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Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

• LinuxBender 4y ago
  If you are comfortable with Ubuntu then perhaps Debian [1], the OS that Ubuntu was forked from would feel natural? [1] - https://www.debian.org/ https://www.debian.org/
  • simfree 4y ago
    After switching from Ubuntu to Debian, it feels like Ubuntu is just a frankenDebian where packages of different versions are mixed haphazardly resulting in many minor but annoying issues.
  • hanniabu 4y ago
    Wow, if there's one thing open source projects are known for, it's dated websites
    • vorticalbox 4y ago
      > isn't broken don't fix it Though in this case it's likely to keep it accessible to people we slow internet connections.
      • hanniabu 4y ago
        It's 1.4mb for an incredibly simple page, and a modern design doesn't mean it needs to be some bloated webapp
        • tmtvl 4y ago
          1.4 MB? WTH, Debian's current page is 14 KB, that is 0.014 MB. 1.4 MB, good grief, that is larger than Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.
          • cesarb 4y ago
            > 1.4 MB? WTH, Debian's current page is 14 KB, that is 0.014 MB. It depends on whether you're looking at just the HTML or at the page as a whole. The HTML is that small, but there are a couple of JPEG photos on the home page, each weighing on the order of hundreds of kilobytes; the total including these photos is around 1.4 MB.
    • bloopernova 4y ago
      Could you be more specific? What exactly should Debian's website offer that it currently isn't?
      • hanniabu 4y ago
        More pleasing to the eyes and not from the 90s. A more attractive site wouldn't turn people off as soon as they visit it and would yield more users and support. Ubuntu's site for example looks nicer and only 0.1mb larger.
        • steelframe 4y ago
          Are you volunteering to redo debian.org? Because that's how this works.
          • npteljes 4y ago
            That's not how it works. I don't think the people on top of the debian community would just let anyone redesign their home page, even if the website would be objectively better in some regard.
            • steelframe 4y ago
              Oh, there would be a debate, for sure. It will probably go through a lot of bikeshedding. But if you demonstrate competence and commitment and stroke the right egos, it can certainly happen.
        • bandrami 4y ago
          Now compare the two on Lynx
        • BrotherBisquick 4y ago
          I never thought i'd meet the guy who actually likes web bloat, and on HN of all places. I thought you were just a legend, like Kayser Soeze.
        • 4y ago
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      Debian's website isn't dated, it's constantly updated and a wonderful, comprehensive resource. Unless you're bikeshedding about rounded corners or something.
      • hanniabu 4y ago
        You can have a constantly updated grate resource that's still dated. Dated is in reference to the UI.
        • riku_iki 4y ago
          its old school, not dated.
    • npteljes 4y ago
      Yes, this is part of the open source culture. It's a matter of resource allocation, and a bit of signalling. If you'd like a trendy corporate website, take a look at a distro that's backed by a corporation too, like Ubuntu, or Red Hat.
  • steelframe 4y ago
    For me Debian has really been "the girl next door" of Linux distros over the past 20 years. I've been momentarily pulled away by "the new hotness" like Gentoo, Ubuntu, Arch, or Flatcar. But I just keep going back to Debian. With a recent price drop I decided to upgrade the storage on my Thinkpad T480s, so I had occasion to reinstall the OS. I went with Debian Bullseye. Choosing all the default settings with LightDM and XFCE, everything except wireless "just worked." Understandably, I had to enable non-free for the Intel wireless firmware, but a simple apt install had that working flawlessly. Everything about my base system is perfect for me. Booting is quick. Power management is great, with the battery (now at 90% of its original capacity) easily lasting all day. Full volume encryption setup was effortless. I even got Secure Boot running after following some steps (more or less copy-and-paste) from the Debian wiki. When the time comes to upgrade the laptop wholesale to something with a more recent CPU, I half expect that simply moving the M.2 SSD from my current laptop to the new laptop will just work, or at least will require minimal tweaking. I've tried using snap to get more recent versions of things, but that ended up being more trouble than it's worth. Now I just build my own containers, running them with UID/GID mapping, giving access to X11, and bind mounting a dedicated home directory for the app. Sort of like a poor man's snap or Flatcar Linux, but it's easy enough to figure out, I get more customization, and I get to keep my old familiar Debian environment.
• bradwood 4y ago
  Personal machines (workstations or servers) are very different to those you'd use in industry. I'll only comment on personal machines. For home workstations, as an ex Ubuntu user, I like Manjaro (and the whole Arch ecosystem) A LOT. Fedora is pretty nice as a dev workstation also.
  • rjh29 4y ago
    Manjaro is maybe not the best if OP is looking specifically for stable + supported for 20 years. Given that it's a community distribution and stays fairly close to the newest versions of everything. But it's still my favourite. All the power of Arch with none of the hassle.
• pestatije 4y ago
  > breaking apt upgrades on 20.04 LTS Could you be more specific? I upgraded from 20.04 to 22.04 without any issues.
  • voakbasda 4y ago
    Attempts to apt upgrade on my 20.04 workstation is met with a notice that certain security updates require a Pro subscription with “esm-apps” enabled. My desktop has been nagging me with notifications — daily — that 20.04 will no longer be supported this year. This despite 20.04 being an LTS release that should provide security updates for another couple of years. Sure, this might be a simple bug in their apt implementation, but it’s been present for weeks now. It’s a sign of corporate-driven rot, and my 30 years experience in the industry tells me that this is the tip of an iceberg that could sink their Titanic. I want off the boat before it sinks.
    • donmcronald 4y ago
      It's really hard to find a clear answer of what's going on too. After looking at their website [1] and a forum thread [2] it makes me think they're going to hold updates that would have gone into 'universe' hostage until you sign up for Ubuntu Pro. The thing I really don't get is that I always assumed 'universe' was mainly driven by 3rd parties. Who's writing the security patches? I can't imagine Ubuntu is capable of doing that for +23k apps, so I'm guessing the maximum they're doing is packaging and the minimum is simply giving us a new repository name that's paid instead of free. Plus, how does "best effort" work for LTS updates if the finished patch/update is already sitting in the ESM repo? There's not really any extra effort required to push those into another repository, so I think the support for 'universe' will become arbitrary. My hunch is that 'universe' updates are going to cease to exist in Ubuntu if you're not paying for Ubuntu Pro. I have no definitive proof of that, but it's not clear what they're trying to do and I tend to assume the worst in those situations. That forum thread feels like they're being intentionally vague about what they're trying to do which I don't like. Can anyone here explain what's actually going on with updates in Ubuntu now? 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/esm https://ubuntu.com/security/esm 2. https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/why-is-extended-security-maintenance-needed-for-apps-in-ubuntu-20-04-x-lts-in-2021/25871 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/why-is-extended-security-main...
• tapoxi 4y ago
  For a desktop, I've had a wonderful experience with Fedora Workstation. They're up-to-date while remaining stable, have a policy of working with upstream, and don't do any real customization to KDE/GNOME. I am mildly peeved at the whole CentOS debacle but wouldn't mind running Fedora on a personal server.
  • cmdlinecowboy 4y ago
    Just use Rocky Linux or Alma Linux it’s basically what Cent was. Unless you’re running anything super insanely mission critical CentOS stream would still be fine for your uses, and if you need something THAT highly available support might be worth while anyways in an enterprise environment.
    • tapoxi 4y ago
      Yeah if you're using it for a real server then Rocky/Alma/Stream/RHEL. For a personal server I find Fedora fine, since my local packages will match my server's.
      • nobody9999 4y ago
        >For a personal server I find Fedora fine, since my local packages will match my server's. Absolutely. I also use Squid[0] as a proxy for updates[1] which, after initial download for one of the dozens of my Fedora boxes, caches the updates, reducing bandwidth usage and (more importantly) speeding up updates significantly. [0] https://serverfault.com/questions/837291/squid-and-caching-of-dnf-yum-downloads https://serverfault.com/questions/837291/squid-and-caching-o... [1] https://linuxiac.com/how-to-use-yum-dnf-command-with-a-proxy-server/ https://linuxiac.com/how-to-use-yum-dnf-command-with-a-proxy...
• ssnistfajen 4y ago
  After a major Ubuntu version upgrade completely broke virtualization, I switched to OpenSUSE. It has a very professional feel and YaST is a great tool for (re)configuring the system without having to look up commandline specifics for every one-off action I wanted to perform. I use Leap for my work laptop and Tumbleweed for my home PC. Both are very stable. I also use Manjaro on the side but for a rolling release it lags slightly behind OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. AUR provides a good supplement of software but more are providing alternatives via Flatpak nowadays. Fedora is a good choice too. I recommend trying all of these before making a decision.
  • hamilyon2 4y ago
    OpenSUSE has it's quirks, but I have been happy user for 7 years. Tumbleweed saves me headache of upgrading every n years
    • ssnistfajen 4y ago
      I've literally never had a positive experience doing major version upgrades in Ubuntu during ~5 years of usage. I only broke some minor things once on Tumbleweed and it was fixed via a Snapper rollback within minutes.
• cmdlinecowboy 4y ago
  Red Hat for enterprise use, Fedora for personal desktop use. One of the largest communities you’ll find. If you want Debian based maybe just straight Debian. The centos debacle was poorly handled but I think what red hat was /trying/ to do made sense. The community just wasn’t there to sustain it. Red Hat was paying to give away free RHEL basically lol. CentOS Stream should have just been called RHEL Stream. It’s basically RHEL minus minor bugs that would only effect small pools of people. I’m glad Rocky and Alma sprung up and have budding communities though.
  • Lucasoato 4y ago
    Is there any specific reason to choose them over Linux Mint? I'm genuinely asking, I've never tried Red Hat or Fedora.
    • timbit42 4y ago
      I would recommend Linux Mint for desktops and Debian stable for servers.
    • kleiba 4y ago
      OP wants to get away from Ubuntu, but Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu. Maybe that would be reason for OP to disprefer Mint?
      • tmtvl 4y ago
        What about LMDE?
        • exegete 4y ago
          OP mentioned stability and long-term supported as what he’s looking for. The Linux Mint team have stated LMDE is more for themselves to gather info and not a priority. So I would stay away if looking for stability and long-term support. “We work on LMDE primarily for us, to get that information. It is not a priority, certainly not compared to Linux Mint itself…” https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4276 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4276
• cf100clunk 4y ago
  > without being ruined by corporate interests I cannot begin to address the issue of "agendae" of various Linux and BSD distro builders, as any number of disagreements have arisen about almost any of them for many reasons (i.e. systemd, dbus, proprietary software, personality differences, etc. etc.) I'll just add that if you have time, set up several Linux and/or BSD OSes in VMs and take them each for a spin to find what suits you.
• spudlyo 4y ago
  I don't know if either Nix or Guix will be stable and supported for the next twenty years, but they probably won't be ruined by corporate interests. I've personally quite enjoyed learning about functional package management, where a package is seen as a pure function whose arguments are all its dependencies, the source, and the build tools. The output of the function are the binary artifacts. It's a good idea, and if you like the idea of setting up your computers by programming in Scheme, Guix will be right up your alley.
  • toastal 4y ago
    Nix did some partnering with Microsoft GitHub recently. It will start with some extra resources for the project, but we will have to see if it stays that way.
• shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  Stable? Debian or Fedora. For an end-user machine, I've found that rolling release is much better than point release (much newer, less buggy/crashy -- paradoxically -- versions of software and GPU drivers). (Although, surprisingly, Fedora seems to have very fast package updates despite being a point release.) For rolling, Manjaro is my top pick. Arch is a close second, assuming you've mastered the arcane art of its installation. You might be thinking, "But a fringe, rolling release distribution can't be as stable as Ubuntu, the de facto default point release distro that ostensibly claims 99% of Linux marketshare." You would be insane to not be thinking that. But I guess companies' potential for incompetence is even more insane since that's been the opposite of my experience. I've had less installation issues and crashes during daily use of Manjaro than on Ubuntu over the last few years, which really surprised me. It's like Ubuntu is decaying. Or maybe I just got bad RNG. Or maybe it's that program and DE devs are always working on the latest version of their software while older versions are an afterthought, so rolling distributions that keep you up to date with the latest versions seem stabler. :p
  • b1ue64 4y ago
    > assuming you've mastered the arcane art of its installation. Archinstall [1] exists, so there isn't much reason to use Manjaro anymore (which has a lot of its own issues anyways [2]) [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall [2] https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/ https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/
• closetometal 4y ago
  My experience with Linux enterprise deployments is not as thorough as using it for desktop & debug environments (every Linux is pretty much same for debug environment if you can handle package update nightmare), I use Arch btw :-) For production, take a look at SUSE (3 production servers with no hiccups, good support and no particular weird design decisions), CentOS stream after RHEL debacle (have 1 deployment on client request, no complaints or production issues so far), and of course the good old Debian if you want familiar things with Ubuntu
• discreditable 4y ago
  Look no further than Debian. After switching from Ubuntu I started to understand why people view Ubuntu as a bit dirty.
  • cf100clunk 4y ago
    > people view Ubuntu as a bit dirty Look even further at Devuan, made by people who conder Debian as a bit dirty. (I use both as needed, I'm just riffing on your comment)
    • greyw 4y ago
      I consider Devuan just under maintained Debian without systemd (I personally consider that a drawback but for some that is a big selling point).
      • temptemptemp111 4y ago
        [dead]
    • shzhdbi09gv8ioi 4y ago
      Where Debian is a reputable distribution with a clear goal, the Devuan crew is solving a non-issue by means of almost religious levels of resistance toward systemd. If you want technological merit, chose Debian. If you want to join the conservatives of Linux, you should go for Devuan.
      • cf100clunk 4y ago
        Even during Debian's systemd adoption wars I'd never seen any argument calling into question Devuan as ''disreputable''. After all, it was a group of experienced Debian folks that made a systemd-less version of Debian that compares almost exactly with Debian's status and capabilities. I hope in your case you have not been forced to use Devuan.
        • 4y ago
• k__ 4y ago
  I always had bad experiences with Ubuntu upgrades to the next major version. Distros with rolling releases seem to do much better.
  • blackflame7000 4y ago
    Major Kernel upgrades occur in major versions
• ergonaught 4y ago
  > stable and supported for the next twenty years, without being ruined by corporate interests That exists only in your imagination, so, imagine whatever you like. Sounds like you want Debian, but you might want to explore the disgruntled CentOS forks/replacements if you want the appearance of an enterprise distribution (that's what "stable and supported for the next twenty years" means) without the pesky problem of having to be aware that there is an enterprise driving it. May as well look at FreeBSD while you're here, though. I switched mostly to Manjaro a long time ago and I've only had a couple of issues with it, for whatever that's worth.
• lucideer 4y ago
  I switched to Debian on servers & was impressed enough (previous experience with Ubuntu & RHEL) that I even went ahead & installed it on desktop. That was a mistake for a few reasons so I quickly switched away* on desktop but it's still my choice on servers, with a few caveats... 1. Snaps are infecting all distros, not just Ubuntu. This affects desktop more than servers, though LetsEncrypt/Certbot are major culprits on servers. I have managed to work around this on my debian servers with a combination of podman & certbot's dockerhub images but it's a sad state of affairs that such fuckery is needed. 2. Hardware support is the perennial issue on desktop & I was still getting hit by this in 2022 on Debian with AMD drivers & multi monitor/KVM support. This obviously isn't a worry on servers. --- * fwiw I switched away from Debian on desktop to Gentoo, which I used to use years ago before getting a little fed up with compile times. Have found compile times to be absolutely miniscule on modern hw compared to what I remembered, & binary ebuilds much more plentiful than in the past too. Had always found it the most sane, stable & up-to-date distro in the past, with compile times really being the only downside, so would recommend for anyone looking to try out something new. Unlike Arch, Gentoo does a lot for you: it's really just the initial install that's a pain.
  • timbit42 4y ago
    I'd recommend you look at Linux Mint as a desktop replacement for Ubuntu.
    • lucideer 4y ago
      Have used mint on the desktop in the past. I'm Irish so I took interest fairly early on due to its provenance. It's cool if you like it's default DE setup, but I don't see any real advantage over Debian, & unless you're using LMDE, it's gonna suffer from all the disadvantages of modern Ubuntu. It's been hit just as hard by snaps - Debian is being hit too but not as hard as Mint or Ubuntu.
      • riku_iki 4y ago
        mint has debian based distro without any ubuntu dependencies.
• w4rh4wk5 4y ago
  You could give Linux Mint a try for desktop. With the regular edition you should get pretty much what Ubuntu offers, with fewer "anti-features". There is also a Debian-based Linux Mint (LMDE) which might be preferred to regular Debian for desktop use.
• sam_lowry_ 4y ago
  I have anecdotal evidence that many people moved from Debian to ArchLinix over the last 5..10 years. ArchLinux is the unassuming kind of distro that gives way to upstream.
  • captn3m0 4y ago
    One such user. Switched to Arch almost a decade ago (from Ubuntu->Mint->PopOS), and now on Asahi Linux (which is just ArchARM with a small overlay of 15-20 driver/kernel packages).
    • xmonkee 4y ago
      I have a M1 mac. How frustrating is Asahi compared to macos? I love me some linux but hate the driver fiddling
      • captn3m0 4y ago
        Here's an draft of my upcoming review: https://hackmd.io/@captn3m0/ByWpMgZho https://hackmd.io/@captn3m0/ByWpMgZho. tl;dr: Asahi works great on Apple Silicon. There’s a small collection of software (like Widevine/Zig) that isn’t available on Asahi/ARM64, and some important features that are still in progress (Speakers/Webcam/Mic/External Monitors). GPU and Sleep support is still experimental, but the device is usable enough for me (No critical showstoppers so far).
  • aquova 4y ago
    Steam's platform survey would agree with you. Ubuntu share has been decreasing steadily over the years while Arch/Manjaro has gone up (not even counting Steam Deck) I am one of them, having switched from Ubuntu to Arch two or so years ago due to frustrations with the platform. Arch is a bit more hands on, especially at first install, but it has solved all my complaints from Ubuntu. If OP is interested, I would recommend looking at EndeavourOS, which is probably the most friendly way to get into the Arch ecosystem, without it getting in the way.
• Darmody 4y ago
  I think Pop_OS! is also a good choice if you want it only the the desktop and not servers. They are doing a great work with their shell on top of Gnome and their own DE is on the way. Even though they are a company, they take the community seriously. I can't wait to have a DE with screen independent workspaces.
• cf100clunk 4y ago
  Distrowatch carries on after all these years, and (at the least) gives a fairly good catalogue of Linux and BSD distro capabilities in textual and tabular format. https://distrowatch.com/ https://distrowatch.com/ Try some out as VMs before comitting to bare metal installs. EDIT: I see that MX Linux continues to reside as the "top" distro according to that site's methodology. MX has been on top there for a very long time.
  • timbit42 4y ago
    It's methodology is page hits so it can be manipulated pretty easily. I see MX Linux at the top but I never see people talking about it on social media so it makes me wonder how it got to the top of the list.
    • LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
      This is surprising for me, too. OTOH I'm using it right now. Maybe it's up there because it just works without much hassle? By that I mean not having to go into any configs, and editing them by hand? They have graphical config tools which did anything I needed to, click, click, clickety click. Chic! Furthermore they support the usecase of installing it to livemedia like USB-sticks, external HDD/SSD via USB, or even booting into RAM, and running from there. Even on older systems, rock stable. All in all very impressive. Like their cousin AntiX, too. No wonder, they are using the same toolsets running atop Debian. Very pragmatic mindset towards daily driver on whatever(common) hardware under whichever circumstances. Maybe that motivated users to rank it up there? (I didn't, btw.)
    • bandrami 4y ago
      I think both AV Linux and KX Studio recently rebased to MX so all the audio people now go there
  • Sunspark 4y ago
    Distrowatch rankings are based on clicks. If someone wanted Hannah Montana Linux to be #1 in the ranking, it could be done.
• kissgyorgy 4y ago
  NixOS is by far the best choice if you want an os to learn for the next 20 years.
  • microtonal 4y ago
    I love NixOS and was a nixpkgs committer. I think a lot of ideas from Nix will get adopted by the wider Linux ecosystem. But I think it is far more likely that immutable systems based on OSTree, like Silverblue and Fedora CoreOS will become the OS for the next 20 years. It is much more familiar to most people and provides many of the same benefits. Especially now OSTree is adopting Docker/OCI images as a transport [1], the line between building systems and building containers is blurring. A lot of organizations have plenty of institutional knowledge in building Docker containers and OSTree with containers makes system building pretty much the same. [1] https://coreos.github.io/rpm-ostree/container/ https://coreos.github.io/rpm-ostree/container/
• perihelions 4y ago
  - "something that will be stable and supported for the next twenty years" Then the safest bet is to choose something that was popular and stable twenty years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect ("...the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, the longer its remaining life expectancy") You *probably* just want Debian. There's many reasonable options but that one's the Schelling point for this question (I think). edit: Here's the list of Slashdot linux threads from 2003. I think anything flamed in there that's still around is a Lindy candidate. https://www.google.com/search?q=site:linux.slashdot.org/story/03/ https://www.google.com/search?q=site:linux.slashdot.org/stor...
  • ploum 4y ago
    I want to highlight this answer. Ubuntu is completely based upon Debian. Going back to Debian ensure familiarity with tools (like apt). Also, the longer release cycle is perfectly adapted for people using only Ubuntu LTS (which, in itself, is quite awkward as Ubuntu was created to allow short release cycle for desktop users). There’s also multiple companies offering Debian support if needed. And it can safely be assumed that Debian is probably one of the 10 operating systems with the most probability of still being supported in 20 years. On the downsides, you may end using some experimental/external repositories to have some bleeding edges applications and those make dist-upgrade often problematic (not that it is better with Ubuntu). You may also lose some automatic configuration at install time. I’ve one laptop which, for example, does not have middle-click working out-of-the box (it is just one apt-get away but you have to know what you want). So, yeah, Debian should be one of the first to consider.
    • chubot 4y ago
      Honest question: how is Debian's hardware compatibility compared to Ubuntu? My impression is that Ubuntu had people testing it on modern hardware, either on the Canonical side, or perhaps on the Dell side (even though I don't own any Dell now) About 10 years ago I installed Debian on a desktop, and I remember having graphics issues that I didn't have with Ubuntu. I guess I needed the proprietary driver that Ubuntu offered? I don't remember exactly. Probably some nvidia crap But either way, I just want to buy some hardware and have the graphics and sound work. Is Ubuntu currently any better than Debian in that regard? Do they have more testing, or are they the same now?
• jodoherty 4y ago
  I live in a region with a lot of government contracting businesses, so Red Hat Enterprise Linux is something I have to maintain a working familiarity with. However, I use Debian for all of my personal projects and infrastructure. The reason? There's no for-profit corporate interest directly controlling the project. The project's organizational structure resembles a constitutional democracy: https://www.debian.org/intro/organization https://www.debian.org/intro/organization There is an incorporated entity in the United States to handle a number of intellectual property and financial concerns: https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/debian/ https://www.spi-inc.org/projects/debian/ However, it exists as a non-profit with a very narrowly defined, specific set of purposes: https://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/certificate-of-incorporation/ https://www.spi-inc.org/corporate/certificate-of-incorporati... Because of this, I feel like the Debian project has a good combination of people and resources, making it easy to rely on long-term, but without the for-profit corporate interests that may conflict with my own in the future.
  • fragmede 4y ago
    Comes full circle as Ubuntu is derived from Debian
    • nine_k 4y ago
      As somebody said, "Ubuntu is Debian-based the same way milk is grass-based".
      • fragmede 4y ago
        What a smarmy thing for that somebody to have said! They use the same package manager and many of the Ubuntu devs were originally Debian devs.
        • nine_k 4y ago
          The same package manager, but different enough packages, PPAs, etc, and a different release process. Many different technical decisuons. A very different project governance. I'm not implying that these things are bad! But different enough they undeniably are. The fact that I can install .deb packages on my box using a port of apt does not make it Debian. (Saying this as a dedicated Debian user since 1998 and until the switch to systemd.)
• blacksmith_tb 4y ago
  I have been liking Pop[1] on desktop, it's pretty functional out of the box, doesn't stuff snaps down your throat (but makes them, and Flatpak, possible if that's your thing). On servers Debian is familiar-feeling but more straightforward for me. 1: https://pop.system76.com/ https://pop.system76.com/
• dandanua 4y ago
  You could try NixOS if stability is that important. It requires time investment, but it saves time too.
• Keyframe 4y ago
  As personal/work OS, I ran Fedora for eons and then I moved to Pop which was great. However, while waiting for next iteration (22.10 omitted), I briefly distro hopper again. Fedora, fine but I had various dmaller issues that I knew I wouldn't on debian/pop. Tried Alma, but same thing. In the end I defaulted to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS + Lambda Stack. So far so good, albeit a bit boring which is fine in my book. I'll see where Pop and Alma go next. Watching those two basically, until then - Ubuntu+Lambda.
• horsawlarway 4y ago
  I think Debian/Fedora(or RedHat if you're willing to pay) are fine on the enterprise side. For personal use... I fell in love with Arch. Between the Arch User Repository (AUR) and the quick upgrades, I really struggle to use anything else these days. Arch takes a bit more work to get online than some of the other distros, but I've been amazingly happy running it across all my personal machines (from desktops to laptops to servers to media machines) - It's a fantastic engine to build a machine around, but you will have to do a bit of building.
  • codemac 4y ago
    Arch isn't too difficult, but I've been using it since ~2005 or so. Something that is hard to quantify - arch uses vanilla software, almost entirely. Very very few patches/configurations are deployed. This means you're actually learning about the upstream software, not the distro. What you learn on Arch, generally applies to other distros as you know something about the upstream software. I don't know a thing about debian, but I can generally figure things out.
• FpUser 4y ago
  I have about the same feeling. Leaning towards Debian. My infra allows automatic build / deploy on dedicated servers and I made sure that it works on Ubuntu, Debian, Arch and Mint. Not looking forward to Arch for production obviously.
• johnklos 4y ago
  Honestly, if you want steady progress and consistency, if you want changes that are thought out, well reasoned, discussed and sensibly implemented, you should consider the BSDs. Even ignoring the systemd stuff separating Linux from the rest of the world, there are just so many ways all these Linux distros are trying, often gratuitously, to differentiate themselves from each other. Often it's sloppy, and the end result is that it affects upgraders (long time users) much more than new people, because they're so focused on attracting new people and therefore test new installs so much. A Linux admin from the '90s would be lost on a modern Linux distro. A BSD admin from the '90s would have plenty to learn, but most of it would still be quite usable.
  • dgacmu 4y ago
    I just had the interesting experience of upgrading a FreeBSD box from 9.x (2012) to 13.1 (2023). It had been turned off for a few years while I was off playing with industry. The process was shockingly smooth. The conf files are mostly in the same places. It was... nice. At the same time I took my desktop from Ubuntu 14 (2014) to 22 and ended up giving up and reinstalling. That was more expected. I was shocked that the FreeBSD upgrade just worked.
• protoman3000 4y ago
  It’s unclear to me what’s exactly wrong with Ubuntu. Can you please give some more explanations on what you mean with “ruined by corporate interests” or “snap”? Why do people say it’s not pure? How does it affect me? So far everything seems nicely enough documented and works mostly conveniently out of the box.
  • karmakaze 4y ago
    That's easy to find "What's wrong with Ubuntu|Canonical?"
• nickjj 4y ago
  I've been running Debian stable on servers for like 8 years now. Up until recently I had a server running Debian Jessie with 1,802 days of uptime. It served a decent amount of traffic. Services on there ran unattended for literally years and it was rock solid. I ended up decommissioning the server because for the same price I could get better hardware specs so I made a new server and put on Debian Bullseye (the latest stable release as of mid-2021). With Docker being a thing now, Debian's older but more stable package versions for app level things (programming runtimes, databases, etc.) is less of an issue because you can run them in Docker. However you can get stable core system packages with Debian's impeccable track record. IMO I wouldn't run anything other than Debian on a server (including base Docker images). For a personal distro, I think it gets more complicated. It's personal preference based on what you value. Using Debian's unstable channel could be an option for having the latest releases on things while still being stable even though it's labelled "unstable". Arch is another choice. There's many others.
  • SteveNuts 4y ago
    You didn't patch in almost 5 years?
    • nickjj 4y ago
      > You didn't patch in almost 5 years? For that machine I configured https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades to auto-patch packages with auto-reboots disabled. That specific server wasn't running Docker so there was less to worry about from an attack surface level. Debian stable releases get 3 years of official support and then an extra 2 years of security maintenance. Running a specific release for 5 years isn't unheard of if the workload you're running is ok with not being updated for that long. Ideally I aim to create new servers when a new stable release is available or at least before the official 3 year time span is over.
    • number6 4y ago
      At least not the kernel.
  • 0xEFF 4y ago
• znpy 4y ago
  I just recently decided I’ll be switching all my desktop computing to fedora. The xfce spin is okay, everything i need is in the repo and for everything else there’s flatpak. F@@k snap.
• cmdlinecowboy 4y ago
  Hannah Montana Linux
• atdrummond 4y ago
  I run my personal servers on Debian and OpenBSD. My OpenBSD machine just hit 12 years of uptime.
• 404mm 4y ago
  I dislike Ubuntu for the same reasons and I can recommend two paths: For environments where you expect and appreciate stability- Debian. Hands down. Your initial feel is going to be like a leaner Ubuntu with a few extra steps (non free drivers or software). Very low learning curve. If you don’t mind “staying on top of your OS and packages”, then I’d recommend Arch Linux for desktop (not server). There is never “end of support of any release” because it’s a rolling release distro. Do your updates regularly and you’ll be good to go. They have one of the best wiki in the Linux world and it’s a low maintenance distro once you set it all up. A bit steep learning curve at first but I’d argue that this learning is beneficial to general understanding of Linux.
  • BrandoElFollito 4y ago
    Why not server? Because of stability? I use Arch as my main server for 5 years or so and never had any issues. I just update when I think about it.
    • 404mm 4y ago
      Stability is great, never had any issues either. Really it’s the frequent package updates. Instead of applying security updates as needed, you are constantly updating all packages as they are released. Depending on what your server does, this may be less than ideal.
    • hiq 4y ago
      > I just update when I think about it. What about security vulnerabilities?
      • BrandoElFollito 4y ago
        I follow them independently (as a collateral effect of my job) - but it is good to see such comments
• fbouvier 4y ago
  75 6 de j'y
• konart 4y ago
  Fedora - stable and predictable. A perfect distro for home\work PC.
• js8 4y ago
  I also had issues with Ubuntu's snap Firefox. And I am also considering leaving (after almost 20 years). My biggest issue was snaps taking huge amohnt of disk space. My 30GB system partition was running out of space. What I usually do is to move the big stuff to another disk and symlink to it. Moving snap directory this way caused mounting issues, Firefox was unable to download anything. I switched to normal Firefox from apt (non-snap) and it works. I am considering Debian. I think Ubuntu (like Mozilla) needs to realize who is their user base - increasingly conservative, occasionally tinkering, users. They need to be more careful with sweeping changes.
  • timbit42 4y ago
    Ubuntu gave up on the desktop user experience when they dropped Unity. Linux Mint has the best desktop user experience now and no Snaps. For servers I would recommend Debian stable.
• simonebrunozzi 4y ago
  Nitpicking: Not for 20 years, but for 18.5 years at most - Warty Warthog, 4.10, came out in October 2004.
• geocrasher 4y ago
  Another vote for Debian. Depending on the workload, FreeBSD is excellent as well.
• kkfx 4y ago
  NixOS. Declarative config, so easy to reproduce, very easy to create a custom iso, nothing like preseed/kickstart nightmare. Nix language is as (in)digestible as haskell, Guix System so might be a wiser choice, but unfortunately it's development is too steered toward HPC/academic usages that miss some things to be ready IMO for servers and desktops in a generic computing environment, unfortunately. In 2023 NO CLASSIC distro or OS is wise IMVHO.
• Georgelemental 4y ago
  I switched to Fedora once the snap-pushing started getting too annoying. It works well, packages are up to date and not modified from upstream.
• twosdai 4y ago
  To add to the noise: I like pop os. It's been a great desktop distro
• ww520 4y ago
  Red Hat for production. Centos for personal. Actually also install Snapd for those few sod apps that need frequent updates.
• lambdaxymox 4y ago
  For end user workstations, my favorite Linux distros have converged on either Pop!_OS or Arch Linux (and Manjaro). Pop!_OS is a remarkably stable and usable Linux distro. At least from a UX and aesthetics standpoint I find it competitive with macOS (I am also a longtime mac user, though macOS has lost its edge in recent years on the UX front). Overall I would say it's my favorite Linux distro these days. I am a big fan of the Debian family of distros in general. I used Arch Linux for almost ten years before switching fully to Pop!_OS and I never had an update go pear-shaped. Rolling release with pacman is amazingly robust indeed. I would say it's my number two. I was an Ubuntu user from version 7 to version 16. Two things did it in for me. The first one was when Canonical submarined Amazon search queries into the OS's search feature somewhere around version 12 or 13. The second problem I had was major version upgrades reliably crashed my workstations. Every single major version upgrade meant a Busybox prompt after rebooting. After a few too many of those headaches (frustrations with apt upgrades causing trouble aside), it got to the point where I'd just do a nuke and boot to upgrade major versions instead of doing it in situ. After that happened for the last time sometime around Ubuntu 16.10 I said enough and dropped it going fully over to Arch Linux until around 2020, when I switched to Pop!_OS for a change of pace. Pop!_OS major version transitions have never caused problems for me. Arch Linux obviously doesn't have a notion of versions to begin with being rolling release.
  • physicles 4y ago
    I’ve been running Pop!_OS for about two years now and I still love it. Use it for both work and home. No plans to change.
• bmitc 4y ago
  What about Linux Mint?
• mvanbaak 4y ago
  Have a look at FreeBSD. The documentation and the fact userland and kernel are developed and released together changed my whole admin experience.
• microtonal 4y ago
  Mainstream: Fedora. It has been rock solid for me, while at the same time adopting the cutting edge of the Linux ecosystem (latest gcc, latest security stuff, etc.). Also a lot of exciting things happening, like Silverblue, CoreOS, OSTree, etc. For stuff that needs to be really stable, you can use RHEL or a derivative. If you are willing to do something more alien: NixOS. But be aware that it can be a deep rabbit hole and time sink.
  • akvadrako 4y ago
    Silverblue looks great; I'll be moving from Ubuntu to that for my next install. My experience with OSTree in flatpak has been pretty positive and I really like the idea of a immutable base image.
• optimalsolver 4y ago
  Kubuntu.
  • mkl 4y ago
    I've used Kubuntu for years and really like KDE, but Kubuntu has the same frustrating snap issues so is not a solution here.
• BirAdam 4y ago
  I have been using Linux since the late 90s, and honestly, there's no correct answer. I use AlmaLinux for serious stuff. I use Intel's Clear Linux on my workstation. I use Slackware for hobbyist stuff. In your case, I would suggest taking a serious look at Debian since you're already using it via Ubuntu. While I do not care for rule by committee, Debian has a rather good track record. You may also want to look at Pop! OS https://pop.system76.com/ https://pop.system76.com/ Beyond Debian and Pop!, Arch is quite common. I never cared for it personally, but many people (and many whom I respect) love it.
• tkuraku 4y ago
  RHEL/Rocky for server / Enterprise. Debian is another option that I also use for my personal workstation. Debian is nice in that there won't be any crazy profit driven decisions. It is super stable. I think it is a much saner option than Ubuntu.
• scotty79 4y ago
  Debian was always a solid choice I ultimately ended up with in the last two decades.
• cesarb 4y ago
  > I have been running Ubuntu on servers and desktops for around twenty years If you have been running Ubuntu for that long, and don't have much experience with other distributions, the stable distribution you will probably feel the most comfortable with will be Debian. From an administration point of view, they are very similar; not only do both use dpkg and apt for package management, but also small things like details of the structure of the configuration in /etc are very similar. This is because Ubuntu started as, and still is, a derivative of the much older Debian distribution. The only thing you might miss would be Ubuntu-specific stuff like snaps; and you might also get a bit annoyed by Debian stable having older versions of packages than you might be used to (it's a slow-moving distribution, more similar to enterprise distributions like RHEL in that aspect).
• beebmam 4y ago
  Try building a Linux system from scratch! It won't be as functional immediately, but you'll learn a lot.
• ac130kz 4y ago
  NixOS stable or good ol Debian stable. Both are smooth, but NixOS is just such a joy to configure with generic hardware and software configurations, yet you don't get the feel that everything has to be manual like on Gentoo or Arch.
• disordinary 4y ago
  I've used Fedora for years as my desktop linux distro on my laptops and CentOS or RHEL for servers. Fedora is the desktop focussed project which is upstream from the commercial RedHat Enterprise Linux, CentOS is the community distribution of RedHat Enterprise Linux. This is a great, stable, and feature rich ecosystem that contributes a lot to opensource and upstream back to Linux and has a long track record stretching back more than 20 years.
• disordinary 4y ago
  I've used Fedora for years as my desktop linux distro on my laptops and CentOS or RHEL for servers. Fedora is the desktop focussed project which is upstream from the commercial RedHat Enterprise Linux, CentOS is the community distribution of RedHat Enterprise Linux. This is a great, stable, and feature rich ecosystem that contributes a lot of innovation to opensource projects and upstream back to Linux, it has a strong community and has a long track record stretching back more than 20 years.
• eximius 4y ago
  Linux Mint is the next easiest step from Ubuntu. Then Debian. If you want to learn more, try Arch. If you want to try something avant garde, maybe Guix or NixOS.
• codetrotter 4y ago
  On my servers I run FreeBSD. It’s stable and it will most likely continue to exist for decades to come unaffected by corporate interests, just like it has for ages so far.
• noloblo 4y ago
  fedora/centos
• lucabs 4y ago
  Debian (server, workstation), Archlinux, Manjaro (desktop)
• gaganyaan 4y ago
  I'm liking NixOS thus far. I've got it installed on my personal laptop. It's got some rough edges, but the benefits for me outweigh the downsides. I really like affordances like "nix-shell -p foo" to just run a shell with the "foo" command in it for one-off usages, instead of slowly accumulating installed apt packages that I forgot why I installed them. Similarly, having any custom configuration inside of "configuration.nix" is way nicer to use than manually editing /etc/whatever.conf. I can have one place to store any custom hacks, with a nice comment as to why + git history.
  • jegp 4y ago
    This. And it's completely reproducible. IMO this is the best bet for stability + long-term survivability.
  • 8jy89hui 4y ago
    > It's got some rough edges I've recently been looking really hard at NixOS as a possible next-step. (I use Manjaro and am particularly interested in ways to keep my Laptop and Desktop in sync) I've heard that the documentation can be pretty lackluster at times. Are there any other rough edges I should know about?
    • gaganyaan 4y ago
      I'd say it's really about the documentation, including "unofficial" documentation like bug reports and SO questions. Part of why Ubuntu is so popular is because there's enough of a community that whatever issue you hit, someone's probably already hit it before and asked about it on SO, where it has a highly upvoted answer that fixes the issue and explains it. That's also why NixOS seemed like a better choice than Guix to me. One thing I ran into was setting up a Python project using poetry2nix. Mostly works great, but then you sometimes get inscrutable error messages. I had to copy this into a shell.nix file for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me (and I had to hunt it down from https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs myself instead of finding docs or a bug report): astunparse = super.astunparse.overridePythonAttrs (old: { buildInputs = old.buildInputs ++ [ self.wheel ]; }); One non-documentation issue I've hit is that even when using the stable channel, you live much closer to the bleeding edge than a distro like Ubuntu. I updated my system to the latest packages, and then my wifi wouldn't work after waking up from sleep. Turned out to be a kernel regression that was fixed a few days later in a patch update. Everything was fine again, but it's not something you'd run into with a more conservative distro. Similar issue with the latest Gnome breaking extensions for a while before they got updated.
• aborsy 4y ago
  It seems most people agree that the snap is a good idea, but not well implemented. I for one use snap packages when they are available for better security, because, if there is a vulnerability, say in Firefox, the malware will be jailed in its container. That’s one more layer. Sandboxing is desperately needed in desktop operating systems. Another advantage that is portability. Snap export nextcloud and import somewhere else! Sure, snaps are slower, and take some space, but with todays CPUs and storage, that’s not a dealbreaker. BTW, if you don’t like snap, you just remove it. What else would be the problem? Check out also Pop!_OS based upon Ubuntu. Ubuntu itself has excellent hardware support.
  • akvadrako 4y ago
    Flatpak is just the better snap. The only reason Ubuntu doesn't use it is that it isn't controlled by them.
    • aborsy 4y ago
      Flatpak is probably better overall. It loads faster, and not controlled by a company, although it takes more space and is less supported on servers.
• djfobbz 4y ago
  I moved to Debian after getting fed up with the fact that I had to upgrade the server on almost daily/weekly basis. Couldn't be happier!
• jrockway 4y ago
  Debian. Anything that's not up to date enough, I install with Homebrew. I did not follow the drama but I know that there was a time when even Unstable was missing a recent version of Emacs. Homebrew has it on release day. With the combination of Debian stable and Homebrew, you get a stable core and the bleeding edge for the 3 pieces of software you actually care about. Perfect.
• blippage 4y ago
  I used to like Ubuntu, but gave up on it for similar reasons. I have an old machine, so I find Ubuntu too bloated. I've been on Debian Stable for a few years now, using MATE. It's fuss-free. I don't find the software too old, but I use a few bits that I've compiled myself. Linux Mint has a good reputation, so I would consider that if I was thinking of moving away from Debian.
• rwky 4y ago
  I'm going to throw my hat in the Debian ring like a lot of other comments. The whole snap thing annoyed me too. I use Debian solely on Desktops now I do have some Ubuntu servers but slowly moving what I can to Debian.
• anigbrowl 4y ago
  Arch, Gentoo
• mherrmann 4y ago
  Debian. It's what Ubuntu uses under the hood (as you very likely know) so the transition will be smooth. For the GUI, my absolute favorite is i3wm. But LXDE is more user-friendly.
• nubinetwork 4y ago
  Gentoo, no I'm serious.
• irusensei 4y ago
  Using Nobara (AKA a copy of glorious eggroll’s hard disk - jk!) which is Fedora based with tons of kernel patches and packages for the new gaming and video editing stuff. Really good stuff. Things like steam being able to use rumble on xone which never worked to me basically works out of the box. On my servers I use manjaro, not a personal choice but because those are Pine based hardware and it seems manjaro-arm has been very well maintained. The actual software is being run from LXC containers which are mostly alpine and ubuntu.
• jmclnx 4y ago
  I do not know what a "Pro agenda means", but you looking for a Linux ? To me the kernel itself is highly "corporatized". So, I would try OpenBSD or maybe FreeBSD. Note, for OpenBSD, Nvidia Graphics are a no-go.
• peoplearepeople 4y ago
  NixOS
• squarefoot 4y ago
  You seem to want the real thing, that is, Debian. However, if you need something really small and fast, mostly for VMs or servers, although it can also be turned int a full fledged, still very resource efficient desktop, take also a look at Alpine Linux. Musl makes all the difference there. Then, should someone with no prior Linux experience ask you to install a desktop for them, I would go with Manjaro, which to me is the most straightforward, while still not bloated, for new users.
• sdumi 4y ago
  Void linux. For personal use, I switched to it couple of years ago after I had some weird issues on Ubuntu. Very stable, everything works as expected: the OS is just there in the background, almost unnoticed, as an OS should be.
• agilob 4y ago
  If you want control and trust into the system, you're choosing between Arch and Nix
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Gordonjcp 4y ago
  I'm going to bet that whatever you choose, you'll be using Ubuntu in six month's time.
• jayski 4y ago
  I've been running FreeBSD for all my production stuff for 20+ years. Works great, stable, consistent, reliable. Give it a try.
  • lockhouse 4y ago
    The BSDs are criminally underrated operating systems. Another great thing about FreeBSD is that there is robust support for compiling from source (the ports system) or using binary packages. It also fully supports ZFS out of the box. I also highly recommend FreeBSD’s cousin OpenBSD if you have supported hardware. It’s default out of the box configuration is extremely secure and bloat-free.
• eternityforest 4y ago
  Linux Mint has a good level of insulation from nonsense like Snaps while preserving compatibility. Fedora seems to be gaining ground, and also all the innovation in Linux is pushed by the Red Hat people, and Fedora gets it way sooner. Although Ubuntu derivatives still seem to be the standard for home users who don't do Arch.
• bayindirh 4y ago
  Debian Stable is your best bet here. It's run by community, evolves slowly and with a consensus (somewhat), and you can be involved in the process if you have the desire and patience. I'm using it since 3.0 both on my desktop and infrastructure, and I'm pretty happy. I once lost a Debian server in our system room. When we remembered that we have such machine, I just logged in and it installed all updates in between and was working without any problems. Just rebooted to get the new kernel, that's all.
• butz 4y ago
  Keep running Ubuntu for servers, even consider using Pro if pricing is suitable for your use case. 10 years of support is pretty good these days. As for desktop: Arch Linux if you like tinkering and need "bleeding edge" software; use Fedora Linux, if you want to be on "leading edge", and want system that you install and it just works; Debian for something more stable. Linux Mint is decent too, but their plan for Wayland is not known yet, if that's something that important for you.
• jm4 4y ago
  A lot of people mentioning Debian. Great distro. If you're comfortable with Debian, you might as well check out Arch too. Can't go wrong with either one.
• pt_PT_guy 4y ago
  OpenSuse Leap
• jrm4 4y ago
  For what it's worth, I was expecting this to be mostly about desktops. Presently I'll throw some love to MX Linux, which appears to be a good example for "Just works." Broadly, this is feeling more and more like a cycle that one can figure out how to "ride?" As, before for me it has been e.g. Lubuntu, Xubuntu, LXLE, etc. Basically something like "find something Debian-ish" that there's a little bit of, but not TOO much, new energy by people who just want something simple.
• notorandit 4y ago
  For me it was Archlinux. Listen Ubuntu. You rely on third party packages and don't really mind to fix them, just bounce users upstream. Yes, you are based upon Debian. You cannot fix "their" bugs. You should, instead, because those are your users'. Archlinux is far from perfect, but nearer than you, Ubuntu.
• thehappypm 4y ago
  ChromeOS is the future of general purpose computers IMO. Browsers only get more capable, other OS’s continue to bloat, and it’s fundamentally easier to run securely.
• ossusermivami 4y ago
  Red Hat for work debian for my rpi and personal cloud services
• everybodyknows 4y ago
  > ... breaking apt upgrades on 20.04 LTS in order to push their Pro agenda I'm running 20.04, and this is news to me. What is the nature of the breakage?
• cookiengineer 4y ago
  I had a similar problem back around 2015 when I could not dist upgrade the UbuntuGNOME I was using. Switched to Arch, which was painful to install (remember LFS?) but never regretted switching to it. For customers I still recommend going for RedHat or Debian though, because the LTS support is great and the distros keeps working and is really low in maintenance overhead. Whereas on Arch you always can fix it, but when it breaks you can't do that on a server without a terminal/monitor/keyboard, so I wouldn't recommend running it on server infrastructure if it's the host system.
• tigrezno 4y ago
  I don't see the problem with snaps. They just work for me. Firefox snap is very fast and don't have issues.
  • joshxyz 4y ago
    Same here. Chromium, firefox, beekeeper studio, they are okay. There was a bug in nodejs snap though involving the vm module, but seems pretty edge case to me. On most normal user use cases it is more useful and not cumbersome
• 7373737373 4y ago
  I remember when I had fun using Ubuntu. My main concern (and joy) back then was enabling wobbly windows. What about now? The commercialization leaks through more and more every year. The Ubuntu logo is becoming as misleading as the OpenAI name, instead of the Kumbaya i thought it to represent, it's quickly becoming just another piece of spyware. There is no way to create an empty file with a right click without googling and going through some bullshit first. I can't even drag and drop files and directories from the desktop straight to the file explorer. Who the hell thought that downgrading functionality was a good idea? The "touchpadization" of the UI sucks. There is no way to configure how background images are displayed. Too much more bullshit every time that I have postponed the next upgrade out of fear it'll become even worse. So yes, I'm ready to change to something better too.
• 28304283409234 4y ago
  Debian. It's always been Debian.
• retrocryptid 4y ago
  Meh. I'm going back to bsd. Though I have to admit, the ease of configuring 3rd party proprietary drivers has sort of delayed my departure from ubuntu. I'm real close to throwing out my Intel NUC + Ubuntu and starting from scratch. It's just too unstable. I tried going back to SuSE, but alas, it's everything I don't care for in ubuntu, only with different minor nits. Maybe RYO leenucks where I build all my tools from scratch.
• sombragris 4y ago
  Slackware 14.0 was released in 2012. Last update was on January 19, 2023, a security update on sudo. Check for yourself: http://slackware.uk/slackware/slackware-14.0/ChangeLog.txt http://slackware.uk/slackware/slackware-14.0/ChangeLog.txt
• moomoo11 4y ago
  I use Debian for my personal workstation. I can’t get basic shit like Bluetooth to work but that’s all right lol.
• nazgulnarsil 4y ago
  Valve's reliance on arch means I think it will continue to see interest and active development
• rbanffy 4y ago
  I’ve been an Ubuntu user for a long time, but I’m moving to Fedora for my laptops and CentOS Stream for my servers. Canonical was great and added a lot of nice things to Ubuntu and contributes a lot with upstream Debian, but my patience with things like snaps has limits.
• gymbeaux 4y ago
  macOS has been breaking my heart lately. Some of it is a consequence of being on ARM instead of x86, but some of it is the OS- for example, I don’t have to tell this group Docker on macOS is the worst (versus Linux and Windows). The theory behind getting a Mac is that it lasts ~5 years before I really feel the need to buy another Mac, but this time, my 2020 M1 MacBook has only made it about 2 years before I’m now trying to unload it. 16GB just isn’t enough for Docker and the IDEs and other apps I have running. It sucks because I followed the “max out the Mac because you can’t upgrade later” rule. 16GB was as high as I could go, and hell 16GB was enough for my 2015 Intel MacBook. Anyway, because of the above and the lack of Nvidia/CUDA support for ML/NLP stuff that I do for work, I built a desktop and run Linux on it. I’ve been jumping around distros over the last few months and here’s what I’ve learned: Ubuntu Desktop has always been on the buggy side for me, going all the way back to 10.04 LTS. I guess taking Debian and GNOME and plastering your own brand on top will do that. The most-stable desktop experience has been Fedora Workstation, which uses pure GNOME as the desktop environment. I wanted a distro with a stable desktop environment (most of my woes pertain to having a 5K display), that supports fractional scaling (200% is too big for a 4K/5K display IMO), and runs all the stuff I want to run. Also rolling release would be nice, because I’m tired of running into issues where a guide I’m following works for Ubuntu 20.04 but not 21.04 for example, or a package (like AWS VPN Client) is made for 20.04 but doesn’t work out of the box with any newer version of Ubuntu. So brass tacks, stable (and modern-looking) desktop environment out of the box, plus rolling release = Manjaro (Arch) and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, both with KDE Plasma. There are other distros that meet this criteria, but they’re niche or having been around for very long. I’ve had a good experience with both Manjaro and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, but OpenSUSE had some annoying UI bugs that I don’t experience with Manjaro, so… I’m just sticking with Manjaro + KDE Plasma. The only downside is that as packages go, everyone makes DEBs but Arch you’ll often have to download a DEB or RPM and convert it and hope it works without any further action on your part. This also means that you can’t have apps auto-update like those that live in APT or Yum. Arch’s AUR technically supports updating the apps you have installed, however for unofficial packages (eg those that someone just converted from DEB or RPM and uploaded to AUR), you’ll be left behind the latest version until someone/the maintainer of that package in AUR manually updates it with the new DEB/RPM they converted for AUR. I think this is an acceptable trade off considering I’m free from Ubuntu and get a rolling release for the OS/desktop environment. Heck, what’s the point in having your apps auto-upgrade if the OS and DE only get updates a couple times a year?
• elcritch 4y ago
  Just putting in two cents for OpenSUSE. They have one of the best rolling release distros along with regular releases. I used it for a while after Manjaro ate itself. It’s been around almost as long as RedHat so they’ve managed to survive.
• downvoteme1 4y ago
  Do you have any issues with Debian. It is very stable and is the base for Ubuntu and many other os’s.
• jan6 4y ago
  it's a very subjective question, depending on stuff like how much you care to update the system, but I'd say: you might like https://mxlinux.org/ https://mxlinux.org/ which has seen growing popularity, it's based on debian stable, but with more up to date software, and ability to use newer kernels in case you need better hardware support for very new hardware you might also just run normal debian, if you don't care for latest versions of everything... Debian is what Ubuntu is based on, and Ubuntu is very close copy of Debian, except Debian's release cycles are very long, so you'll be running on old software all the time, if you choose debian's stable branch...Ubuntu picks packages from debian's Testing branch, verifies it's good enough, and pushes them to ubuntu users, while debian stable is trying to be "super ultra mega stable", so it takes a loong time until everything's sufficiently tested...but using debian's testing branch is pretty fine (unstable is often fine, but might break sometimes) and another contender: I feel like OpenSUSE is criminally underrated... as they get their money from the enterprise side of things (paid support for linux servers, etc, much like red hat and others), they don't have any reason to mess with what works, and they've been around for like, over a decade also, I forget how long, but a looong time... it would be a bit different, though, using RPMs instead of DEBs, and such, but one very useful feature is, they have builtin YaST control panel which allows you to, either GUI or TUI interface, do a lot of common tasks, without having...
• spicyusername 4y ago
  Debian or RHEL for the server Fedora for the desktop.
• CelticBard 4y ago
  Arch Linux
• SuperSandro2000 4y ago
  NixOS. Not going back to imperative, none atomic updates aka I don't know what is configured on this machine or it just broke completely apart in the middle of the update and I need to clean up the mess right now.
• SuperSandro2000 4y ago
  I will never understand why people prefer debian's old packages. When I was using it I constantly was looking for features in newer versions because they actually are useful and made things things possible which where not easily before. Also installing anything out of tree is just a huge mess. Also when you are on testing things would fall apart almost every week.
• xtracto 4y ago
  I like debian for servers and Mint for desktop
• Saris 4y ago
  Debian.
• hansvm 4y ago
  Gentoo solved literally all my problems with Ubuntu. There's a bit of a learning curve to use it properly on a server farm, but it's worth it, especially if you have any even slightly atypical performance constraints.
• plaguepilled 4y ago
  I'm going to slightly subvert the spirit of your question, because I think this is exactly what you referred to when you said "ruined by corporate interests", but Fedora Desktop would be my go-to Ubuntu replacement. Red Hat are very hands-off (I really don't think the analogy of it being a testbed for RHEL is accurate) and the stability is excellent. Additionally, SELinux is preconfigured, and flatpaks allow a very basic sandbox implementation via GUI (though it is far from perfect). OTOH, if you don't give a shit about security (SELinux and AppArmor in particular) then try NixOS. Extremely powerful, idempotent system config. You can do Gnu Guix if you prefer but I have yet to be convinced by the Guix crowd it is superior, and since it has less apps I'm generally Nix-oriented.
• BlueNorth 4y ago
  An alternative to Ubuntu will emerge when competent people have reached the limit of their patience. Personally, I am more and more tempted by Debian. Ubuntu has become a dangerous tool.
• aeuropean12 4y ago
  I would suggest Debian (for ease of migration) or Red Hat Linux (for industries that are heavily regulated by compliance). However, with Red Hat you will most likely run into the "corporate interests" factor again. Maybe you can think of a medium-term and a long-term solution. Begin with Debian, and then look into the feasibility of using FreeBSD. That powers some of the largest services, such as Netflix and Whatsapp. However, FreeBSD does not use Bash but tsch, so you will want to ease the migration and administrative pains by looking into transitioning any OPS scripts and the like, but FreeBSD does provide a package management solution that holds it ground against apt/aptitude. This is by no means a comprehensive comparison, just a few insights that might serve as starting points.
• renonce 4y ago
  I’ve been using Arch Linux for several years now. It has a rich ecosystem of packages, a wiki for many aspects of the system (you might be using the wiki even if you came from another distribution), and AUR fills the hole for whatever packages not included in the official repo. All packages are kept up to date, so it’s great for personal usage where latest packages are preferred over stable packages.
• zgk7iqea 4y ago
  i use alpine linux on my servers. it's actually quite good.
• kn100 4y ago
  I've moved to Fedora for desktop use in the last little bit. It's been quite nice, I have to say! My server stock is a bit all over the place at the moment, as I'm experimenting with a few things. I've got: * Ubuntu 22.04 * Debian Bullseye * Oracle Linux 8 (This was more accidental than anything...) * Armbian I haven't settled on where I'll be going but I think in the end I'll mostly be moving towards Fedora for everything. Their server OS is pretty nice too!
• rcarmo 4y ago
  I’m slowly gravitating to that, although I mostly deploy my servers as usual and remove snapd. My breaking point was being forced to install Firefox via snap. Anything with a GUI now runs Fedora (which can be annoying sometimes because it feels unfinished, but largely works), and I’m using Debian for other things.
• kokizzu2 4y ago
  PopOS for desktop? i think debian for server?
• lukkor 4y ago
  On freebsd on my laptop for more or less one year; from this short experience, I would recommend it for anyone looking for a stable and reliable system. Never used on servers yet but it has nothing to prove there, already used by the biggest.
• amir734jj 4y ago
  Debian for server PopOS for everyday use
• npteljes 4y ago
  I was a similar situation, and was distro hopping for a while. I ended up running Debian on most of my systems. Testing with KDE for desktop, and stable on servers.
• oriettaxx 4y ago
  I've just got this one ________________________________________ root@ansible:~# apt full-upgrade Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done Calculating upgrade... Done The following security updates require Ubuntu Pro with 'esm-apps' enabled: imagemagick ansible libopenexr25 libmagickcore-6.q16-6-extra libmagickwand-6.q16-6 imagemagick-6.q16 libmagickcore-6.q16-6 imagemagick-6-common Learn more about Ubuntu Pro at https://ubuntu.com/pro The following packages have been kept back: python3-software-properties software-properties-common update-notifier-common 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded. ________________________________________ and to have those security upgrades I see I have to pay 500$ per year!!!! wtf! I'm going to remove all my comments from ubuntu help
• rookderby 4y ago
  For what it's worth, I've been using SUSE, openSUSE, and currently tumbleweed personally as a daily driver on-and-off for ~19 years. Occasionally I hop over to Fedora and come back. I also run a couple public-facing servers on Linnode using Suse's Leap. I haven't had any major issues (some minor annoyances along the way of course), but the software is very up-to-date. I see that you're concerned about corporate control, maybe I've just been getting lucky. I don't have much experience with Debian, but have been experimenting with FreeBSD (has a non-profit registered in colorado[0]) and NixOS (has a non-profit registered in Netherlands[1]). [0]: https://freebsdfoundation.org/legal/ https://freebsdfoundation.org/legal/ [1]: https://nixos.org/community/ https://nixos.org/community/
• warrenm 4y ago
  I switched from CentOS/RHEL to Ubuntu on my servers a couple years ago While it was a little jarring to have things named and located differently (not much different, but different none-the-less), I was basically "Ubuntufied" within a couple weeks 20 years ago I ran SuSE almost exclusively Prior I had Slackware (which is still around, and distinctly non "corporate"), RedHat, Mandrake, and a couple others You wanting to avoid "being ruined by corporate interests" is likely impossible - unless you go with a single BDFL distro like Slackware Ubuntu is "corporate" RedHat is "corporate" SLES is "corporate" Debian is "corporate" (not as in a commercial entity, but definitely have their own very tight community (ie "corporate") rules as to the "right" and "wrong" ways of doing things) I'm curious as to why you think Ubuntu (or Red Hat, or any of a number of other distros) which have been around "a long time" won't continue to be around for "a long time"? Ubuntu's 18 Debian's 29 Red Hat is 30 Suse is 31 ...what are you looking for, exactly, that you think isn't handled well-enough by the "big guys"?
• the_third_wave 4y ago
  Debian. From Debian we came and to Debian we will return. It "just works" without any corporate plans which need to be implemented and for which users are to be used as pawns in the chess game of market domination.
• SergeAx 4y ago
  Why Ubuntu in the first place, when there's Debian?
• bdlowery 4y ago
  Just skip to the end and use MacOS.
• 2devnull 4y ago
  2 options: 1) gentoo 2) FreeBSD Which of those you choose depends on your needs. I’d try FreeBSD first, and if you find it lacking then I’d go for gentoo. BSD seems like a well kept secret, but it won’t work for everyone. They do have stellar docs and a friendly community, buts it’s not ubuntu.
• taf2 4y ago
  Fedora?
• linza 4y ago
  Because of this thread, I switched back to Debian on my laptop after 8 years on Ubuntu, and everything works nicely. Thanks HN!