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Call me a noob if you like, but I don't like hunting down drivers. Tried to go to debian on my last dev machine upgrade, but reverted straight back to ubuntu.

Call me a noob if you like, but I don't like hunting down drivers. Tried to go to debian on my last dev machine upgrade, but reverted straight back to ubuntu. I may be lazy, but I really don't want to hunt down drivers. I'll try debian again next cycle.

entropicdrifter 4y ago
I run Mint on my primary desktop and it's fantastic. What Ubuntu LTS would've become if it had continued to focus on a good desktop experience and pushed Flatpak instead of Snap
- at-fates-hands 4y ago
  I came here to say this too. Ironically I was about to set up a new Linux Dev machine with Ubuntu and now I'm more inclined to go back to Mint since I never had a bad experience with it. I was fortunate to skip the Gnome 3 days and the Cinnamon and Xfce implementations have been very stable for a while now.
webkike 4y ago
I haven't had trouble with drivers using Fedora in years. RPM fusion handles Nvidia drivers just fine. It's a far cleaner and "noob friendly" distro in my opinion, so long as you're able to google "how to install nvidia drivers fedora"
- GlumWoodpecker 4y ago
  This is mostly just a Debian problem, due to their "no non-free software" philosophy, which extends to device drivers. I have never in my days booted a Debian install that worked with wifi out of the box, and I suspect I never will, due to that philosophy.. For that reason, I've stopped trying and I default to Ubuntu (-based) distros instead. All it takes to get rid of snaps forever is `sudo apt purge snapd`.
  - kej 4y ago
    In the past you could use the images from here [0] to get installs with wifi firmware, but future versions will have it included in the official images. They've worked out of the box on almost all recent (last 5-10 years) systems I've tried it with. [0] https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/ https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images...
  - addingnumbers 4y ago
    > All it takes to get rid of snaps forever is `sudo apt purge snapd`. That's not enough. Some package could eventually drag it back in. $ apt show firefox Package: firefox ... Pre-Depends: debconf, snapd If you really want to keep it off your system for good, you need something like this: $ cat /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-snapd Package: snapd Pin: release a=* Pin-Priority: -1 $
    - WirelessGigabit 4y ago
      When I try to remove snapd it says it'll also remove ubutu-server-minimal. And that scares me.
      - the_third_wave 4y ago
        Use the moment to replace ubuntu-server with Debian and you'll be glad you did when Canonical decides on its next move to ensnare users. Even when I used Ubuntu - back in the early brown-desktop days when they sent out free CD-ROMs to anyone who wanted one - I never felt tempted to use it on a server since it was never clear to me what it offered that Debian could not deliver while it was clear that keeping Debian up to date was (and is) far easier than doing the same with Ubuntu. Ubuntu had its place in popularising Linux but they jumped the shark a long time ago, now they are just another player jostling for their own niche.
        WirelessGigabit 4y ago
        Thanks for the recommendation. Before I do that I'd have to check which binary drivers I have so I don't end up with a server that has no internet. And by server I mean that dusty NUC...
- skrtskrt 4y ago
  Yeah I use both Fedora and OpenSuse (Tumbleweed) and it's a really stupid easy no-config setup on both distros. Ubuntu is just maddening. Pop OS is nice out of the box too, but I just don't want to use Ubuntu derivatives at this point even if they've removed snaps
conor- 4y ago
I feel like hunting down drivers hasn't been an issue on Linux for any relatively modern machine I've run in over 10 years. If it really is something that you have had problems with, maybe try PopOS instead of Debian. The restricting non-free repos by default out of principle with Debian can sometimes get annoying when you need to install certain non-free drivers (looking at you Nvidia), but PopOS is a really well-polished ootb experience that is trivial to install. Second to PopOS for a set it and forget it experience, OpenSUSE is a rock-solid distro that does not seem to get much praise.
- tcmart14 4y ago
  Or another recommendation. If you want all the drivers and you want to run Debian, use the non-free image which I believe they just decided to make it easier to find?
  - eYrKEC2 4y ago
    Didn't know that was an option! Thank you! If I only had a time machine to 3 weeks ago. Oh well. Thanks anyways. I'll try that again in a couple of years.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      In all fairness to Debian, they do cover this in their installation instructions.
  - IYasha 4y ago
    I've tried non-free KDebian last month. It still booted without wi-fi. But what's most frustrating - it didn't detect any partitions on my drive. The KDE installer I mean. lsblk showed everything just fine. Same with Neon live. And guess what? It works in KUbuntu. But ubuntu is just SO slow now. ( And I couldn't install it of my current dual-boot anyway because it does NOT have option to NOT TO install new bootloader. :-/ I love Linux (lie).
- hnzix 4y ago
  >I feel like hunting down drivers hasn't been an issue on Linux for any relatively modern machine I've run in over 10 years. Try installing any Debian flavor on an Intel Mac. Keyboard, mouse, bluetooth, wifi drivers all incredibly hard to get working. Need to perform some voodoo extracting the drivers from a MacOS image then making them available during boot.
marcosdumay 4y ago
You know what distro I had the most experience of hunting down drivers? Ubuntu. I've given-up on Debian-like systems on a laptop, because the drivers were never good, just decide one last try with bare Debian, and have everything work out of the box. In my experience, Ubuntu never works, and when you suddenly get most things to work, they break down again in a week or two. No other distro ever gave me that experience.
panick21_ 4y ago
Use PopOs. Better hardware and is mostly Ubuntu with lots of the dumb Snap stuff removed. Plus some other cool features.
raffraffraff 4y ago
Give OpenSUSE Tumbleweed a shot. Better than Ubuntu (in my experience) when it comes to drivers. They have the MacBook Pro 2015 facetimehd webcam (which Ubuntu doesn't have) and my brand new Asus Zenbook S13 OLED was perfect right out of the box. It's a rolling release so you get extremely recent packages. And its KDE is amazing (I switched from XFCE, it was so good). I love it.
mb7733 4y ago
You want Linux Mint.
reportgunner 4y ago
What machine are you using ?
entropicgravity 4y ago
You could also try Linux Mint. I moved to that two years ago when Ubuntu started to go sideways and I've been very happy so far.

entropicdrifter 4y ago

I run Mint on my primary desktop and it's fantastic. What Ubuntu LTS would've become if it had continued to focus on a good desktop experience and pushed Flatpak instead of Snap

at-fates-hands 4y ago
I came here to say this too. Ironically I was about to set up a new Linux Dev machine with Ubuntu and now I'm more inclined to go back to Mint since I never had a bad experience with it. I was fortunate to skip the Gnome 3 days and the Cinnamon and Xfce implementations have been very stable for a while now.

webkike 4y ago

I haven't had trouble with drivers using Fedora in years. RPM fusion handles Nvidia drivers just fine. It's a far cleaner and "noob friendly" distro in my opinion, so long as you're able to google "how to install nvidia drivers fedora"

GlumWoodpecker 4y ago
This is mostly just a Debian problem, due to their "no non-free software" philosophy, which extends to device drivers. I have never in my days booted a Debian install that worked with wifi out of the box, and I suspect I never will, due to that philosophy.. For that reason, I've stopped trying and I default to Ubuntu (-based) distros instead. All it takes to get rid of snaps forever is `sudo apt purge snapd`.
- kej 4y ago
  In the past you could use the images from here [0] to get installs with wifi firmware, but future versions will have it included in the official images. They've worked out of the box on almost all recent (last 5-10 years) systems I've tried it with. [0] https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-including-firmware/ https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images...
- addingnumbers 4y ago
  > All it takes to get rid of snaps forever is `sudo apt purge snapd`. That's not enough. Some package could eventually drag it back in. $ apt show firefox Package: firefox ... Pre-Depends: debconf, snapd If you really want to keep it off your system for good, you need something like this: $ cat /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-snapd Package: snapd Pin: release a=* Pin-Priority: -1 $
  - WirelessGigabit 4y ago
    When I try to remove snapd it says it'll also remove ubutu-server-minimal. And that scares me.
    - the_third_wave 4y ago
      Use the moment to replace ubuntu-server with Debian and you'll be glad you did when Canonical decides on its next move to ensnare users. Even when I used Ubuntu - back in the early brown-desktop days when they sent out free CD-ROMs to anyone who wanted one - I never felt tempted to use it on a server since it was never clear to me what it offered that Debian could not deliver while it was clear that keeping Debian up to date was (and is) far easier than doing the same with Ubuntu. Ubuntu had its place in popularising Linux but they jumped the shark a long time ago, now they are just another player jostling for their own niche.
      - WirelessGigabit 4y ago
        Thanks for the recommendation. Before I do that I'd have to check which binary drivers I have so I don't end up with a server that has no internet. And by server I mean that dusty NUC...
skrtskrt 4y ago
Yeah I use both Fedora and OpenSuse (Tumbleweed) and it's a really stupid easy no-config setup on both distros. Ubuntu is just maddening. Pop OS is nice out of the box too, but I just don't want to use Ubuntu derivatives at this point even if they've removed snaps

conor- 4y ago

I feel like hunting down drivers hasn't been an issue on Linux for any relatively modern machine I've run in over 10 years. If it really is something that you have had problems with, maybe try PopOS instead of Debian. The restricting non-free repos by default out of principle with Debian can sometimes get annoying when you need to install certain non-free drivers (looking at you Nvidia), but PopOS is a really well-polished ootb experience that is trivial to install. Second to PopOS for a set it and forget it experience, OpenSUSE is a rock-solid distro that does not seem to get much praise.

tcmart14 4y ago
Or another recommendation. If you want all the drivers and you want to run Debian, use the non-free image which I believe they just decided to make it easier to find?
- eYrKEC2 4y ago
  Didn't know that was an option! Thank you! If I only had a time machine to 3 weeks ago. Oh well. Thanks anyways. I'll try that again in a couple of years.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    In all fairness to Debian, they do cover this in their installation instructions.
- IYasha 4y ago
  I've tried non-free KDebian last month. It still booted without wi-fi. But what's most frustrating - it didn't detect any partitions on my drive. The KDE installer I mean. lsblk showed everything just fine. Same with Neon live. And guess what? It works in KUbuntu. But ubuntu is just SO slow now. ( And I couldn't install it of my current dual-boot anyway because it does NOT have option to NOT TO install new bootloader. :-/ I love Linux (lie).
hnzix 4y ago
>I feel like hunting down drivers hasn't been an issue on Linux for any relatively modern machine I've run in over 10 years. Try installing any Debian flavor on an Intel Mac. Keyboard, mouse, bluetooth, wifi drivers all incredibly hard to get working. Need to perform some voodoo extracting the drivers from a MacOS image then making them available during boot.

marcosdumay 4y ago

You know what distro I had the most experience of hunting down drivers? Ubuntu. I've given-up on Debian-like systems on a laptop, because the drivers were never good, just decide one last try with bare Debian, and have everything work out of the box. In my experience, Ubuntu never works, and when you suddenly get most things to work, they break down again in a week or two. No other distro ever gave me that experience.

panick21_ 4y ago

Use PopOs. Better hardware and is mostly Ubuntu with lots of the dumb Snap stuff removed. Plus some other cool features.

raffraffraff 4y ago

Give OpenSUSE Tumbleweed a shot. Better than Ubuntu (in my experience) when it comes to drivers. They have the MacBook Pro 2015 facetimehd webcam (which Ubuntu doesn't have) and my brand new Asus Zenbook S13 OLED was perfect right out of the box. It's a rolling release so you get extremely recent packages. And its KDE is amazing (I switched from XFCE, it was so good). I love it.

mb7733 4y ago

You want Linux Mint.

reportgunner 4y ago

What machine are you using ?

entropicgravity 4y ago

You could also try Linux Mint. I moved to that two years ago when Ubuntu started to go sideways and I've been very happy so far.