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I loved Ubuntu around 2007-2009 or so. Nowdays it feels like there are plenty of alternative distros that "just work" without so many of the idiosyncratic stuff

I loved Ubuntu around 2007-2009 or so. Nowdays it feels like there are plenty of alternative distros that "just work" without so many of the idiosyncratic stuff canonical keeps dumping into what used to be "debian for the masses" > As Linux evangelist Mark Pilgrim once quipped, Ubuntu "is an ancient African word meaning 'can't install Debian'". https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/16/debian_lenny_review/ https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/16/debian_lenny_review/

reilly3000 5y ago
I’m a long time Ubuntu user and haven’t really shopped for other distros. Any recommendations besides Debian?
- petre 5y ago
  openSuSE Leap is nice if you don't have anything against rpms. Upgrades just work and the distribution has an 18 month support window. The packages are pretty polished too. We're currently using that and Debian and also Ubuntu 18 on the developer workstations, which we'll switch to Debian 11.
- josephg 5y ago
  I’ve been really happy with Mint. It’s based on Ubuntu internally, but it feels light and fast.
- y4mi 5y ago
  Fedora, Arch. You can basically look for any popular distro, they're all working very well if you're not entirely out of your depth wrt Linux
  - zamalek 5y ago
    Agreed. I've done a lot of Ubuntu and Arch. Arch is fantastic. I recently have been trying out Fedora and I have been enjoying it a lot.
  - shams93 5y ago
    Yeah I switched to Fedora recently, with pipewire setup by default its really easy to get great audio performance out of the box, I used to have to build custom kernels for jackd.
- zarkov99 5y ago
  PopOS. Ubuntu with better power management and a tilling WM.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  I like Fedora.
- dudus 5y ago
  Manjaro seems pretty popular now. It's based in Arch with rolling releases and everything but gives a good experience out of the box while Arch is a full time job to maintain
  - e-v 5y ago
    > Arch is a full time job to maintain I've never understood that sentiment. Are there things I don't know about I should be doing? I installed Arch probably four years ago on my laptop, and have never had to do anything but install updates and read the announcements on archlinux.org since. I do understand the appeal of Manjaro - I did use it briefly when it first came out - but I don't see how maintaining Arch Linux would appear as being particularly complicated. I literally don't do anything with it I wouldn't do with any other OS.
    - feydaykyn 5y ago
      The fact that any update may break your system if you're not careful is quite stressful when you're working. It's only a few hours from time to time, but when work is pilling up "just for an update" it feels like days. Also, it seems to me that ArchLinux had less very impactfull changes in the past years because it has matured quite a lot. It's only an impression though!
- tclst 5y ago
  If you like (or are okay with) GNOME, I'd recommend giving Fedora a try. Been using for a few years now and it has been the closest thing to "set up and forget" to me (I needed to install some codecs to play H.264/HEVC video). Painless upgrades, decent software catalog... It has been extremely reliable. Highly recommend it.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    My home server uses Fedora. I've upgraded it on every release, from Fedora 29 all the way to 34 today. I've been dailying the 35 beta on my desktop and it's been great so far as well.
- int_19h 5y ago
  Mint is arguably better at being what Ubuntu was originally intended to be. And is still based on Ubuntu, so all your mad apt-get skills still apply, the packages are readily available etc.
  - kd913 5y ago
    Ubuntu is a commercial distro. They have their own infra, they have their own security team, they have large amounts of reliable funding and contracts. Mint is worked by a few people, had several large security flaws including not distributing security updates timely. They had issues in the past with their ISO being hacked. I can empathize with the whole mint, small time dev-base stuff. It just doesn't make sense to me compared with just going straight ubuntu + cinnamon.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  KDE Neon. Based on Ubuntu but with a UI built by and for actual users, not a UI built by experts for grandmothers.
- n8cpdx 5y ago
  If you want to use a multitouch trackpad fluently, Elementary is is the only game in town. It has macOS-level support which is pretty cool.
  - djbusby 5y ago
    How do they get it? Can't those tools also work in Debian or Gentoo? What's the magic sauce? Kernel patches?
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    https://youtu.be/aKlmV-EiqVk?t=45 https://youtu.be/aKlmV-EiqVk?t=45
    - n8cpdx 5y ago
      Can't edit my comment but thanks for pointing this out. For anyone not wanting to watch the video, apparently this release includes trackpad multitouch support comparable to elementary. It looks like Ubuntu is now comparable to Elementary. I'm going to be trying this out ASAP. Ubuntu with Wayland does a much better job with high and mixed DPI display setups. Maybe now I won't have to choose between running my 4k display at full resolution and using my trackpad.
notatoad 5y ago
Assuming I don't really give a crap about what mechanism is used to update Firefox, and just want a browser that works, what am I missing out on by sticking with Ubuntu? It's always been my OS of choice because I don't really care about my OS. Is there another distro that is similarly easy for me to get up and running With current versions of Firefox, chrome, vscode, and docker, and on whatever random hardware I happen to have available?
- ihattendorf 5y ago
  I use Fedora personally for these exact reasons.
JonathanBeuys 5y ago
Debian has a strange approach to security these days. There are over 100 unpatched vurnurabilities in their version of Chromium for example: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/stable https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s... Because of this, I don't see debian as an option for the Desktop anymore. I hope they still fix the server software in their repos.
- hjek 5y ago
  Looks like all the CVEs are fixed in Debian Sid at least. Edit: Not all, apparently. The whole bottom of that Chromium CVE list is still unfixed in Bookworm/Sid.
  - beermonster 5y ago
    Which makes a good case for rolling release distros. Not that Sid is released but things tend to get fixed upstream quickly and there’s less lag than both testing and stable. The flip side is stuff breaks more regularly of course.
- beermonster 5y ago
  Check how many vulnerable packages they have against their stable release across all packages and how long until they’re fixed. It’s an eye opener.
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    I guess a few volunteers can't backport security fixes to all software in the world after all.
    - beermonster 5y ago
      Indeed they can’t. So don’t depend on that.
  - beermonster 5y ago
    See https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/stable https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s...
Chyzwar 5y ago
If anything, Cannonical is aligning with mainstream in recent years: upstart -> systemd, unity -> gnome, mir -> wayland New things that are Canonical specific are netplan and snap. I think snap is solving software packaging in Linux. If anything, I wish that snap brand stores were more affordable.
- Zardoz84 5y ago
  Use flatpack
  - app4soft 5y ago
    Use AppImage + firejail (optionally, to fully sandbox AppImage)
    - xiaomai 5y ago
      I want to like AppImage, but it is just unreasonable that there is no built-in way to trivially install a .desktop file for a given AppImage I've downloaded.
      - app4soft 5y ago
        > there is no built-in way to trivially install a .desktop file for a given AppImage I've downloaded Here it is.[0,1] [0] https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher [1] https://docs.appimage.org/reference/desktop-integration.html https://docs.appimage.org/reference/desktop-integration.html
    - handrous 5y ago
      I've tried AppImage, Flatpack, and Snap, and AppImage is the only one that approaches tolerable.
      - Fnoord 5y ago
        Tried Nixpkgs?
rakoo 5y ago
As someone who left Ubuntu at Hardy Heron (8.04), what are the problems with Ubuntu these days ? I know they tried to do desktop differently but failed to convince other distros and projects to change paradigms but it seems to me they are back to more common infrastructure now.
Octabrain 5y ago
I’ve seen that quote so many times used in forums and I find it annoyingly condescending. Actually I think that kind of attitudes are one of the worst things in the linux community in general. Anyways, I used to stupidly joke back saying that “Debian is a code word that means: no relevant contribution to the linux ecosystem for the last 15 years”.

reilly3000 5y ago

I’m a long time Ubuntu user and haven’t really shopped for other distros. Any recommendations besides Debian?

petre 5y ago
openSuSE Leap is nice if you don't have anything against rpms. Upgrades just work and the distribution has an 18 month support window. The packages are pretty polished too. We're currently using that and Debian and also Ubuntu 18 on the developer workstations, which we'll switch to Debian 11.
josephg 5y ago
I’ve been really happy with Mint. It’s based on Ubuntu internally, but it feels light and fast.
y4mi 5y ago
Fedora, Arch. You can basically look for any popular distro, they're all working very well if you're not entirely out of your depth wrt Linux
- zamalek 5y ago
  Agreed. I've done a lot of Ubuntu and Arch. Arch is fantastic. I recently have been trying out Fedora and I have been enjoying it a lot.
- shams93 5y ago
  Yeah I switched to Fedora recently, with pipewire setup by default its really easy to get great audio performance out of the box, I used to have to build custom kernels for jackd.
zarkov99 5y ago
PopOS. Ubuntu with better power management and a tilling WM.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
I like Fedora.
dudus 5y ago
Manjaro seems pretty popular now. It's based in Arch with rolling releases and everything but gives a good experience out of the box while Arch is a full time job to maintain
- e-v 5y ago
  > Arch is a full time job to maintain I've never understood that sentiment. Are there things I don't know about I should be doing? I installed Arch probably four years ago on my laptop, and have never had to do anything but install updates and read the announcements on archlinux.org since. I do understand the appeal of Manjaro - I did use it briefly when it first came out - but I don't see how maintaining Arch Linux would appear as being particularly complicated. I literally don't do anything with it I wouldn't do with any other OS.
  - feydaykyn 5y ago
    The fact that any update may break your system if you're not careful is quite stressful when you're working. It's only a few hours from time to time, but when work is pilling up "just for an update" it feels like days. Also, it seems to me that ArchLinux had less very impactfull changes in the past years because it has matured quite a lot. It's only an impression though!
tclst 5y ago
If you like (or are okay with) GNOME, I'd recommend giving Fedora a try. Been using for a few years now and it has been the closest thing to "set up and forget" to me (I needed to install some codecs to play H.264/HEVC video). Painless upgrades, decent software catalog... It has been extremely reliable. Highly recommend it.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  My home server uses Fedora. I've upgraded it on every release, from Fedora 29 all the way to 34 today. I've been dailying the 35 beta on my desktop and it's been great so far as well.
int_19h 5y ago
Mint is arguably better at being what Ubuntu was originally intended to be. And is still based on Ubuntu, so all your mad apt-get skills still apply, the packages are readily available etc.
- kd913 5y ago
  Ubuntu is a commercial distro. They have their own infra, they have their own security team, they have large amounts of reliable funding and contracts. Mint is worked by a few people, had several large security flaws including not distributing security updates timely. They had issues in the past with their ISO being hacked. I can empathize with the whole mint, small time dev-base stuff. It just doesn't make sense to me compared with just going straight ubuntu + cinnamon.
skinkestek 5y ago
KDE Neon. Based on Ubuntu but with a UI built by and for actual users, not a UI built by experts for grandmothers.
n8cpdx 5y ago
If you want to use a multitouch trackpad fluently, Elementary is is the only game in town. It has macOS-level support which is pretty cool.
- djbusby 5y ago
  How do they get it? Can't those tools also work in Debian or Gentoo? What's the magic sauce? Kernel patches?
- marcodiego 5y ago
  https://youtu.be/aKlmV-EiqVk?t=45 https://youtu.be/aKlmV-EiqVk?t=45
  - n8cpdx 5y ago
    Can't edit my comment but thanks for pointing this out. For anyone not wanting to watch the video, apparently this release includes trackpad multitouch support comparable to elementary. It looks like Ubuntu is now comparable to Elementary. I'm going to be trying this out ASAP. Ubuntu with Wayland does a much better job with high and mixed DPI display setups. Maybe now I won't have to choose between running my 4k display at full resolution and using my trackpad.

notatoad 5y ago

Assuming I don't really give a crap about what mechanism is used to update Firefox, and just want a browser that works, what am I missing out on by sticking with Ubuntu? It's always been my OS of choice because I don't really care about my OS. Is there another distro that is similarly easy for me to get up and running With current versions of Firefox, chrome, vscode, and docker, and on whatever random hardware I happen to have available?

ihattendorf 5y ago
I use Fedora personally for these exact reasons.

JonathanBeuys 5y ago

Debian has a strange approach to security these days. There are over 100 unpatched vurnurabilities in their version of Chromium for example: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/stable https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s... Because of this, I don't see debian as an option for the Desktop anymore. I hope they still fix the server software in their repos.

hjek 5y ago
Looks like all the CVEs are fixed in Debian Sid at least. Edit: Not all, apparently. The whole bottom of that Chromium CVE list is still unfixed in Bookworm/Sid.
- beermonster 5y ago
  Which makes a good case for rolling release distros. Not that Sid is released but things tend to get fixed upstream quickly and there’s less lag than both testing and stable. The flip side is stuff breaks more regularly of course.
beermonster 5y ago
Check how many vulnerable packages they have against their stable release across all packages and how long until they’re fixed. It’s an eye opener.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  I guess a few volunteers can't backport security fixes to all software in the world after all.
  - beermonster 5y ago
    Indeed they can’t. So don’t depend on that.
- beermonster 5y ago
  See https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/stable https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s...

Chyzwar 5y ago

If anything, Cannonical is aligning with mainstream in recent years: upstart -> systemd, unity -> gnome, mir -> wayland New things that are Canonical specific are netplan and snap. I think snap is solving software packaging in Linux. If anything, I wish that snap brand stores were more affordable.

Zardoz84 5y ago
Use flatpack
- app4soft 5y ago
  Use AppImage + firejail (optionally, to fully sandbox AppImage)
  - xiaomai 5y ago
    I want to like AppImage, but it is just unreasonable that there is no built-in way to trivially install a .desktop file for a given AppImage I've downloaded.
    - app4soft 5y ago
      > there is no built-in way to trivially install a .desktop file for a given AppImage I've downloaded Here it is.[0,1] [0] https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher [1] https://docs.appimage.org/reference/desktop-integration.html https://docs.appimage.org/reference/desktop-integration.html
  - handrous 5y ago
    I've tried AppImage, Flatpack, and Snap, and AppImage is the only one that approaches tolerable.
    - Fnoord 5y ago
      Tried Nixpkgs?

rakoo 5y ago

As someone who left Ubuntu at Hardy Heron (8.04), what are the problems with Ubuntu these days ? I know they tried to do desktop differently but failed to convince other distros and projects to change paradigms but it seems to me they are back to more common infrastructure now.

Octabrain 5y ago

I’ve seen that quote so many times used in forums and I find it annoyingly condescending. Actually I think that kind of attitudes are one of the worst things in the linux community in general. Anyways, I used to stupidly joke back saying that “Debian is a code word that means: no relevant contribution to the linux ecosystem for the last 15 years”.