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How are any of the Ubuntu moves with Snap in the spirit of open source? I notice that Pop!OS installs flatpak but I didn't realise they weren't considered an "

How are any of the Ubuntu moves with Snap in the spirit of open source? I notice that Pop!OS installs flatpak but I didn't realise they weren't considered an "official" variant of Ubuntu, so perhaps it will continue doing that. The Register article is overly kind about this, I appreciate the "news not editorial" flavour but the real story is that Ubuntu apparently consider themselves apart from the community that makes their software and they should now be consigned to history by that community. Off to uninstall it in my network now.

twosdai 4y ago
My 2 cents fwiw. Pop os is probably the best consumer linux desktop experience. Flatpack installs, company customer support, and a well configured Ubuntu base make it ideal. I'm glad they're not an official flavor, canonical hasn't been doing a great job on their consumer desktop sector because their money is made via the server installs and distributions.
- brnt 4y ago
  After using Ubuntu for a decade, I switched to Debian with Bullseye and I couldn't be happier. Or can I? Why use PopOS, and does it do KDE?
  - LorenDB 4y ago
    Why use Pop!_OS? I guess because the name makes you look like a 1337 h4xx0r. Joking aside, Pop is generally liked for its easy-to-use interface. System76 has made a well-polished suite of software, and they are in the process of replacing GNOME with their own DE to make it an even smoother experience. Of course, if you use something else (I prefer openSUSE Tumbleweed), you can just stick to Flatpaks entirely without having to get concerned about snaps.
  - isthisfoss 4y ago
    Why use it? Probably no reason if you’re happy on debian. It’s just a solid distro and as other have said the best out-of-the-box desktop experience out there IMO. Definitely not going to win over any KDE fans but their tuned GNOME DE is really slick, and it’s only gonna get better when they release their own DE “COSMIC”. I’ve been dailying Pop on all my main machines for years now without any problems. Think of it as Uncononical’d Ubuntu in a way but they’re really committed to making a unique footprint
  - veidr 4y ago
    I use Pop OS (mostly) but there is not a super compelling use case for if you don't want to just go with their defaults. Pop OS is a time saver in the sense that it gives you a bunch of things out of the box (disk encryption, tiling window manager, NVIDIA drivers, Apple-like recovery partition in case anything goes wrong, etc) that you could set up yourself, but don't have to. You can basically set up Ubuttnu or most other common Linuxes to be just like Pop OS by spending a few hours on it. For people using another distro without customizing it much after the installer is done, then I would usually recommend Pop OS. I think it's the best "out of the box" Linux for most general-purpose computing like programming, email/web, Slack, etc. But if you already switched to Debian and are happy, then there's probably no huge benefit to moving to Pop unless you are sick of tinkering and just want automatic system updates that keep you pretty up to date with recent kernels and packages without you having to do anything.
- lproven 4y ago
  > Pop os is probably the best consumer linux desktop experience. I've tried it. I really did not like it. May I suggest that you try to separate your personal preferences, which are your own business and 100% fine but are yours, from a general canonical announcement such as "best consumer... experience" which is a sweeping generalization and is not true? The existence proof that Pop OS is not the best consumer experience is this: the most widely-used desktop Linux in the world is ChromeOS. It has something around 200-300 million happy users, and ChromeBooks now outsell Macs and have been doing since 2017 in the USA and 2020 worldwide. ChromeBooks are pure Linux machines, with a desktop Linux based on Gentoo. There are about 10x more ChromeBooks in use than all other desktop Linux distros PUT TOGETHER. So, that proves by sheer numbers that the most popular consumer Linux is ChromeOS. It sells, for money, more than all the free distros put together.
  - dadoomer 4y ago
    I disagree with this reasoning on the grounds that quality (however that may be defined) is only one of many factors that influence Linux distro popularity. FWIW, my unrequested opinion, is that I largely agree that Pop!_OS is one of, if not the, best consumer distros.
  - lapinot 4y ago
    The chromeos argument is straight up bad faith. Google is a tech giant with immense marketing capabilities. They sell laptops which obviously outsell anything like framework/purism/system76/pine64, they would even if the product was garbage. Now chromeos is what these machines get preinstalled with. The domination is a mechanical consequence of what google is and that they happen to have a product running it, it doesn't say anything about chromeos.
    - lproven 4y ago
      I strongly disagree with every line of that. > straight up bad faith. You do not know my motivations, so kindly do not question them. > Google is a tech giant with immense marketing capabilities. So? So is Red Hat, for instance. > They sell laptops which obviously outsell anything like framework/purism/system76/pine64 [1] Wrong: not only Google sells Chromebooks. In fact I submit that it is a minority vendor of Chromebooks. [2] Obviously outsell etc. Why is this obvious? What do you feel is obvious here, and why? > they would even if the product was garbage. Evidence, please? On what basis do you make this claim? > mechanical consequence of what google is What is a "mechanical consequence"? > they happen to have a product running it "happen to have" is bogus. This took years, major effort, and the people behind it had to fight for it. > it doesn't say anything about chromeos. It 100% does. It says that Linux is ready for the desktop, and that it has been for years. It outsells the only other rival product to MS Windows; how much more ready can anything be? The year of Linux on the desktop came and went and the Linux world was, as ever, too busy squabbling and arguing with itself to even notice. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of consumers are happily running Linux laptops and Linux phones and just use it, all day every day... And all the distros are a rounding error.
lproven 4y ago
> The Register article is overly kind about this Wait, what? I wrote the article. In what way do you feel I am being "overly kind"? You baldly state this as an assertion without any backup or argument or evidence to support it. > I appreciate the "news not editorial" flavour Not really, no. I added in the analysis and evaluation that I felt it merited. > but the real story is that Ubuntu apparently consider themselves apart from the community that makes their software Why do you feel that that is "the real story"? On what basis? Ubuntu is not a community distro. Ubuntu is built and maintained by Canonical on the basis of Debian. Debian is a community distro. The Ubuntu remixes are, arguably, community distros, but a requirement of being an official remix is only using upstream Ubuntu packages. I specifically spelled that out in the article, with a link for citation, but the reason I know is that I approached Canonical and asked about making new remixes, years ago, and they told me no, for 2 reasons: * One was that one of my planned remixes used proprietary freeware. This, for clarity, did in the end get launched as a product, but without Ubuntu branding, at Canonical's demand. * The other one needed external repos because the versions in Ubuntu's repos are too old. Ubuntu would not take newer versions into their repos; the packages came from Debian, and Debian didn't have current versions, so for Canonical it was Somebody Else's Problem and there the discussion ended. > and they should now be consigned to history by that community If you don't want to use an Ubuntu remix, nobody is forcing you. But millions do, more than any other free Linux distro. Ubuntu has merits. Its users like those. Some don't. Debian hasn't gone away. Neither has Slackware, one of the few distros that predate Debian. That is how evolution works. We humans evolved from apes, which evolved from monkeys, which evolved from things very like lemurs, but all of those still exist because they are very good at doing what they do and being what they are. Monkeys are better at being monkeys than humans are at being monkeys. Debian is better at being Debian than Ubuntu is, so Debian continues to exist. Debian continues to be rather harder to install, which is why SpiralLinux exists. Debian continues to be rather dogmatic about init systems, which is why Devuan and antiX and MX Linux exist. Debian continues to be built from rather out of date packages, which is why siduction exists. And so on.
- smackeyacky 4y ago
  Good lord, maybe put that kind of effort into the next reg article!

twosdai 4y ago

My 2 cents fwiw. Pop os is probably the best consumer linux desktop experience. Flatpack installs, company customer support, and a well configured Ubuntu base make it ideal. I'm glad they're not an official flavor, canonical hasn't been doing a great job on their consumer desktop sector because their money is made via the server installs and distributions.

brnt 4y ago
After using Ubuntu for a decade, I switched to Debian with Bullseye and I couldn't be happier. Or can I? Why use PopOS, and does it do KDE?
- LorenDB 4y ago
  Why use Pop!_OS? I guess because the name makes you look like a 1337 h4xx0r. Joking aside, Pop is generally liked for its easy-to-use interface. System76 has made a well-polished suite of software, and they are in the process of replacing GNOME with their own DE to make it an even smoother experience. Of course, if you use something else (I prefer openSUSE Tumbleweed), you can just stick to Flatpaks entirely without having to get concerned about snaps.
- isthisfoss 4y ago
  Why use it? Probably no reason if you’re happy on debian. It’s just a solid distro and as other have said the best out-of-the-box desktop experience out there IMO. Definitely not going to win over any KDE fans but their tuned GNOME DE is really slick, and it’s only gonna get better when they release their own DE “COSMIC”. I’ve been dailying Pop on all my main machines for years now without any problems. Think of it as Uncononical’d Ubuntu in a way but they’re really committed to making a unique footprint
- veidr 4y ago
  I use Pop OS (mostly) but there is not a super compelling use case for if you don't want to just go with their defaults. Pop OS is a time saver in the sense that it gives you a bunch of things out of the box (disk encryption, tiling window manager, NVIDIA drivers, Apple-like recovery partition in case anything goes wrong, etc) that you could set up yourself, but don't have to. You can basically set up Ubuttnu or most other common Linuxes to be just like Pop OS by spending a few hours on it. For people using another distro without customizing it much after the installer is done, then I would usually recommend Pop OS. I think it's the best "out of the box" Linux for most general-purpose computing like programming, email/web, Slack, etc. But if you already switched to Debian and are happy, then there's probably no huge benefit to moving to Pop unless you are sick of tinkering and just want automatic system updates that keep you pretty up to date with recent kernels and packages without you having to do anything.
lproven 4y ago
> Pop os is probably the best consumer linux desktop experience. I've tried it. I really did not like it. May I suggest that you try to separate your personal preferences, which are your own business and 100% fine but are yours, from a general canonical announcement such as "best consumer... experience" which is a sweeping generalization and is not true? The existence proof that Pop OS is not the best consumer experience is this: the most widely-used desktop Linux in the world is ChromeOS. It has something around 200-300 million happy users, and ChromeBooks now outsell Macs and have been doing since 2017 in the USA and 2020 worldwide. ChromeBooks are pure Linux machines, with a desktop Linux based on Gentoo. There are about 10x more ChromeBooks in use than all other desktop Linux distros PUT TOGETHER. So, that proves by sheer numbers that the most popular consumer Linux is ChromeOS. It sells, for money, more than all the free distros put together.
- dadoomer 4y ago
  I disagree with this reasoning on the grounds that quality (however that may be defined) is only one of many factors that influence Linux distro popularity. FWIW, my unrequested opinion, is that I largely agree that Pop!_OS is one of, if not the, best consumer distros.
- lapinot 4y ago
  The chromeos argument is straight up bad faith. Google is a tech giant with immense marketing capabilities. They sell laptops which obviously outsell anything like framework/purism/system76/pine64, they would even if the product was garbage. Now chromeos is what these machines get preinstalled with. The domination is a mechanical consequence of what google is and that they happen to have a product running it, it doesn't say anything about chromeos.
  - lproven 4y ago
    I strongly disagree with every line of that. > straight up bad faith. You do not know my motivations, so kindly do not question them. > Google is a tech giant with immense marketing capabilities. So? So is Red Hat, for instance. > They sell laptops which obviously outsell anything like framework/purism/system76/pine64 [1] Wrong: not only Google sells Chromebooks. In fact I submit that it is a minority vendor of Chromebooks. [2] Obviously outsell etc. Why is this obvious? What do you feel is obvious here, and why? > they would even if the product was garbage. Evidence, please? On what basis do you make this claim? > mechanical consequence of what google is What is a "mechanical consequence"? > they happen to have a product running it "happen to have" is bogus. This took years, major effort, and the people behind it had to fight for it. > it doesn't say anything about chromeos. It 100% does. It says that Linux is ready for the desktop, and that it has been for years. It outsells the only other rival product to MS Windows; how much more ready can anything be? The year of Linux on the desktop came and went and the Linux world was, as ever, too busy squabbling and arguing with itself to even notice. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of consumers are happily running Linux laptops and Linux phones and just use it, all day every day... And all the distros are a rounding error.

lproven 4y ago

> The Register article is overly kind about this Wait, what? I wrote the article. In what way do you feel I am being "overly kind"? You baldly state this as an assertion without any backup or argument or evidence to support it. > I appreciate the "news not editorial" flavour Not really, no. I added in the analysis and evaluation that I felt it merited. > but the real story is that Ubuntu apparently consider themselves apart from the community that makes their software Why do you feel that that is "the real story"? On what basis? Ubuntu is not a community distro. Ubuntu is built and maintained by Canonical on the basis of Debian. Debian is a community distro. The Ubuntu remixes are, arguably, community distros, but a requirement of being an official remix is only using upstream Ubuntu packages. I specifically spelled that out in the article, with a link for citation, but the reason I know is that I approached Canonical and asked about making new remixes, years ago, and they told me no, for 2 reasons: * One was that one of my planned remixes used proprietary freeware. This, for clarity, did in the end get launched as a product, but without Ubuntu branding, at Canonical's demand. * The other one needed external repos because the versions in Ubuntu's repos are too old. Ubuntu would not take newer versions into their repos; the packages came from Debian, and Debian didn't have current versions, so for Canonical it was Somebody Else's Problem and there the discussion ended. > and they should now be consigned to history by that community If you don't want to use an Ubuntu remix, nobody is forcing you. But millions do, more than any other free Linux distro. Ubuntu has merits. Its users like those. Some don't. Debian hasn't gone away. Neither has Slackware, one of the few distros that predate Debian. That is how evolution works. We humans evolved from apes, which evolved from monkeys, which evolved from things very like lemurs, but all of those still exist because they are very good at doing what they do and being what they are. Monkeys are better at being monkeys than humans are at being monkeys. Debian is better at being Debian than Ubuntu is, so Debian continues to exist. Debian continues to be rather harder to install, which is why SpiralLinux exists. Debian continues to be rather dogmatic about init systems, which is why Devuan and antiX and MX Linux exist. Debian continues to be built from rather out of date packages, which is why siduction exists. And so on.

smackeyacky 4y ago
Good lord, maybe put that kind of effort into the next reg article!