort of service that links to shared libraries on the system, you need to be prepared to relink to updated versions or not depend on system-wide versions at all.
So long as you make sure to keep up with changes, rolling release distros are exactly as reliable as upstream releases.
The other thing to note is that tracking releases may actually end up being more reliable, because you are constantly getting bug fixes and improvements!
Most projects do testing before making a release of course, and for lots of software releases are very reliable. The kernel is an example of this, where Arch packages the most recent "stable" kernel rather than sticking to an LTS version. There is nothing "unstable" about this, in the sense of "unstable" meaning unreliable or buggy.
The key thing is that "stable" and "unstable" have practically nothing to do with the quality or reliability of the distro. Unstable only means that the packages may update in non-backwards compatible ways, so you need to be prepared to make changes to accommodate that. Normally it's something like updating a configuration file, or passing different flags to a command line program, or something along those lines. Maybe you run some sort of service that links to shared libraries on the system, you need to be prepared to relink to updated versions or not depend on system-wide versions at all.
So long as you make sure to keep up with changes, rolling release distros are exactly as reliable as upstream releases.
The other thing to note is that tracking releases may actually end up being more reliable, because you are constantly getting bug fixes and improvements!
The word "stable" can have different meanings, e.g. stable behavior/stable interfaces. I am using arch/manjaro on my personal machine, but I installed Debian for some of my remote family members (who mostly just need firefox+libreoffice+vlc+cups) since this makes me confident that they can get periodic security updates and bugfixes all by themselves without needing my intervention (while rolling releases sometimes require some adjustments or troubleshooting e.g. on the config files, etc).
Arch has been working great for me on both my ancient laptop and my Ryzen PC for ages now. And whenever I do run into a problem or want to learn something new, I've always got the truly excellent Arch Wiki to back me up. Even those running a different distribution will often refer to it to solve a problem.
I expect even greater things from Arch in the future with Valve's use of this distro on the Steam Deck.
I expect even greater things from Arch in the future with Valve's use of this distro on the Steam Deck.
I moved to Arch last week because I did not have a USB drive large enough for the new Ubuntu install iso and they did not provide a net installer either (it is a new PC). The silliest reason, but now I find Arch lovely and everything works for me (including typically fragile things). Weird how such a silly thing led to switching away after 15 years as an Ubuntu user.
> "Rolling release" gets an undeserved bad reputation in my opinion
Totally undeserved IME.
For me, Arch and Manjaro, both rolling, have always been more stable than Ubuntu has ever been. At this point, I've used all three for about an equal amount of time (~2 years). On Ubuntu, 4ish years ago, my DE and stuff crashed a LOT. Hardly ever happened on either Manjaro or Arch.
It makes some kind of sense: DE devs, for example, are banging away on the latest version of their software. They'll even ask you to upgrade your DE to the latest version to see if you can reproduce an issue you found on an older version for whatever your Ubuntu snapshot is using. Paradoxically, newer software seems to have less bugs.
Totally undeserved IME.
For me, Arch and Manjaro, both rolling, have always been more stable than Ubuntu has ever been. At this point, I've used all three for about an equal amount of time (~2 years). On Ubuntu, 4ish years ago, my DE and stuff crashed a LOT. Hardly ever happened on either Manjaro or Arch.
It makes some kind of sense: DE devs, for example, are banging away on the latest version of their software. They'll even ask you to upgrade your DE to the latest version to see if you can reproduce an issue you found on an older version for whatever your Ubuntu snapshot is using. Paradoxically, newer software seems to have less bugs.
I'm really irritated by Arch's meme status, because it's genuinely a solid distro and out of all the weird Linux workstations I've spun up over the years, my Arch workstations have given me the least trouble. Manjaro, being Arch with batteries included, is an excellent starting point.
Honestly the most useful thing about Arch is the documentation. The Arch Wiki is a fantastic resource for all sorts of common Linux utilities, worth a read even if you use a different distro.
Honestly the most useful thing about Arch is the documentation. The Arch Wiki is a fantastic resource for all sorts of common Linux utilities, worth a read even if you use a different distro.
+1 for the wiki. I'm a fedora user but I regularly consult the arch wiki.
I installed Ubuntu on my local server at home. A few weeks later I had issues with installing packages because Snap was enabled by default. I don't know what was configured wrong on my server but I managed to install 2 versions of the same firefox package from Snap, one using snap and the other using apt.
It broke the whole system so I decided to just remove snaps as a whole.
I run Arch Linux daily since 2019 and the only problems I had that I can remember are setting up dual-GPU on laptops and dealing with dual boot issues - whenever my laptop had a BIOS update on Windows, my BIOS settings would be reverted to the default, so the F1-12 keys acted as fn keys by default (e.g. pressing F5 wouldn't refresh a web page), Windows overwrote the bootloader on my boot partition so I had to reinstall GRUB/systemd-boot every time this happened and it also changed the SATA mode for the laptop which made it impossible to locate the Linux partition on my HDD unless I switched it back to AHCI (default was Intel RST + Optane).
The other issue I recently had with Arch which I think it's more related to the software and not the distro itself is that occasionally my Latte Dock will crash, but that's about it.
It broke the whole system so I decided to just remove snaps as a whole.
I run Arch Linux daily since 2019 and the only problems I had that I can remember are setting up dual-GPU on laptops and dealing with dual boot issues - whenever my laptop had a BIOS update on Windows, my BIOS settings would be reverted to the default, so the F1-12 keys acted as fn keys by default (e.g. pressing F5 wouldn't refresh a web page), Windows overwrote the bootloader on my boot partition so I had to reinstall GRUB/systemd-boot every time this happened and it also changed the SATA mode for the laptop which made it impossible to locate the Linux partition on my HDD unless I switched it back to AHCI (default was Intel RST + Optane).
The other issue I recently had with Arch which I think it's more related to the software and not the distro itself is that occasionally my Latte Dock will crash, but that's about it.
I ran Arch for about six months back in 2021 on a Thinkpad. As I recall the mouse driver would reset like once a day. I'd be mousing around and suddenly the pointer would teleport to the top-left corner. And the wifi would intermittently slow way down until I restart it.
So I switched to Ubuntu. And the wifi troubles continued. But the mouse troubles went away.
Perhaps I'd have a better time with a desktop.
So I switched to Ubuntu. And the wifi troubles continued. But the mouse troubles went away.
Perhaps I'd have a better time with a desktop.
Using Arch is a dream compared to things like Ubuntu for me. PPAs and release cycles made upgrades awkward on Ubuntu. I've been a user for 3 years on my work laptop and have had everything be almost completely painless. (One time yay broke something and a python module had to be removed lol)
Arch works fine but sometimes I think I might prefer something like Debian Stable + Flatpak because the repos are frozen. Since Arch doesn't support partial upgrades, you have to upgrade the whole system every time a repo list refresh is required, basically. So some days after the last upgrade, some package you want to install is bumped, and a repo refresh list is required, which wouldn't be a problem in Debian. But Arch is rock solid and the AUR for obscure packages is something Debian doesn't have. I might be wrong about this opinion about partial upgrades etc, somebody let me know.
Debian + Flatpak has been my go to for some time now.
That stable base I don’t have to worry about plus up to date apps is living the dream, as far as I’m concerned.
That stable base I don’t have to worry about plus up to date apps is living the dream, as far as I’m concerned.
I may need to trailblaze development on a Linux VM at a new job because my rural DSL isn't up to the task of doing everything on my local MacBook like all the other devs. I have a lot of experience with Arch on desktops and laptops. I was leaning towards Ubuntu just due to a vague sense that "more of the important stuff will 'just work' " but do you think Arch might be a better call?
Same here, every system is different, but my main desktop Arch installation is kicking since 6 years now with absolute minimal maintenance issues. Perhaps 1-2 times per year maximum things need to be fixed manually in super rare cases.
Arch is my ideal distro, but since my motherboards started using UEFI I just haven't been able to install it. I followed the instructions from the Install Wiki[0], but just couldn't figure it out. Manjaro's been a nice in-between with a painless installation process
[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide
[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide
You can't disable UEFI in your BIOS settings? That's what I do.
That may be a good idea, but I honestly haven't looked into it. My preference is for operating systems to just work, rather than me change all my motherboards to accommodate them
Arch does "just work" it's more of an issue with booting from a live image you are encountering by the sounds of things. Ironically your preferred OS is derivative of Arch and considered less stable by many users of both systems.
Writing from a Arch system I installed on 2017-12-04 and use as my daily driver, I've been moving the hard drive from laptop to laptop over time and the system from drive to drive when upgrading. Prior to that, I had been using Gentoo for years which is also great.
Just a reminder to everybody, Debian 12 is about to release in 2 days.
A few years ago I moved back from Ubuntu to Debian and couldn't be happier.
A few years ago I moved back from Ubuntu to Debian and couldn't be happier.
I have a devuan desktop, but it somehow self-nuked its grub.
I really, really dislike systemd, but the other desktop is a manjaro setup. It was stable for a while, but now something with logind (which is somehow related to systemd) broke.
The one reason I switched to manjaro is that the machine is shared between kids and two parents, and I wanted to be able to switch accounts from the screensaver prompt. That routinely fails now.
I really wish there was a debuggable (so, not systemd) Linux distribution where things like account switching, zoom and steam worked. Manjaro is the closest thing I've found. I wish one of the *BSD's worked for that. (I genuinely like my OpenBSD router, but I only log into it every year or so, because, well, it just works.)
I really, really dislike systemd, but the other desktop is a manjaro setup. It was stable for a while, but now something with logind (which is somehow related to systemd) broke.
The one reason I switched to manjaro is that the machine is shared between kids and two parents, and I wanted to be able to switch accounts from the screensaver prompt. That routinely fails now.
I really wish there was a debuggable (so, not systemd) Linux distribution where things like account switching, zoom and steam worked. Manjaro is the closest thing I've found. I wish one of the *BSD's worked for that. (I genuinely like my OpenBSD router, but I only log into it every year or so, because, well, it just works.)
Have you tried Alpine Linux? Fairly straightforward to set up as a desktop and no systemd (OpenRC FWIW) by default. Flatpak Steam reportedly runs fine.
https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Steam
https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Steam
All of which you described works for me in Debian, one of my laptops is also shared by the family. I believe that now systemd is so much more common that paths without it are less tested and way more prone to bugs.
Systemd was kind of a problem many many years ago while it was a new thing and still barely tested, but now it's mostly stable. Don't let your past experience impair your judgement of how things are in 2023. Everybody putting money on Linux is on systemd.
Systemd was kind of a problem many many years ago while it was a new thing and still barely tested, but now it's mostly stable. Don't let your past experience impair your judgement of how things are in 2023. Everybody putting money on Linux is on systemd.
You can run debian without systemd [1]. I've been running debian sid - the "unstable"/rolling development version - with sysvinit for over 3 years now and it has been a good experience.
[1] https://wiki.debian.org/Init
[1] https://wiki.debian.org/Init
Debian's my favorite distro by a longshot. Sadly, I only recently completed upgrading to 11, so 12 will have to wait for a year or two.
Debian is pretty nice. I tried it after a new cloud provider didn't have option for Alpine Linux, which would be my first choice. Using Ubuntu had given me fear of anything related to it, so I was skeptical at first, but so far it has been a solid experience. The only thing I will never accept is services being started immediately after installing packages.
Weirdly, Debian has never given me any trouble -- but Ubuntu gives me much more trouble than any other distro I've tried.
How do you deal with grossly outdated software on Debian Desktop?
You deal with it by being happy that it doesn't constantly change UI/Interface/Features and break your workflow unexpectedly sometimes. Yes, you don't always have the latest and greatest and if that's a solid requirement, Debian isn't a good choice. But for a stable, not-going-to-change-out-from-under-you point of view, Debian is fantastic. Software you can rely on that's still patched for security issues.
Debian is really solid as a server OS. I wouldn't use it for desktop unless you're using ancient hardware. My days of using CentOS as a development workstation are thankfully behind me. I will never use a long-release cycle distro for primary development, the headaches that come with it are not worth it.
If you aren't worried about your system being unstable, just use testing. Or just do what everyone else does, and use testing on your laptop/workstation and stable on everything else.
> Debian is really solid as a server OS. I wouldn't use it for desktop unless you're using ancient hardware
I'm running Debian 12 (since the soft freeze I think) on my newly built AMD 7700X. I wouldn't exactly call that "ancient hardware".
Zero issue. No headaches for me. FWIW I'm running Debian since Debian 1.1 (1.1, not 11).
I'm running Debian 12 (since the soft freeze I think) on my newly built AMD 7700X. I wouldn't exactly call that "ancient hardware".
Zero issue. No headaches for me. FWIW I'm running Debian since Debian 1.1 (1.1, not 11).
I'm dumb :)
Debian releases every 2 years. Each release gets LTS support for 5 years, but there is no reason you need to use it that long unless you choose not to upgrade.
Wait... whaaaaaa!? I thought it was 5 for some reason. Disregard! 2 years is a pretty reasonable lifecycle
I use Debian on the desktop with various hardware, both inside the case and outside it (various SDRs and data capture toys) and it works great for me. Just a data point, YMMV.
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Depends on the apps. For most it's completely irrelevant whether it’s the latest release. For others, there’s flatpaks or containers (docker/podman). Personally I think people get too attached to bleeding edge.
I use it as a desktop OS on all of my nonserver machines, and it's been great. Obviously, tastes vary, of course.
I mean, if you really need newer software, then you can probably find a DPA (like Ubuntu's PPA). The PHP packages provided by Ondřej Surý come to mind as an example, which have recent versions that would otherwise be unavailable: https://deb.sury.org/
Alternatively, one can use OCI containers (e.g. Docker) for something even more recent, or software unavailable on Debian altogether. That way, you can have a very stable base server OS, with isolated bits of something more recent, feature packed, albeit sometimes a bit more unstable.
Those aren't the only options, of course, but they are pretty viable, depending on your use case. Personally, I also didn't see any issues with the ~10 year EOL of some of the RPM distros, as long as you care mostly about security updates/stability and not recent features.
Alternatively, one can use OCI containers (e.g. Docker) for something even more recent, or software unavailable on Debian altogether. That way, you can have a very stable base server OS, with isolated bits of something more recent, feature packed, albeit sometimes a bit more unstable.
Those aren't the only options, of course, but they are pretty viable, depending on your use case. Personally, I also didn't see any issues with the ~10 year EOL of some of the RPM distros, as long as you care mostly about security updates/stability and not recent features.
isn't there a testing/"unstable" version that has the latest/greatest? I had heard it was roughly as stable as ubuntu...
It's "testing", not unstable. "Unstable" is actually unstable, and seems to be where people are actually testing things. I find the names needlessly misleading, although accurate, because "testing" is being tested to be the next "stable." "Unstable" is where people are figuring out things; they go into "testing" when they're pretty much figured out.
I've had an order of magnitude more breakage on regular Ubuntu updates than on Debian testing. That being said, I ditched Ubuntu probably a decade ago and it might go out better now.
I've had an order of magnitude more breakage on regular Ubuntu updates than on Debian testing. That being said, I ditched Ubuntu probably a decade ago and it might go out better now.
Debian Testing doesn’t get security updates quickly, unlike Stable and Unstable. Hence why the Debian wiki does not recommend Testing for ordinary users.
unstable is a bit of an odd fit for most purposes. For 6 months leading up to a stable release it is frozen, so few packages are being updated, then for 6 months after a stable release there is a bunch of churn and things can get a bit unstable, and then for about a year it is like running a rolling release, albeit one that isn't as up-to-date as Arch. I feel most people who want up-to-date packages would be better off running Arch or Fedora.
There is nothing to deal with, outdated software still works, it's stable and you get on with your life.
Anything of importance has deb package/official deb repo (Chrome, Brave, VS Code, Slack, Signal, Dropbox, etc), so you receive latest versions. There is flatpak as well. Newer kernel and some libraries could be found in backports repo.
I use Debian with 0 flatpaks/snaps/Appimages, only Debian repos and few official third-party ones.
Anything of importance has deb package/official deb repo (Chrome, Brave, VS Code, Slack, Signal, Dropbox, etc), so you receive latest versions. There is flatpak as well. Newer kernel and some libraries could be found in backports repo.
I use Debian with 0 flatpaks/snaps/Appimages, only Debian repos and few official third-party ones.
There are still some reason that you may want to use a newer version of a software when your distro is stable. e.g. The latest version added a new feature that is really useful to you, or a long-standing bug has been fixed in latest version.
I think Flatpak would be current best choice for these tasks if you are running a stable distro. But I think it would be good to have a distro where core OS and user application is completely separated, and can be updated independently. It would be nice to have latest application without fearing the next grub/DE/kernel/driver/... update might break your current setup.
I think Flatpak would be current best choice for these tasks if you are running a stable distro. But I think it would be good to have a distro where core OS and user application is completely separated, and can be updated independently. It would be nice to have latest application without fearing the next grub/DE/kernel/driver/... update might break your current setup.
> I think it would be good to have a distro where core OS and user application is completely separated, and can be updated independently.
There is nuance here. Technically, this is how it currently is, since the "core OS" is the kernel, and you can absolutely update that separately from everything else.
But lots of what people tend to think of as the "OS" are just applications (in Linux, anyway), so if that's the point of view, then it gets trickier. You can still update that stuff independently, but you have to decide what parts count as "core OS" to you and you'll need to update each of them independently.
True "user applications" are updateable independently.
There is nuance here. Technically, this is how it currently is, since the "core OS" is the kernel, and you can absolutely update that separately from everything else.
But lots of what people tend to think of as the "OS" are just applications (in Linux, anyway), so if that's the point of view, then it gets trickier. You can still update that stuff independently, but you have to decide what parts count as "core OS" to you and you'll need to update each of them independently.
True "user applications" are updateable independently.
> How do you deal with grossly outdated software on Debian Desktop?
Use the Source, Luke.
If there's something too shiny that I really need on my Debian, I compile it from source.
For example Emacs 29, with tree-sitter and whatnots, is just too shiny. So I compile it from source.
Use the Source, Luke.
If there's something too shiny that I really need on my Debian, I compile it from source.
For example Emacs 29, with tree-sitter and whatnots, is just too shiny. So I compile it from source.
This is my approach. There's only been one or two times that I needed the latest version of something, and when that happened I just built them myself.
A Debian base with something like Homebrew on top, so all the user-facing applications are always up-to-date, would be basically perfect. Which, I know there's a Homebrew port for Linux, but it and its packages seemed rather more bug-ridden than than the Mac version, plus there were way fewer packages, last time I checked, probably because it has to support a whole bunch of underlying distros, Linux's culture around software packaging & libraries is... challenging, and there are simply a lot fewer eyeballs on it than on regular Homebrew. I think the distro itself would have to provide the separate non-system-software manager, specifically for that distro and close derivatives, for that to take off in Linux land. And it'd be a lot of work, to untangle that from underlying system software so the system packages could sit at a stable versions for months or years while the user-software updated on top of it.
[EDIT] And, yeah, I know you can probably get a similar effect with Nix, but, ah, no. I tried it in a VM a couple years back, and it's a hard no. And I was a Gentoo user for years, so I'm not necessarily averse to some pain... but no.
[EDIT] And, yeah, I know you can probably get a similar effect with Nix, but, ah, no. I tried it in a VM a couple years back, and it's a hard no. And I was a Gentoo user for years, so I'm not necessarily averse to some pain... but no.
Was your VM NixOS, or something else with Nix on top? The latter is a fairly painless way to test-drive the idea without going all-in.
What I do is that the very few apps that I want/need the most recent upstream version of (Firefox, Thunderbird, Digicam, KeepassXC), I use the AppImage version of those. (The Mozilla has some other system than AppImage, but it works really well with auto updating, etc. nonetheless)
On the off chance that I need some library, I may use a backports mirror. But I am not needing any at the moment and don't recall the last time I had to use backports. Must have been at least a couple of years since...
On the off chance that I need some library, I may use a backports mirror. But I am not needing any at the moment and don't recall the last time I had to use backports. Must have been at least a couple of years since...
I haven't noticed anything grossly outdated. I have some Debian and some Ubuntu desktop machines, and honestly I couldn't tell the difference except when trying to install stable diffusion (bleeding edge software with official support for Ubuntu only).
I also used to run Debian on my server machines but switched to NixOS - although I'm now seriously considering switching back to Debian since it has far less headaches and just works.
I also used to run Debian on my server machines but switched to NixOS - although I'm now seriously considering switching back to Debian since it has far less headaches and just works.
I've been using Debian 11 since after Christmas. Which outdated software am I using? Everything seems just fine as it was on Ubuntu 20.04.
I couldn't tell you, but since Debian 12 is moving into Stable you can see for yourself with a apt-get full-upgrade. For a little while, you'll be as close to cutting edge as Stable gets.
I'll check. The point is that software for web development is not installed with debs but with their own package managers (rvm, npm, pip) or meta managers (asdf) or docker so I'm cutting edge no matter what I get from the distro. Same thing for browsers. I downloaded Firefox from Mozilla and it auto updates more gracefully than the deb I had in Ubuntu: it suggests a restart and doesn't force it when I open a new tab. Chrome has its own apt, I think.
About the rest of the software, it's not very important which version I have. Actually, staying for years on an older Gnome shell won't force me to spend time to adapt to or disable new weirdnesses. Libre Office from n years ago would be OK. Evince, the same. Nautilus, give me the one from 2008.
About the rest of the software, it's not very important which version I have. Actually, staying for years on an older Gnome shell won't force me to spend time to adapt to or disable new weirdnesses. Libre Office from n years ago would be OK. Evince, the same. Nautilus, give me the one from 2008.
Debian updates as often as Ubuntu LTS. And Ubuntu tries to force people into LTS (by not offering you to update to non-LTS once you get into an LTS), so most people using Ubuntu will have the same cadence of updates if they switch to Debian.
Also, things just work. There's no application that I need that needs to be absolutely using the latest version. The only apps I can think of that require this auto-update themselves, like Steam and Bitwarden (for which I use an AppImage).
Also, things just work. There's no application that I need that needs to be absolutely using the latest version. The only apps I can think of that require this auto-update themselves, like Steam and Bitwarden (for which I use an AppImage).
FWIW I run Debian bullseye on the desktop and don't have any issues with any of the software I use, like web browsers and IM clients.
I'm not running anything fancy locally so perhaps it's an unusual case, and I will admit that I can't print from my desktop for reasons I've never bothered to look into, so the experience isn't 100%; but I prefer it to running Windows, which is becoming more and more like an OS-as-a-service-with-ads by the day.
I'm not running anything fancy locally so perhaps it's an unusual case, and I will admit that I can't print from my desktop for reasons I've never bothered to look into, so the experience isn't 100%; but I prefer it to running Windows, which is becoming more and more like an OS-as-a-service-with-ads by the day.
I willingly use Stable, although if you want something that includes more recent versions, you want Unstable.
Personally, there's only been one time in the last decade or so that not using the latest version of something has caused any real headache for me, and that was a manageable situation.
Personally, there's only been one time in the last decade or so that not using the latest version of something has caused any real headache for me, and that was a manageable situation.
> I willingly use Stable, although if you want something that includes more recent versions, you want Unstable.
You want Testing. I don't think people really use Unstable unless they work on Debian itself.
You want Testing. I don't think people really use Unstable unless they work on Debian itself.
Debian Testing doesn’t get security updates quickly, unlike Stable and Unstable. Hence why the Debian wiki does not recommend Testing for ordinary users.
Snaps are awful. Even simple programs like 'calculator' take multiple seconds to start. I'm planning to bail on Ubuntu soon as well.
I cannot understand why they did the weird squashfs thing that murders their first start performance over sacrificing a little disk space.
It's such an odd technical choice that makes snap look bad for a few megs.
It's such an odd technical choice that makes snap look bad for a few megs.
No kidding, especially for programs that aren’t that big.
Sounds like they worked too hard on making things feel safe and familiar to Windows users who might want to migrate.
Ah yes, the mythical Windows user who's finally ready to switch to Linux now after all these decades.
You do make a correct point, but it doesn't seem that you realise that you were responding to something that was far more snarky joke about the quality of Windows than serious idea of people switching or not based on calculator performance.
Surely this year is the year of the Linux desktop.. surely..
I don't want snaps anywhere. Definitely not on the server (ever looked how much RAM it takes on a machine with 512MB - 1GB of RAM?) and also not on the desktop.
I don't have to optimise my machine to get the calculator run within 1-2 seconds, this is just bad by design and there is no excuse.
They are an abomination or workaround for problems in OS library packaging (& manager) and OS security concepts.
If snaps are so cool why are there no similar concepts in other famous major desktops (even non Linux)?
I don't have to optimise my machine to get the calculator run within 1-2 seconds, this is just bad by design and there is no excuse.
They are an abomination or workaround for problems in OS library packaging (& manager) and OS security concepts.
If snaps are so cool why are there no similar concepts in other famous major desktops (even non Linux)?
There are similar concepts: I use flatpak on other distros. It is just that flatpaks are not remotely as invasive and inconsistent as snaps (and probably most importantly, not forced on you).
> If snaps are so cool why are there no similar concepts in other famous major desktops (even non Linux)?
APKs are pretty much the Android equivalent. In both cases the key features are sandboxing and bundling of dependencies. The stores also work roughly equivalently - like with snaps you can install an APK without a store, and that mechanism is what alternative stores use, but for full integration there's really just one: the Google Play Store.
iOS works pretty much the same way too, as far as I understand.
APKs are pretty much the Android equivalent. In both cases the key features are sandboxing and bundling of dependencies. The stores also work roughly equivalently - like with snaps you can install an APK without a store, and that mechanism is what alternative stores use, but for full integration there's really just one: the Google Play Store.
iOS works pretty much the same way too, as far as I understand.
Lately I've been running Fedora.
Early Ubtuntu & Mark Shuttleworth were a big part of my teens and my first real experience with a Linux Desktop and Philosophy tied to Open Source Software.
It's been fun watching Ubuntu evolve over the years and see distros like Mint evolve off of them as well.
Early Ubtuntu & Mark Shuttleworth were a big part of my teens and my first real experience with a Linux Desktop and Philosophy tied to Open Source Software.
It's been fun watching Ubuntu evolve over the years and see distros like Mint evolve off of them as well.
Fedora Workstation and especially Silverblue made Linux work for me in a way no distribution I have used before has been able to. Being bleeding edge yet stable and reliable just made it so pleasant, coming from a mix of Slitaz, Elementary and Manjaro.
Also switched to Silverblue and love it.
Ubuntu wasn't especially bad, it was more that Silverblue made so much sense. It fixed the issues I was having with other distros where messiness would creep into my setup over time.
I also tried NixOS, but it felt too rigid. Silverblue offered the same benefits of immutability without a loss of flexibility.
Ubuntu wasn't especially bad, it was more that Silverblue made so much sense. It fixed the issues I was having with other distros where messiness would creep into my setup over time.
I also tried NixOS, but it felt too rigid. Silverblue offered the same benefits of immutability without a loss of flexibility.
Do you do development on it? If so, how do you work around Silverblue's restrictions? Curious about people's experiences.
It's a great design for development since your dev environments are isolated and you can have multiple, without risking breaking your main OS.
I use a combination of toolbox, distrobox, flatpak, docker, homebrew, junest and custom bwrap scripts.
I use a combination of toolbox, distrobox, flatpak, docker, homebrew, junest and custom bwrap scripts.
I do. I use toolboxes for pretty much all my development. I've scripted the setup each type of toolbox I use, so they can be reproduced. I use a terminal editor (neovim), but I think it's possible to run vscode from a toolbox too[1].
For graphical apps (browsers etc.) the flatpaks are very handy.
The above setup means I don't really need to layer much in the OS, mainly drivers and common terminal utilities.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/107lvlf/silverblue_...
For graphical apps (browsers etc.) the flatpaks are very handy.
The above setup means I don't really need to layer much in the OS, mainly drivers and common terminal utilities.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/107lvlf/silverblue_...
Yeah, I agree (although with Kinoite because fuck GNOME). It still has plenty of issues, but at least I don't feel like I'm constantly fighting the system just to use software.
I'm super happy with Fedora for ~ 4 years. It's always one/two versions behind (currently 37) and it never gave me any problems (compared to manjaro/arch/ubuntu and few other smaller distro that I've used, but names escapes me)
Fedora seems faster than Ubuntu out of the box on the same hardware.
It's also rock solid from my experience. That may be somehow related to docker doing heavy lifting when needed. Ofc YMMV.
Fedora isn't perfect, but it can go for weeks without updates and then update cleanly reliably, which is not something you typically get with rolling distributions. This makes it well suited for use as a dual booted secondary OS or VM OS.
Anecdata: I've used Arch Linux for several years and it's been probably 3-4 years since I've had any stability issues with it after upgrading. And the last time I did run into problems, it was from bugs in the open source AMD GPU drivers due to how relatively immature they were at the time.
Would I use it for a mission critical workstation or server? Probably not. But for daily personal use, it's been completely fine for me and I would highly recommend it to others.
Slightly tangential question: Is there a distro that has a stable "core" (kernel, maybe some userspace libraries) but uses rolling releases for everything else? Ideally, that would probably give you the best of both worlds for a personal machine.
Would I use it for a mission critical workstation or server? Probably not. But for daily personal use, it's been completely fine for me and I would highly recommend it to others.
Slightly tangential question: Is there a distro that has a stable "core" (kernel, maybe some userspace libraries) but uses rolling releases for everything else? Ideally, that would probably give you the best of both worlds for a personal machine.
> Slightly tangential question: Is there a distro that has a stable "core" (kernel, maybe some userspace libraries) but uses rolling releases for everything else? Ideally, that would probably give you the best of both worlds for a personal machine.
I'm aware this isn't exactly what you were asking for—and with the disclaimer that I spent a lot of years as a Linux desktop user, so I do have a great deal of experience with how that "half" lives, but: this is one of the things that's so nice about MacOS + Homebrew. It's a very stable core (up through and including the graphical environment—after all, if that breaks on a workstation/desktop, that's nearly as bad as the whole OS breaking) that only updates every couple years (and I can ignore the updates a long time without notable consequences) with a very-high-package-count package manager that's rolling-release on top of it, for most of the software I directly use.
I'd love to see a Linux distro that worked that way—I don't think I could go back to doing package management the typical Linux way, on my workstation. I've done rolling-release, I've done everything-stable-and-maybe-some-bodged-in-extra-repositories-for-newer-stuff, and both suck, for my needs, compared to this arrangement. Stable core + rolling applications is great, would be thrilled to see more Linux distros explore that kind of thing.
I'm aware this isn't exactly what you were asking for—and with the disclaimer that I spent a lot of years as a Linux desktop user, so I do have a great deal of experience with how that "half" lives, but: this is one of the things that's so nice about MacOS + Homebrew. It's a very stable core (up through and including the graphical environment—after all, if that breaks on a workstation/desktop, that's nearly as bad as the whole OS breaking) that only updates every couple years (and I can ignore the updates a long time without notable consequences) with a very-high-package-count package manager that's rolling-release on top of it, for most of the software I directly use.
I'd love to see a Linux distro that worked that way—I don't think I could go back to doing package management the typical Linux way, on my workstation. I've done rolling-release, I've done everything-stable-and-maybe-some-bodged-in-extra-repositories-for-newer-stuff, and both suck, for my needs, compared to this arrangement. Stable core + rolling applications is great, would be thrilled to see more Linux distros explore that kind of thing.
Homebrew has its issues, but yes I also like the approach of the system and the packages I install living in two entirely separate worlds, with the system being boring and stable and other packages lining up with whatever is currently shipping for Windows/macOS. The extra space consumed is negligible and well worth the turbulence reduction.
Immutable distributions like Fedora Silverblue seem to lean in that direction, though I've never used them personally.
Immutable distributions like Fedora Silverblue seem to lean in that direction, though I've never used them personally.
I have heard good things about NixOS but I am also told its not a normie daily driver.
You better love Unix to run NixOS.
I do love Unix, I was a FreeBSD fellow, but Nix is so incredible that everything else feels like poking at your hard drive with a stick.
Editing a file in /etc/ feels like PEEK/POKEing to memory now. Barbaric.
Editing a file in /etc/ feels like PEEK/POKEing to memory now. Barbaric.
If you desire stability and you’re already used to Ubuntu derivatives, there’s always Debian.
The issue with Debian is how old application packages are, and I'm not really into Flatpak. Fedora's packages are pretty close in recency to what's shipping on other platforms.
Stability and update frequency are inversely correlated. It’s largely an unavoidable trade-off.
It makes perfect sense to me that you’d feel that Fedora struck a better balance for you.
Many people prefer Debian based distros. Some people use Debian on the desktop because they prefer less frequent updates (among other reasons).
I’m just stating the obvious here, really.
It makes perfect sense to me that you’d feel that Fedora struck a better balance for you.
Many people prefer Debian based distros. Some people use Debian on the desktop because they prefer less frequent updates (among other reasons).
I’m just stating the obvious here, really.
Debian testing is more stable than other "so-called stable" distros, and has often newer packages than the contemporary ubuntu version.
Debian testing puts you in a pretty bad place in terms of security updates; you're not getting new upstream releases as quickly as unstable/experimental, but they don't do dedicated backports of security fixes like with stable.
I found the installer was lacking something I typically wanted. Disk encryption maybe? Or maybe it’s partitioning or file system options were limited? Can’t recall. It kept me from trying it out full time at one point
The installer having disk encryption is one of the reasons I chose Fedora. I use Kinoite with btrfs over LUKS, FWIW.
Devil's advocate...how much do we really care about these different distros at this point. The world lives out of the browser. As long as I have chrome and VS Code I'm pretty good to go.
When your browser is shipped via a snap and is 2 versions out of date because the update mechanism sucks and has been failing silently for over a month, it makes a difference.
There's my personal anecdote.
There's my personal anecdote.
Firefox through snap has been the last straw for me as well. Not quite enough to ragequit on the spot, but next time I have to install a new OS, it won't be Ubuntu.
I like the security/privacy promises of options like snaps. It seems like other issues, like file sizes, aren’t the worst. And getting it to match your os options seems like a solvable problem. Could somebody explain why they hate these systems?
why do you install it from snap? I'm using ubuntu and don't install from snap most of the time.
It's the default now.
Yup, and installing Firefox via apt installs a snap as well. I manually had to add a separate apt repo for Firefox alone. I seem to have to do this more and more for things that just can't be slow on my machine.
Yep, I did the same. But I don't want to mess around with hacks like that any more, so my next distro isn't going to be Ubuntu, even though I've used some Ubuntu variant for over a decade now. I'm looking at Tumbleweed for my next distro.
Good for you I guess, but most features I need aren't offered by web apps. Paradoxically, Linux is the only platform where desktop apps are the default.
Linux still has its fair share of electron wrapper "applications"
There are some, but nothing of real importance (to me, YMMV). There are no electron-based applications that I use.
> The world lives out of the browser
Exactly: my productive environment is «out of the browser» and I want it to be as fitting as possible, for my efficiency and comfort.
Exactly: my productive environment is «out of the browser» and I want it to be as fitting as possible, for my efficiency and comfort.
Imo package managers/repos, update cycles, and installation process can still be a reasonable differentiator between distros. Admittedly these decisions are fairly minor -- most popular packages are available on the major repos and you probably aren't installing your distro every day. But even though most the time I'm just living in nvim and Firefox, if adding or changing something becomes a chore it can really expand quickly as I might avoid making a positive change to my system just because I can't overcome the initial inertia from having to bend my distro to my will. Then again, that's probably a sign that I should swallow my pride and switch from Arch to Manjaro at some point.
I didn't care much about one distro vs another until I found a lot of packages I wanted were packaged for Arch Linux and not Ubuntu Linux, and the Arch Wiki was better than Ubuntu's docs. And also, yes "Snaps" were annoying.
I still use applications and my file system.
> The world lives out of the browser
Your world does, and I know that it does for many. But mine absolutely doesn't -- there isn't anything critical I use that is browser-based. And many are like me.
Different strokes and all that.
Your world does, and I know that it does for many. But mine absolutely doesn't -- there isn't anything critical I use that is browser-based. And many are like me.
Different strokes and all that.
Agree. OSes are practically irrelevant. The only thing I need is a web browser and a terminal with posix like commands. I can (almost) get that on Windows these days.
I’ve run Mac for 20 years now, and before that Linux for almost 10. I can’t think of anything I lost when switching beyond focus follows mouse.
I’ve run Mac for 20 years now, and before that Linux for almost 10. I can’t think of anything I lost when switching beyond focus follows mouse.
One of the downfalls of Linux Desktop, besides the fragmentation, was Apple and Microsoft figuring out that a large majority wants a POSIX like experience, and aren't that deep onto GNU/Linux anyway.
There is a certain irony when the Linux Desktop is on minority when looking around laptops at FOSDEM.
There is a certain irony when the Linux Desktop is on minority when looking around laptops at FOSDEM.
You also need some form of window management, and if you like tiling windows, Linux has the most options by far.
If you miss focus follows mouse and like tiling windows, i3 and sway both have that option.
Others might too, those are the only two I have experience with though.
Others might too, those are the only two I have experience with though.
That's one of the jobs of Finder. And no, I don't like tiling windows.
I gave up on Ubuntu after some snap frustrations.
I tried Nix but couldn't figure out how to install some software I needed (dealt with plugins).
I tried Manjaro but the system was unbootable after a software update soon after install and I just don't want to fight problems like that anymore.
I've been using Mint but recently am giving PopOs a try but they've not fixed enough of the Gnome 3 usability problems.
Been a deb used for decades at this point but maybe I'll give Fedora a try next, either going with XFCE (like I did with Mint) or KDE.
I tried Nix but couldn't figure out how to install some software I needed (dealt with plugins).
I tried Manjaro but the system was unbootable after a software update soon after install and I just don't want to fight problems like that anymore.
I've been using Mint but recently am giving PopOs a try but they've not fixed enough of the Gnome 3 usability problems.
Been a deb used for decades at this point but maybe I'll give Fedora a try next, either going with XFCE (like I did with Mint) or KDE.
If you're coming from "Ubuntu was what I needed but sucks with recent decisions" have you thought about using popOs with a different desktop environment? (like xfce, or KDE)
My experience is you get what Ubuntu used to have that way, i.e. no thrills reliability, so would definitely recommend it
My experience is you get what Ubuntu used to have that way, i.e. no thrills reliability, so would definitely recommend it
Why not Debian?
Manjaro isn't much better. They tried to force a proprietary office suite on their users and tried their hand at the adware thing too.
Stop relying on "user friendly" distros, you haven't needed them for almost a decade, most common distributions run out of the box with no problems most of the time.
Stop relying on "user friendly" distros, you haven't needed them for almost a decade, most common distributions run out of the box with no problems most of the time.
Really? So if I switched back to Gentoo after 20 years away I would find that I could quickly get a nice desktop environment set up, have the NVIDIA graphics drivers properly installed and compatible, log into my office Wifi and detect the office printer, and be able to install Anaconda and get back to training PyTorch models, within a couple of days?
Did you pick gentoo for a reason? Maybe because you don't have a point otherwise?
Because I used to run Gentoo back when I had spare time for taking care of my operating system, and very much enjoyed the customizability and the efficiency of having every binary on my system compiled for my system.
You say that, but I can take an SSD out of its wrapper, fit it to a PC, put an Ubuntu USB stick in, and have a fully-functioning machine in five minutes without actually having to interact with it in any way.
What else can you recommend that does that?
What else can you recommend that does that?
Fedora. Boot stick, select the drive you want to install to, click install.
Why would I choose Fedora over Ubuntu?
Because Fedora doesn't force Snap on you or try to put ads in your environment.
There's also Linux Mint and Debian if you're hell bent on apt. They usually work right out of the box like Ubuntu does.
There's also Linux Mint and Debian if you're hell bent on apt. They usually work right out of the box like Ubuntu does.
Ubuntu doesn't put ads in your environment, and I want snap and cannot understand why anyone wouldn't.
If you can't install snap packages, your distro is useless.
If you can't install snap packages, your distro is useless.
Well, most linux users and computer users in general disagree with you. I personally loathe snap and will not use software that is packaged only in snap. I use my distro just fine, far from useless.
But you're free to add snap to anything you like. The problem with Ubuntu is forcing it on users, not simply that snap exists.
But you're free to add snap to anything you like. The problem with Ubuntu is forcing it on users, not simply that snap exists.
Can you explain what you think is wrong with snap?
You didn't ask in your previous comment why you would want X over Ubuntu.
You asked what other distro would get you going as quickly as Ubuntu.
You asked what other distro would get you going as quickly as Ubuntu.
Most distros have installers. Even Arch, which I installed recently, had just a couple choices to make and hit enter a few times.
I've been using Regolith (Ubuntu + well-integrated i3) happily for a while, but the Snap moves from Ubuntu are a massive turn-off.
Looks like Regolith can in theory be installed on top of Pop!_OS which seems to target the same audience while going in a more sensible direction. Anybody tried that combo, or have any feedback on PopOS in general?
Looks like Regolith can in theory be installed on top of Pop!_OS which seems to target the same audience while going in a more sensible direction. Anybody tried that combo, or have any feedback on PopOS in general?
I switched over to Pop OS and Regolith 2 about a month ago and I'm very happy with it, it's the same experience as using it with Ubuntu.
I have had some trouble with the Pop Shop leaking memory, freezing, and crashing, but you can disable it and use Gnome Software if you want a gui.
I have had some trouble with the Pop Shop leaking memory, freezing, and crashing, but you can disable it and use Gnome Software if you want a gui.
I found Regolith nice to use except for the configuration. It seems to split the configuration into a bunch of files rather than just a standard i3 config file.
Pop is generally great. Surprised it is not being discussed here more. It is Ubuntu + Flatpak + Nice UX improvement improvements
Regolith looks really cool, thanks for sharing. Gonna check this out tonight
> My daily driver is a middle-aged Dell laptop, it’s about five years old but because I invested in the highest spec I could at the time, with an i7 of the day and 16 gigabytes of memory it’s still a contender.
I like how they need to defend themselves for using a 5 year old laptop.
I like how they need to defend themselves for using a 5 year old laptop.
What? A top spec 5 year old (2018) laptop should be plenty fast for most common desktop use.
I have a 2016 Dell latitude laying around with Debian 11 on it. It is plenty fast for most things. Even running virtual machines in virtual box with gaming (mostly older Windows games I run in a WinXP VM)
I have a 2016 Dell latitude laying around with Debian 11 on it. It is plenty fast for most things. Even running virtual machines in virtual box with gaming (mostly older Windows games I run in a WinXP VM)
I'm typing this on a top spec 10 year old laptop. I'm saying it's funny to see them feel that they need to defend that choice.
How's the battery life on that 10-year-old laptop?
The big improvement with modern laptops isn't compute power, it's energy efficiency and thus battery life, and also weight. Modern laptops are a lot easier to carry than 10-year-old models since they weigh a fraction as much.
The big improvement with modern laptops isn't compute power, it's energy efficiency and thus battery life, and also weight. Modern laptops are a lot easier to carry than 10-year-old models since they weigh a fraction as much.
Depends. I have a t430 that with the right distro last like 4 to 6 hours depending on usage.
It's a chunky laptop, but gets me going when I travel to a place where security can be iffy. So looks like an old VCR, and get less attention than an apple logo.
It's a chunky laptop, but gets me going when I travel to a place where security can be iffy. So looks like an old VCR, and get less attention than an apple logo.
The battery is good enough for me.
> A top spec 5 year old (2018) laptop should be plenty fast for most common desktop use.
Heck, a medium-spec 20 year old computer is plenty fast for common desktop use.
Heck, a medium-spec 20 year old computer is plenty fast for common desktop use.
I'm editing video on a desktop PC older than that (more RAM and a decent graphics card, admittedly).
Maybe ten years ago I jumped from Ubuntu to Fedora, can't remember why - just wanted to shake things up maybe? This year I installed Mint on my main machine. Contemplating a switch to Debian 12 when it's out - but might not bother, Mint has been really nice.
What drove me from Fedora was mostly the need to upgrade every 6 months, and the short support windows.
What drove me from Fedora was mostly the need to upgrade every 6 months, and the short support windows.
My only problems with Mint is that I don't care about Cinnamon, and when things go wrong the only forum that will help you with that particular frankendebian is the Mint forum, which is woefully inadequate. If you want to quickly fix what's broken, Arch, Debian, and Fedora are aces, everything else is trouble imo.
I have used Mint with xfce4/xmonad as my daily driver for six years now. Haven't had any issues and I have continued upgrading.
Why not use the MATE edition?
> thus had to select a distro for which the installation is painless, the learning curve is minimal, and which doesn’t have too many neckbeard quirks.
While obviously Manjaro has a nice and pleasant GUI installer, it is a pretty weird distro with many quirks and not having some familiarity with Arch is probably a bad thing.
In my personal oppinion I have trusted Arch enough to rely on it for my education, it is a remarkably solid and reliable distro, regardless of the jokes about it. But I wouldn't put the same trust into Manjaro, it is definitely a weirder distro with more points of failure.
While obviously Manjaro has a nice and pleasant GUI installer, it is a pretty weird distro with many quirks and not having some familiarity with Arch is probably a bad thing.
In my personal oppinion I have trusted Arch enough to rely on it for my education, it is a remarkably solid and reliable distro, regardless of the jokes about it. But I wouldn't put the same trust into Manjaro, it is definitely a weirder distro with more points of failure.
If you have the stomach for starting from nothing and installing only what you need, Alpine is wonderful. It uses musl libc so there are some things you need flatpaks for, but the vast majority of stuff I've tried just works, and it's small enough that the entire OS is comprehensible to a mere mortal.
I'm also using Alpine, but 100% of binary distributions of software I've tried have failed to run. Even AppImages don't run on Alpine, due to lack of glibc. It's honestly pretty frustrating--though I don't blame Alpine for this!
As a mitigation, I use Nix to run anything that isn't packaged for Alpine (e.g. Deno), and that actually works pretty well, but having a parallel set of libraries kind of defeats my whole purpose for running Alpine, namely a having trim system without any bloat (on a netbook with 1 GB of RAM).
As a mitigation, I use Nix to run anything that isn't packaged for Alpine (e.g. Deno), and that actually works pretty well, but having a parallel set of libraries kind of defeats my whole purpose for running Alpine, namely a having trim system without any bloat (on a netbook with 1 GB of RAM).
You can install glibc on Alpine but it's a shitemare from start to finish. Better to stick to Arch for a very similar user experience.
Yeah, I've found just using Nix on Alpine for glibc-dependent stuff to be the simplest workflow.
Note that, in my case, I'm not using Alpine for the "user experience", but solely because it is the most lightweight distribution (important when running on a machine with 1 GB of RAM). I was able to set up a C programming environment on a Raspberry Pi in only 300 MB... of disk space, not RAM! :)
Note that, in my case, I'm not using Alpine for the "user experience", but solely because it is the most lightweight distribution (important when running on a machine with 1 GB of RAM). I was able to set up a C programming environment on a Raspberry Pi in only 300 MB... of disk space, not RAM! :)
I've dabbled with various flavors of Linux for a few years. Started with Ubuntu in college, then ran Linux Mint for about 6 months on my gaming rig before giving up and going back to Windows.
Most recently, I had Manjaro running on my Thinkpad for about 3 years before I wiped it and put W10 on it for my fiancee. Since getting a Steam Deck I've been eyeballing Linux on the desktop again, having seen firsthand how well Proton works.
Having effectively been a Linux baby 3 times, I have to say Manjaro was everything I thought Ubuntu would be when I tried it. I remember Ubuntu being intractable, hard to use, and weird to update. Manjaro seemed almost effortless to use, and honestly I'd probably recommend it to a Windows user over any other offerings at the current juncture.
Most recently, I had Manjaro running on my Thinkpad for about 3 years before I wiped it and put W10 on it for my fiancee. Since getting a Steam Deck I've been eyeballing Linux on the desktop again, having seen firsthand how well Proton works.
Having effectively been a Linux baby 3 times, I have to say Manjaro was everything I thought Ubuntu would be when I tried it. I remember Ubuntu being intractable, hard to use, and weird to update. Manjaro seemed almost effortless to use, and honestly I'd probably recommend it to a Windows user over any other offerings at the current juncture.
My actual choices are: Debian for servers and tinkering hardware (including derivatives such as Armbian on non x86 embedded boards), Alpine on small servers and very small/older hardware and Manjaro on my laptops and PCs that I convert to Linux for other people, relatives etc. So far I've been very happy with these three choices, and Manjaro helped a lot to introduce Linux to non tech people.
Why manjaro for those people? What desktop environment?
Many of them were/are old people who were used to Windows XP or 7, rarely 8 and beyond, therefore I thought that moving to a XFCE desktop would have been less traumatic for them, and in the end it worked well. XFCE to me is the right balance of features and snappiness, that's the one I use on all my non CLI machines, although I prefer Debian on my main one, but Debian's XFCE defaults on ugly+impractical settings that would need too much work to repeat at each install. I also want to give them a rolling distro, which on Debian can be risky.
I also made the switch to Debian because I want to get closer to Ubuntu's origin. And when Ubuntu decided to only provide security updates to core
applications (and leaving "universe" package users like ImageMagick vulnerable
unless they were subscribed to Ubuntu Pro), my migration was the right thing
to do. I still do installing snaps (and messing with LXD), though...
Canonical has provided security updates just for the packages in "main" and the security updates for the rest were provided by community maintainers on a best-effort basis. With Ubuntu Pro, Canonical now provides security updates for more packages than it used to, otherwise.
Disclaimer: I work for Canonical but have nothing to do with the distribution or Ubuntu Pro. And I am not speaking on behalf of the company.
Disclaimer: I work for Canonical but have nothing to do with the distribution or Ubuntu Pro. And I am not speaking on behalf of the company.
I made the same move a few years ago and honestly never looked back. Manjaro might have its warts, but it works really well, has an active community, and gives almost all the advantages of Arch (the AUR is amazing!) for "cowards" like me. Manjaro "just worked" and it has been extremely easy to roll with the updates since install. I have since migrated other machines to Manjaro happily.
> the AUR is amazing
Every time I end up on the Ubuntu machine: "sudo apt install somet<tab><tab>" nothing. Urgh. Off I go to Google "install <package> Ubuntu" and visit some third party website for a .deb.
If I wanted to circumvent the packaging system by default, I'd use Windows.
Every time I end up on the Ubuntu machine: "sudo apt install somet<tab><tab>" nothing. Urgh. Off I go to Google "install <package> Ubuntu" and visit some third party website for a .deb.
If I wanted to circumvent the packaging system by default, I'd use Windows.
Our realities must be very different; I have never had to side-load a .deb. I honestly didn't even consider that tab-completion on apt might be a thing; I usually search with grep for what I want, but I've never not had something be there.
I guess my needs are meager.
I guess my needs are meager.
Proper Binary Chrome (not Chromium), Minecraft, MS Edge, and I'm sure there was something else I needed to install recently where I needed to download a .deb and run "sudo dpkg -i <thing>"
Okay, I don't *need* to install Minecraft, but I like it.
Yes, Edge works just great on Linux, probably better than it does on Windows.
I am not a typical Linux user. I have been doing weird and unsupported shit with it since kernel 0.93 and I know what I'm getting into before I unscrew the lid.
Okay, I don't *need* to install Minecraft, but I like it.
Yes, Edge works just great on Linux, probably better than it does on Windows.
I am not a typical Linux user. I have been doing weird and unsupported shit with it since kernel 0.93 and I know what I'm getting into before I unscrew the lid.
Let me go ahead and give some love to MX Linux; especially if you're trying to stick with a similar package manager. Right now MX feels like the perfect balance of "light" and "everything just works, pretty nicely."
(Their attitude toward Systemd is one thing that got me on board. They had healthy criticism and waited a bit, but weren't all like NEVER EVER! and eventually made room for it.)
(Their attitude toward Systemd is one thing that got me on board. They had healthy criticism and waited a bit, but weren't all like NEVER EVER! and eventually made room for it.)
I only know Manjaro in name from the disgust-filled messages in the #archlinux IRC
I also ditched Ubuntu after using it for over a decade and went to Arch Linux, which Manjaro is based on. Seems to be a common migration story.
I used Arch for years but switched to Ubuntu because I got tired of coping with Arch's broken networking in the default kernels, and then they shipped a totally broken avr-gcc which prevented me from doing actual proper work.
This was a while ago, probably about ten years ago, and I've used Ubuntu ever since.
This was a while ago, probably about ten years ago, and I've used Ubuntu ever since.
I said bye to ubuntu after the snap debacle. Using debian now.
I switched from Ubuntu to Manjaro a few years ago and I have been very happy. The only issue is that commercial software companies have limited (if any) resources to devote to developing for Linux, so often I find that commercial software is available as a DEB or an RPM and that's it. In most cases if the software is popular enough it can be found in the AUR as what's essentially a "port" if any of you are FreeBSD people. But right now we're evaluating device/endpoint management software and the few solutions that ship agents for Linux all treat Ubuntu as king. We did find one nerdy solution that ships an Arch agent, though.
I'm was sticking to ubuntu because
1. NVidia seem to love debian/ubuntu more that other distros, and in general I don't want to waste much time with setting up machine learning env/CUDA on my machines
2. work has debian based distro, so using same tool/mindset is convenient
but I really want to get rid of it because of snaps and overall attitute (previous controversies with their unity desktop manager, ads in it etc). I kind of didn't cared much then as I switched to Mint linux (even that had different distro names to annoy when need to set nvidia) and went back then ubuntu + i3. Right now it seems it's time to ditch ubuntu completely.
1. NVidia seem to love debian/ubuntu more that other distros, and in general I don't want to waste much time with setting up machine learning env/CUDA on my machines
2. work has debian based distro, so using same tool/mindset is convenient
but I really want to get rid of it because of snaps and overall attitute (previous controversies with their unity desktop manager, ads in it etc). I kind of didn't cared much then as I switched to Mint linux (even that had different distro names to annoy when need to set nvidia) and went back then ubuntu + i3. Right now it seems it's time to ditch ubuntu completely.
Enabling proprietary nvidia drivers on NixOS:
services.xserver.videoDrivers = [ "nvidia" ];
{
outputs = { self, nixpkgs }:
let pkgs = import nixpkgs
{
inherit x86_64-linux;
config.allowUnfree = true;
config.cudaSupport = true;
};
in
{
# Environment
};
};
}
> but I really want to get rid of it because of snaps
If you want something on the desktop that is close enough to Ubuntu but without the snaps, you might want to have a look at Linux Mint: https://linuxmint.com/
Or some might also just use Debian with a desktop environment installed, there's not too many reasons to not do that.
If you want something on the desktop that is close enough to Ubuntu but without the snaps, you might want to have a look at Linux Mint: https://linuxmint.com/
Or some might also just use Debian with a desktop environment installed, there's not too many reasons to not do that.
Anecdotal but I've had a lot less cuda/nvidia driver breaking moments with Arch than Ubuntu.
Didn't manjaro fell out of grace and right now the hot new go to is EndeavourOS?
I don't get how one can have a single computer. The OS is hardly the only thing that can go wrong. I toss a cup of coffee in my laptop the other week. Just switch it off (the lack of a real switch or a plug is wildly annoying here) and leave it off for a good while. Playing with different OS's is also more fun if your life doesn't depend on everything working all of the time.
Arch is awesome. It's not a beginner's distro, but once it's set up it tends to keep working.
I will never not think of Manjaro as a clown show after this: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/31yayt/manjaro_forgo... https://i.imgur.com/qV7QrQB.png
I will never not think of Manjaro as a clown show after this: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/31yayt/manjaro_forgo... https://i.imgur.com/qV7QrQB.png
I am using Debian for more than 20 years and have never missed anything.
I still use (K)Ubuntu desktop, but for servers I feel Centos Stream 9 is best choice for a homelab at the moment. Debian is also good. What these two distros have over Ubuntu, is easy and clear documentation. Ubuntu Server adds so much noise, they are changing too many things over the years. Network configuration documentation is a mess. I'm tired of googling for an example thats updated. For Centos I easily find examples that includes how to configure network services correctly with SELinux. Extra security without time wasted is good!
Kubuntu is awesome! Using an LTS version which provides a solid base and then using the kubuntu-backports PPA to get the latest KDE Plasma stuff works great in my experience.
> Centos Stream 9
Rocky Linux?
Rocky Linux?
I just moved my Raspberry Pi 4 (8MB) from Ubuntu to Debian 11. I run Ubuntu in several other environments so having one common Linux has been good. But Debian 11 is significantly faster. Same hardware, just noticeably faster.
There are a few anomalies, I suspect mostly from the fact that Gnome is a post install add on. The Gnome network applet doesn't work but the network works fine. The only thing that is problematic on the PI is Firefox - it lags.
I intend to slowly migrate my other systems -Desktop, Digital Ocean to Debian after a bit longer.
There are a few anomalies, I suspect mostly from the fact that Gnome is a post install add on. The Gnome network applet doesn't work but the network works fine. The only thing that is problematic on the PI is Firefox - it lags.
I intend to slowly migrate my other systems -Desktop, Digital Ocean to Debian after a bit longer.
Check out DietPi — Debian-based OS with optimized software packages for devices such as Raspberry Pi. And super easy upgrade options.
https://dietpi.com
https://dietpi.com
Thanks!!
[deleted]
I see all of this complaining about snaps and the "direction" Canonical takes as a purity constest. Yes, Snaps can be annoying (it isn't in my case). Yes, Canonical is far from perfect.
The Snap hate is really overblown. I'm using some to work daily and, apart from the annoying notification that appears far less than before (like once by a blue moon now on my system), they work exactly like .deb files.
Every OS suck in their own specific way. Fix the problems or move on to your new and shiny evergreen OS.
The Snap hate is really overblown. I'm using some to work daily and, apart from the annoying notification that appears far less than before (like once by a blue moon now on my system), they work exactly like .deb files.
Every OS suck in their own specific way. Fix the problems or move on to your new and shiny evergreen OS.
I don't think it is so much the snaps that are the problem, but that it is hard to get around them. I choose not to use snaps (or would like to choose that), but I find I am constantly fighting them. Why do I have a mount of some snap thing? Why does Firefox have to be a snap? I have enough things to know about without having to learn about snaps. sigh. So I am moving away from Ubuntu after years of being a happy user. It is not a hate thing, it is because either the choice to use snaps is not mine or because I am too stupid to know how to get rid of them.
What are you constantly fighting with snaps about? What snaps are you using that are so broken that you have to fight with it? I mean that seriously. I've never had this experience and I've used Ubuntu for ~15 years.
Not the poster you're responding to, but I am finding it very hard to use Firefox on my Ubuntu 22.04 laptop consistently ever since it started prompting me to install the snap version.
The snap wouldn't install, I couldn't figure out how to make it work, it seemed to get stuck trying to mount something from some unspecified device. I needed Firefox to keep working, but was forced to stop work to figure out what was broken. Decided to go around it.
Went to some unofficial mozilla PPA with "apt" incantations to force the apt version to take precedence. This version also mysteriously stops upgrading when the snap version becomes newer, or something. I am forced to reinstall it periodically. Possibly a Firefox packaging bug, or maybe I'm not clever enough to understand the interdependencies between apt and snap.
The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't want to debug this snap thing that I never asked for. I feel like I am dealing with some corporation, not open source software. As soon as I get some down time, I'll say bye-bye to Ubuntu.
The snap wouldn't install, I couldn't figure out how to make it work, it seemed to get stuck trying to mount something from some unspecified device. I needed Firefox to keep working, but was forced to stop work to figure out what was broken. Decided to go around it.
Went to some unofficial mozilla PPA with "apt" incantations to force the apt version to take precedence. This version also mysteriously stops upgrading when the snap version becomes newer, or something. I am forced to reinstall it periodically. Possibly a Firefox packaging bug, or maybe I'm not clever enough to understand the interdependencies between apt and snap.
The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. I don't want to debug this snap thing that I never asked for. I feel like I am dealing with some corporation, not open source software. As soon as I get some down time, I'll say bye-bye to Ubuntu.
The defaults are not sane. Sure it is nice they restrict applications, until you open a DVD reader and discover it can't talk to the DVD drive.
[deleted]
Nah. "Can't get fooled again."
I see what Ubuntu is doing. I understand what they're doing as a business, and I don't like it and have every right to criticize it for what it is. Ubuntu built their brand on the promise of free and open source and then more and more cozied up to Microsoft and an "us only" way of doing things.
They are free to do that and I understand why as a business. But I'm also just as free to call it out and say I don't like it and steer people away from that sad story.
(MX Linux is what I'm rolling with for now.)
I see what Ubuntu is doing. I understand what they're doing as a business, and I don't like it and have every right to criticize it for what it is. Ubuntu built their brand on the promise of free and open source and then more and more cozied up to Microsoft and an "us only" way of doing things.
They are free to do that and I understand why as a business. But I'm also just as free to call it out and say I don't like it and steer people away from that sad story.
(MX Linux is what I'm rolling with for now.)
> I see all of this complaining about snaps and the "direction" Canonical takes as a purity constest. Yes, Snaps can be annoying (it isn't in my case). Yes, Canonical is far from perfect.
I don't care about "purity," I care about "annoying." If you acknowledge that some of Ubuntu's business decisions create annoyances, why dismiss people who just want their computers to work as being irrational?
> Every OS suck in their own specific way.
This is the law of averages. It is not a law.
I don't care about "purity," I care about "annoying." If you acknowledge that some of Ubuntu's business decisions create annoyances, why dismiss people who just want their computers to work as being irrational?
> Every OS suck in their own specific way.
This is the law of averages. It is not a law.
[deleted]
Switch to Debian. Seems more stable and sane than Ubuntu.
It always was - the initial point of Ubuntu from a technical standpoint (there was some mumbo-jumbo about togetherness & whatnot as well as the technical decisions) was taking Debian but compromising a little on some of Debian's hard rules in favour of newer versions and some other tweaks for friendliness. That is why the initial versions were based on Debian:Testing with bits of Debian:Sid where there were security or stability concerns in that branch (back then Testing could lag a noticeable amount on security updates, compared to both the stable and unstable branches), rather than starting with Debian:Stable.
They do seem pretty determined to antagonize users so yeah I can see how people move away
Actually for me it was bye bye Desktop Linux, Hello Apple/Google/Microsoft platforms, running GNU/Linux on VMware if needed (or WSL).
Or just ssh into a headless instance, keeping the UNIX tradition it was designed for.
Or just ssh into a headless instance, keeping the UNIX tradition it was designed for.
I made the same switch for the same reasons about three years ago. I have no regrets!
Also, as a CS teacher I've been forcing about 80 students to run Manjaro KDE full-time. The complaining is not nearly as loud as one would imagine. :-)
Also, as a CS teacher I've been forcing about 80 students to run Manjaro KDE full-time. The complaining is not nearly as loud as one would imagine. :-)
I read through the comments here and I’m not excited at all about using something other than Ubuntu.
Instead I’m solidly confident that macOS as a daily driver is the right choice for a busy developer who doesn’t want to mess with stuff.
Instead I’m solidly confident that macOS as a daily driver is the right choice for a busy developer who doesn’t want to mess with stuff.
Over a year ago, I switched to an M1 Max 14-inch as my main computer from an AMD Renoir equipped laptop running Fedora Silverblue with Pantheon. Previously used MacOS from Snow Leopard to Yosemite and very much liked it back then.
Everyone of course is going to have different experiences, but I continue to be disappointed how issue ridden MacOS Ventura has been for me. My Fedora laptop could run for weeks without the need for a reboot (honestly only necessary because I used Silverblue which is immutable), whereas my Macbook constantly has issues adjusting scaling when plugging in a monitor during sleep (necessitating logging out and in), or randomly failing to connect to any WiFi connection after waking up, requiring a full reboot around three times a week.
The settings app is appalling too, I genuinely am flabbergasted how sluggish (as in not loading settings pages for multiple seconds) it can be, especially considering the hardware. Very rarely, Xcode will try to open even though I set VSCode as the default for that file type, but this may be user error (though I don't see what else I can do beyond click that tick). Also, though this is more their design than a fault, I have become far to reliant on dnf via toolbox and whilst I am thankful for Homebrew, I can't stop feeling that a more integrated package manager would make MacOS more usable. Worst of all though is how MacOS handles USB peripherals. Upon plugging in, it should ask for confirmation, a good idea in theory. But for me, no matter the device (printer, usb drive, hub, display), this confirmation window only appears for a split second before disappearing. I then have to unplug and replug the cable about five times before, for some magic reason, the confirmation window stays upon permanently and I can actually interact with it. I tried a fresh install and spend a bit of time on the phone with customer support, neither helped. Simply cannot see MacOS as the choice for someone who needs to rely on their machine in this state.
I'm constantly testing the Asahi Fedora Remix[0] and cannot wait for that to be at a level where I can use it day-to-day. The hardware is amazing, but the software really needs to be improved.
[0] https://pagure.io/fedora-asahi/asahi-repos/tree/main
Everyone of course is going to have different experiences, but I continue to be disappointed how issue ridden MacOS Ventura has been for me. My Fedora laptop could run for weeks without the need for a reboot (honestly only necessary because I used Silverblue which is immutable), whereas my Macbook constantly has issues adjusting scaling when plugging in a monitor during sleep (necessitating logging out and in), or randomly failing to connect to any WiFi connection after waking up, requiring a full reboot around three times a week.
The settings app is appalling too, I genuinely am flabbergasted how sluggish (as in not loading settings pages for multiple seconds) it can be, especially considering the hardware. Very rarely, Xcode will try to open even though I set VSCode as the default for that file type, but this may be user error (though I don't see what else I can do beyond click that tick). Also, though this is more their design than a fault, I have become far to reliant on dnf via toolbox and whilst I am thankful for Homebrew, I can't stop feeling that a more integrated package manager would make MacOS more usable. Worst of all though is how MacOS handles USB peripherals. Upon plugging in, it should ask for confirmation, a good idea in theory. But for me, no matter the device (printer, usb drive, hub, display), this confirmation window only appears for a split second before disappearing. I then have to unplug and replug the cable about five times before, for some magic reason, the confirmation window stays upon permanently and I can actually interact with it. I tried a fresh install and spend a bit of time on the phone with customer support, neither helped. Simply cannot see MacOS as the choice for someone who needs to rely on their machine in this state.
I'm constantly testing the Asahi Fedora Remix[0] and cannot wait for that to be at a level where I can use it day-to-day. The hardware is amazing, but the software really needs to be improved.
[0] https://pagure.io/fedora-asahi/asahi-repos/tree/main
I bet if you looked on a MacOS tweaker forum you'd find just as much attention paid to nonsense tuning. And if anything I'd say MacOS is more likely to pull the rug out from under you than Ubuntu, they're pretty aggressive about droping backward compatibility for things.
> Instead I’m solidly confident that macOS as a daily driver is the right choice for a busy developer who doesn’t want to mess with stuff.
This is true in the way you intend it, but also in a way that you don't.
Yes, macOS "just works" for most stuff--so you don't have to mess with it.
However, if you hit one of those things that does not just work, you can't mess with it so you still don't have to mess with it.
(Yes, I have hit them and they were enough to make me leave the macOS system. USB and Bluetooth are perennial frustrations for me with macOS and there are active threads with dozens of pages of complaints--so it isn't just me.)
This is true in the way you intend it, but also in a way that you don't.
Yes, macOS "just works" for most stuff--so you don't have to mess with it.
However, if you hit one of those things that does not just work, you can't mess with it so you still don't have to mess with it.
(Yes, I have hit them and they were enough to make me leave the macOS system. USB and Bluetooth are perennial frustrations for me with macOS and there are active threads with dozens of pages of complaints--so it isn't just me.)
As a Debian user who would never buy an Apple product, the amount of time I've spent troubleshooting Macs for coworkers who thought they were a ticket to not understanding how their computers worked is absurd. And the proportion of those failures that lead to an Apple support thread where dozens of people were being ignored or gaslit by Apple support is probably a third.
Two root partions with one stable debian and another bleeding edge is an option. And a common big home partition for accomodating flatpaks which can be shared by both.
[deleted]
The thing about an open source OS is that it can be infiltrated by a bigger more powerful OS company . . .
I did the same. But chose ArchlLinux.
Ubuntu runs my 12y old laptop and never had an issue. dont use snaps though
Thanks Ubuntu maintainers & backers
Thanks Ubuntu maintainers & backers
Manjaro is a nice hobbyist distro but it's not a distro to be taken seriously.
I've been using Manjaro for three years without issue. What gives?
Isn't Manjaro the distro that constantly fails to renew their SSL certificates, pushes security updates way too late, and distributed software that brought down the AUR a couple of times?
I have never used it myself, but from everything I've heard about it I'm kind of surprised how popular it is.
I have never used it myself, but from everything I've heard about it I'm kind of surprised how popular it is.
'AUR' = Arch User Repository on Manjaro. Non-Manjaro users won't know that acronym.
I'll bite. Why?
Never noticed any issues with snap, but truth be told I seldom use it for installing anything. If someone is unhappy with snap why use it? There is no requirement to use snap, usually you can get .deb from somewhere, you can find ppa, or install from source.
> If someone is unhappy with snap why use it?
That is largely the point. Though they are not using it by moving to a distro where it isn't “native” so they don't have to do things more manually for some packages that they need/want.
That is largely the point. Though they are not using it by moving to a distro where it isn't “native” so they don't have to do things more manually for some packages that they need/want.
>There is no requirement to use snap, usually you can get .deb from somewhere, you can find ppa, or install from source.
Yes, because installing Firefox from source, and updating every few days when new security updates are released, is so easy...
It is possible to switch to a PPA for Firefox, but installing it isn't quite trivial, since Ubuntu really doesn't want you doing it that way. With this, and so many other decisions that Ubuntu has been making in recent years, it's easier to just find another distro better aligned to my interests.
Yes, because installing Firefox from source, and updating every few days when new security updates are released, is so easy...
It is possible to switch to a PPA for Firefox, but installing it isn't quite trivial, since Ubuntu really doesn't want you doing it that way. With this, and so many other decisions that Ubuntu has been making in recent years, it's easier to just find another distro better aligned to my interests.
Honestly, don't know what distro some of these people are using. Maybe the last time they tried snaps they were slow but they have the same startup speed as anything else now.
Made the switch, never happier.
Manjaro is worse
I've heard a lot of praise for Debian and Ubuntu but the former was regularly kernel-panicking after updates (granted that was 10+ years ago so I am definitely not being up-to-date -- or even fair -- here) and the latter just keeps piling more and more stuff inside itself, defeating the purpose of a Linux box (for me at least; I want something much more minimal than macOS).
Not to mention Ubuntu moves more and more stuff to Snap and you get to the ridiculous situation of a basic calculator needing seconds to start. Yeah, frak that.
Furthermore, I use various CLI tools regularly in my work and I can't wait for Debian to update them 6 months in the future.
I need something that has the minimum amount of background processes but also without suffering any user or developer usability problems; so not like the absolutely minimal set of services but the minimally viable set of services that give you very usable machine without any bloat.
Maybe Arch is the best for my criteria but I installed Manjaro and never looked back since (2.5 years now). The only one problem I ever had was I think December 2022 when they shipped an OpenSSH version that hard-deprecated (read: removed / stopped support for) certain crypto algorithms, and my key was of course using one of them. I grumbled but connected a display and keyboard to the machine (it's one of my servers at home), migrated my keys to the new algorithms, put them on a USB pen drive, put them on my workstation and all was right again.
Not even once had I any of the "rolling distribution" problems that people mention regularly on Reddit. Of course I might have been lucky.
Lately I am meticulously extracting a fully OS-neutral dotfiles configuration (and I am like 95% done) and then will create a OS-neutral bootstrapping set of scripts and will install Manjaro on 2 or 3 of my spare laptops and I expect no problems at all. It's a very "out of your way" distro and I love it for that.
(I am aware that there are people who have a beef with Manjaro because apparently they outright "stole" code -- which sounds meaningless to me when we're talking open-source, can somebody explain? -- and just rebranded stuff for themselves but as their user I can egotistically claim this has absolutely zero effect on me, I don't care and I use the distro because it hits the right spots for me.)
I love my iMac Pro but the tinkering possibilities are vastly reduced compared to any Linux box (example: I want to experiment with ZFS and BCacheFS but of course both are not supported on a Mac, and virtualization / containerization is much more inefficient -- and slow -- on a Mac compared to a Linux machine). I will very likely be buying an M2 (or M3 when they come out) laptop just for the excellent display and will do my work "on it" by actually remoting to a Linux workstation.
Plus, call me an old fart but I'd like my `ps aux` output to be maximum 70 lines long. I want control over my machine.
Maybe I'll come crying back to Macs in a few years, who knows. But I'll make a very serious effort to take back control of my computing in the meantime.
Not to mention Ubuntu moves more and more stuff to Snap and you get to the ridiculous situation of a basic calculator needing seconds to start. Yeah, frak that.
Furthermore, I use various CLI tools regularly in my work and I can't wait for Debian to update them 6 months in the future.
I need something that has the minimum amount of background processes but also without suffering any user or developer usability problems; so not like the absolutely minimal set of services but the minimally viable set of services that give you very usable machine without any bloat.
Maybe Arch is the best for my criteria but I installed Manjaro and never looked back since (2.5 years now). The only one problem I ever had was I think December 2022 when they shipped an OpenSSH version that hard-deprecated (read: removed / stopped support for) certain crypto algorithms, and my key was of course using one of them. I grumbled but connected a display and keyboard to the machine (it's one of my servers at home), migrated my keys to the new algorithms, put them on a USB pen drive, put them on my workstation and all was right again.
Not even once had I any of the "rolling distribution" problems that people mention regularly on Reddit. Of course I might have been lucky.
Lately I am meticulously extracting a fully OS-neutral dotfiles configuration (and I am like 95% done) and then will create a OS-neutral bootstrapping set of scripts and will install Manjaro on 2 or 3 of my spare laptops and I expect no problems at all. It's a very "out of your way" distro and I love it for that.
(I am aware that there are people who have a beef with Manjaro because apparently they outright "stole" code -- which sounds meaningless to me when we're talking open-source, can somebody explain? -- and just rebranded stuff for themselves but as their user I can egotistically claim this has absolutely zero effect on me, I don't care and I use the distro because it hits the right spots for me.)
I love my iMac Pro but the tinkering possibilities are vastly reduced compared to any Linux box (example: I want to experiment with ZFS and BCacheFS but of course both are not supported on a Mac, and virtualization / containerization is much more inefficient -- and slow -- on a Mac compared to a Linux machine). I will very likely be buying an M2 (or M3 when they come out) laptop just for the excellent display and will do my work "on it" by actually remoting to a Linux workstation.
Plus, call me an old fart but I'd like my `ps aux` output to be maximum 70 lines long. I want control over my machine.
Maybe I'll come crying back to Macs in a few years, who knows. But I'll make a very serious effort to take back control of my computing in the meantime.
Sounds like FreeBSD would suit you best honestly.
Heard that before, I am just worried about hardware support, I have to admit.
I really am not keen on manually downloading and loading kernel drivers. :( And I plan to start installing stuff on fairly random old laptops.
Do you have any extended experience with installing FreeBSD on all sorts of machines?
I really am not keen on manually downloading and loading kernel drivers. :( And I plan to start installing stuff on fairly random old laptops.
Do you have any extended experience with installing FreeBSD on all sorts of machines?
I wouldn't say extended. I've switched to it on a couple of random machines I had (notably never AMD/ATI graphics because I always found their drivers bad even on windows/linux) and it's been fine there, shrug.
I'm planning on moving all of my machines to BSD at some point. I have a lot of them, and so it's an intimidating task that I've been procrastinating, but it is where I'll go eventually.
The hardware support thing made me nervous at first, but I don't expect it to be a major issue. We'll see.
The hardware support thing made me nervous at first, but I don't expect it to be a major issue. We'll see.
Compared to Ubuntu where I'd often have major issues in between releases, I don't think I could ever go back.