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I have defaulted to Ubuntu for familiarity reasons, but recently I got to learn - the procedure for upgrading to a newer release of ubuntu it you run sed as ro

I have defaulted to Ubuntu for familiarity reasons, but recently I got to learn - the procedure for upgrading to a newer release of ubuntu it you run sed as root to fix your sources.list, then you do-release-upgrade, but it doesn't work because it has an undocumented dependency on pciutils - at this point i should be used to this pciutils thing since ~all software has undocumented dependencies on autoconf, automake, autotools, libtool, cmake, ninja, rust, python2, python3, calling the binary called python in your path and expecting it to be a particular version that is 2 or 3 but some stuff needs 2 and other stuff needs 3, perl, npm but not the latest npm, clang but not the clang in the repositories, gcc, nvm, ruby, lua but not the latest lua, bazel, make, openssl, libressl, libcrypto, a different version of libc that will break almost all software on your machine when you install it, a bunch of optional obscurely named C header packages that install the headers into folders that the build won't search for header files and that turn out not to be optional if you want the thing to work at all, and a hundred different javascript build automation and test automation tools that exist mainly to call each other - snap will just install broken package updates for you and is incapable of undoing this operation by design - systemd-resolved will randomly just start taking 250+ms to return cached DNS entries so if you call connect() many times per second you need a much bigger threadpool than you may have expected (and this is maybe an architectural change to your software if your previous threadpool size for connect() offloding was 1 or if you were naively calling connect() on your thread where you do actual work) - if you thought you knew how to set the open file limit for a user, systemd has rearranged your furniture and by the way this operation now requires you to reboot your computer so i'm not sure ubuntu has been a great fit, but i'm also not switching to anything else

sfuller808 4y ago
chao- 4y ago
>snap will just install broken package updates for you and is incapable of undoing this operation by design I no longer recommend Ubuntu for this reason to people looking to get into Linux for the first time for developer-adjacent reasons. My recommendation is now Mint or Pop_OS, as they are effectively Ubuntu without Snap. Edit: I am not blindly against snap, or against its idea outright. I understand what it is for, and if it delivered on that without issue, I would welcome it. My avoidance of Ubuntu is due to having to repeatedly (and increasingly) help Linux newbies through problems, where lately all of those problems have wound up being based in snap.
- easton 4y ago
  Cracked me up the other day when Ubuntu in WSL2 told me that I needed to install Firefox via Snap if I wanted to use it, but Snap doesn’t work in WSL2 because systemd isn’t being used.
  - naikrovek 4y ago
    I found that switching to debian for WSL 2 has made my life in WSL 2 much better. you can set up systemd in WSL 2 now, and it's supported, but it gave my Ubuntu distro a lot of problems so I disabled it there. in Debian it works great so I left it on.
  - CoolCold 4y ago
    Systemd works nowdays. Running LXD under systemd and snap on my WSL2 right now. May require insider builds though. Never tried Firefox, cannot day works or not, have Firefox on Windows' side of the things.
e12e 4y ago
> the procedure for upgrading to a newer release of ubuntu it you run sed as root to fix your sources.list, then you do-release-upgrade Are you talking about upgrading an lts release to the next dot.1 lts release, without dodgy third party apt-sources enabled?
- anonymoushn 4y ago
  I'm talking about upgrading a non-LTS release to an LTS release.
  - janc_ 4y ago
    The only supported (=tested) upgrade from non-LTS to LTS is from the last version before the LTS, and you should not change the sources yourself when you do that. When you skip releases, no distro will officially support such upgrades (except for Ubuntu LTS-to-LTS, without skipping an LTS), and things might break. Also, when you really want to skip releases, it is often better (IME) to change the sources manually and not use do-release-upgrade, but use aptitude and/or synaptic and/or other such tools to fix the dependencies manually. In any case, you might have to fix some breakage afterwards (or mid-upgrade…), as it is untested & unsupported.
    - anonymoushn 4y ago
      If you have a machine running ubuntu 19.something today, you cannot upgrade to any other release without messing with your sources first.
      - janc_ 4y ago
        Any Ubuntu 19.something hasn’t been supported for years…
        anonymoushn 4y ago
        I am not sure what that has to do with anything.

sfuller808 4y ago

chao- 4y ago

>snap will just install broken package updates for you and is incapable of undoing this operation by design I no longer recommend Ubuntu for this reason to people looking to get into Linux for the first time for developer-adjacent reasons. My recommendation is now Mint or Pop_OS, as they are effectively Ubuntu without Snap. Edit: I am not blindly against snap, or against its idea outright. I understand what it is for, and if it delivered on that without issue, I would welcome it. My avoidance of Ubuntu is due to having to repeatedly (and increasingly) help Linux newbies through problems, where lately all of those problems have wound up being based in snap.

easton 4y ago
Cracked me up the other day when Ubuntu in WSL2 told me that I needed to install Firefox via Snap if I wanted to use it, but Snap doesn’t work in WSL2 because systemd isn’t being used.
- naikrovek 4y ago
  I found that switching to debian for WSL 2 has made my life in WSL 2 much better. you can set up systemd in WSL 2 now, and it's supported, but it gave my Ubuntu distro a lot of problems so I disabled it there. in Debian it works great so I left it on.
- CoolCold 4y ago
  Systemd works nowdays. Running LXD under systemd and snap on my WSL2 right now. May require insider builds though. Never tried Firefox, cannot day works or not, have Firefox on Windows' side of the things.

e12e 4y ago

> the procedure for upgrading to a newer release of ubuntu it you run sed as root to fix your sources.list, then you do-release-upgrade Are you talking about upgrading an lts release to the next dot.1 lts release, without dodgy third party apt-sources enabled?

anonymoushn 4y ago
I'm talking about upgrading a non-LTS release to an LTS release.
- janc_ 4y ago
  The only supported (=tested) upgrade from non-LTS to LTS is from the last version before the LTS, and you should not change the sources yourself when you do that. When you skip releases, no distro will officially support such upgrades (except for Ubuntu LTS-to-LTS, without skipping an LTS), and things might break. Also, when you really want to skip releases, it is often better (IME) to change the sources manually and not use do-release-upgrade, but use aptitude and/or synaptic and/or other such tools to fix the dependencies manually. In any case, you might have to fix some breakage afterwards (or mid-upgrade…), as it is untested & unsupported.
  - anonymoushn 4y ago
    If you have a machine running ubuntu 19.something today, you cannot upgrade to any other release without messing with your sources first.
    - janc_ 4y ago
      Any Ubuntu 19.something hasn’t been supported for years…
      - anonymoushn 4y ago
        I am not sure what that has to do with anything.