7 ms·

Vanilla OS 2.0 Orchid base is changing from Ubuntu to Debian

122 points by teleforce 3y ago

DiabloD3 3y ago
As a long time Debian user, I agree with their choice. Their thought process is logical and sound. Not sure I agree with their continued use of GNOME, though; seems the land of the Linux desktop has abandoned GNOME's years of user-hostile actions and moved to either KDE or to increasingly more obscure build-a-desktop stuff (ie, sway + waybar, or river, or bspwm, or w/e). Some major distros already do KDE by default, and basically phone in their GNOME support by virtue of "GNOME claims it 'just works', so let it 'just work' and hang themselves on that claim". But yeah, having a Debian-based atomic image distro seems to be very interesting. Would be more useful in enterprise than in the user desktop, but I guess they can do that in the future.
- unmole 3y ago
  > seems the land of the Linux desktop has abandoned GNOME's years of user-hostile actions and moved to either KDE or to increasingly more obscure build-a-desktop stuff (ie, sway + waybar, or river, or bspwm, or w/e). This is a bizzare take. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RedHat and its spinoffs all default to GNOME.
  - easrng 3y ago
    Last time I installed Debian it gave me a list of DEs and I could pick as many as I wanted to, no default. Did something change?
    - johnny22 3y ago
      which one would be selected if you didn't make a choice. I don't use debian, but I thought the answer was GNOME.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        IIRC, if you don't choose one, no DE is installed at all.
    - 6581 3y ago
      If you don't choose a specific DE (which is the default setting), it installs GNOME.
      - George83728 3y ago
        I'm quite sure the last time I installed Debian, a year or two ago, I didn't choose a DE so it installed no DE at all. Are you people talking about installing from a GNOME-based live image or something? I think most people use the netinstall image, which uses no DE and, I'm about 90% sure, has no graphical environment selected by default.
        reportgunner 3y ago
        Perhaps you used the minimal image, I remember both having a DE when installing debian and not having a DE when I installed it again later.
        goosedragons 3y ago
        If you choose the desktop environment task then by default it gives you GNOME.
        DiabloD3 3y ago
        This is correct, but lacking context: If you don't select the desktop task, no desktop is installed; if you select the desktop task, but no specific version of it, it installs GNOME. There are also KDE, XFCE, LXDE, and maybe others, to also install; but the user has to select those instead of the default desktop task.
    - stonogo 3y ago
      Check again. That list of DEs comes with GNOME checked by default.
  - pojntfx 3y ago
    Yeah. If anything, the exact opposite has happened, and KDE and GNOME work together on almost all new developments through FreeDesktop/XDG and they even have a shared conference now (LAS)
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Only base Ubuntu uses GNOME.
  - huggingmouth 3y ago
    Aren't those just the older distributions who are already saddled with their defaults? What are the more recent distributions doing (steamos,popos,..etc)? Dismissing things as "bizzar takes" is a good way to miss very clear signs.
    - packetlost 3y ago
      ...????? what? Distros are not saddled with any obligation towards defaults (for DEs at least). Were you not around for the whole Ubuntu + Unity debacle?
      - huggingmouth 3y ago
        Doesn't the unity debacle show how hard it is to switch out the desktop default. Anyway, I think looking at the de defaults of newer distributions, especially those established after the gnome 3 disaster might give a more accurate picture about the popularity of the de.
        taskforcegemini 3y ago
        maybe the issue wasn't switching it, but how canonical implemented it, like many other things they start. and they had even aquihired the compiz creator, if I remember correctly. and compiz was a huge thing, probably the best thing ever to happen to linux desktop
        DiabloD3 3y ago
        90% of Ubuntu's mistakes are "a little of column A, a little of column B". As in, they sometimes have good ideas, and then just entirely butcher the implementation: either they do it directly (Unity and Mir's in-house development), or they adopt an external source of bad implementations (Redhat's pulseaudio and systemd initiatives; both good ideas on paper, but then just become a thorn in everyone's side for a decade until better alternatives appear ).
        3y ago
- accelbred 3y ago
  You should give modern Gnome a good honest try. I felt like you before, but ended up using it at work since it was what IT supported. After using it for a month, I switched all my personal machines over. For me, modern Gnome is the most usable, consistent, and smooth desktop experience I've used. And this is from someone who has used KDE, Windows, MacOS, and custom desktop environments with i3 and bspwm.
  - Nursie 3y ago
    Can I rearrange visual elements so my desktop is similar to how it has been in gnome 2, mate and xfce for the last 20 years? Can non-blessed apps get into the systray/notification-area/whatever? Genuine questions, I've not tried Gnome since the early days of gnome 3 when they broke everything and more or less made out you were a luddite and unwanted loser if you weren't up for a massive change in workflow.
    - pmontra 3y ago
      There are enough extensions to do whatever you want. My Gnome desktop has no top bar. Activities are totally hidden: I don't have any mouse or keyboard event that shows them. I use 5 virtual desktops and switch between them with hotkeys. I have a bottom bar with status icons, task bar, application menu, a menu of bookmarked directories, a menu of the last notifications, a menu of recent files. Notifications popup from the bottom. I alt tab between windows on the current desktop. Possibly other stuff but that's the most I can remember. If I remember well I stayed with Gnome Fallback until there were enough of those extensions to rebuild my desktop with Gnome shell. That was about at the time of Ubuntu 20.04.
      - grunfelder 3y ago
        In my experience, with every update, half the extensions stop working. And then it's unclear if they will ever come back, how supported they actually are, and now and then the whole thing crashes and I don't know if it's because of a rogue extension or something else..
- Double_a_92 3y ago
  What's the issue with gnome? If you can live with the "desktops" workflow, it seems to me like the most polished DE there is...
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I have two main issues with Gnome. The first is that I find it unintuitive and difficult to use. The second is that it's really hard, sometimes impossible, to configure it to remove some of the pain points and add missing functionality.
- teekert 3y ago
  FWIW, I really like Gnome, on my Laptop, on my desktop I currently use Plasma, because it has an ultra-wide monitor so the build-in tiling is really great (turn on wobbly windows and watch that jelly window snap into its grid position, it's glorious).
  - petre 3y ago
    I currently use Gnome 3.22 and really like it, especially the one in Ubuntu. I also have a Debian 11 with Gnome at home on my laptop. Used to be all against it. But then I used MacOS X for a few years and then switched to another box with Linux and Gnome. Such a breath of fresh air compared to the Mac. Now I can switch virtual desktops with simple keybindings, without using the mouse. Most actions are a no brainer. I guess Gnome 4 is even better. Vanilla's decision to base their distro on Debian is a good one. I am going to install Debian as well when this Ubuntu 18 LTS version reaches EOL.
    - johnny22 3y ago
      gnome 4 didn't happen. they abandoned their previous numbering of even/odd for the minor version being release or devel (like 3.22, 3.23) in favor of whole new numbers and patch. The current release is 44.1
      - teekert 3y ago
        Maybe she/he refers to v40, which had some changes in the way multiple dekstops are presented (now more Mac like where it was vertical).
- spookie 3y ago
  GNOME is alright, I really like what they've done with it recently and for me it's almost perfect for daily use. I just wish it had a better file manager. If I were to pick a DE I would use KDE/XFCE or Cinnamon though. Seriously, they managed to make a good user interaction flow, one that dismisses a lot of Windows idiosyncrasies. If they manage to port everything to GTK4, it will work out great. The biggest issue lies in going against the norm, and most software is built against that norm. There are plenty of extensions to fix that however. But I do agree that they go overboard sometimes, like the inability to select the terminal that appears on nautilus' right click menu. That's were a lot of it breaks down for me, I should be able to select the tools I want, and not go through hacks to do something that's so simple to implement.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I tried it again recently, and I still find Gnome to be pretty horrible. It's very hard for me to use out of the box, and it very strongly resists being configured. I get that some people love it -- and more power to them -- but I really don't understand why. I suspect that there's something fundamental about Gnome philosophy that I just don't understand.
- jakkos 3y ago
  > seems the land of the Linux desktop has abandoned GNOME My perception has been the opposite. The distros that I see people using are Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch. I use NixOS and Gnome is the recommended DE. Gnome has sane defaults and in my experience does actually "just work" on a surprisingly wide variety of modern hardware.
- strzibny 3y ago
  Not true. GNOME is well used and liked. Personally I think it's the best thing that happened to Linux.
- interlinked 3y ago
  Does kde still have that bug in its bug reporting tool that makes it unusable
- skerit 3y ago
  I actually always kind of liked the Gnome look & feel, but I agree they dumb things down way too much. Even to the detriment of the user experience, where you have to go dive into dconf to work around the bugs they introduced. And anyway, that was only until the new libadwaita crap, with yet another "flat look" they would look to force upon us. I'm just looking forward to Cosmic DE.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  XFCE is also quite good, if you like classical UNIX desktops. It integrates with D-BUS, uses Gtk+, has several extension points, nice set of apps, plugins,
- rbut 3y ago
  > seems the land of the Linux desktop has abandoned GNOME's years of user-hostile actions and moved to either KDE Moved from mac to Ubuntu and feel right at home in Gnome. Not sure what you're talking about here, but it seems quite opinionated.
- tortoise_in 3y ago
  Kde is so choppy! Kde doesn't work properly even with 16gb Ram and useless options. GNOME is far better in smoothness and switching apps even.
  - DiabloD3 3y ago
    This is false. Sounds like you've accidentally compared Wayland to X11 (which has nothing to do with your choice of DE; GNOME and KDE continue to support both for now, and both are looking to remove X11 support over the next two-three years (=major version cycle)); Wayland may be failing to accelerate compositing on your system due to missing driver stack features. If you're on an Nvidia GPU and are trying Wayland, either use an up to date distro and stop using the Nvidia binary driver, or stop buying from Linux-hostile companies like Nvidia. If we could force Nvidia to pull it's collective head of it's ass, we would; the entire Linux community has been trying for ~15 years, and it hasn't budged an inch.
jraph 3y ago
I didn't know about Vanilla OS. So it's a distro that wants to provide a stable and coherent set of packages, with as few modifications as possible from upstream? And they opted for deb for the compatibility? I see the appeal of being Ubuntu-based. They do the bulk of the work of releasing stabilized snapshots of Debian Sid. But indeed you need to revert a lot of stuff if you do this, and increasingly so. > Ubuntu provides a modified version of the GNOME desktop, which does not match how GNOME envisions its desktop As a KDE user on openSUSE that spend a lot of time on Ubuntu (before Gnome 3), I think this is the one thing that seems nice about Ubuntu customizations. This Unity-like version of Gnome seems appealing. Basing on Debian seems like a good idea. Debian is great. Releasing stable snapshots of Debian Sid while handling security seems painful. Good luck to them, I hope it works out well for them!
pjmlp 3y ago
I didn't even knew they existed, so whatever makes them happy.
neilv 3y ago
Kudos on moving to Debian. And it'll be interesting to see what they settle on for vetting package updates to Debian Sid (Debian's constantly-updated track). A long time ago, I ran Sid at home, but it was eating up time and presenting risk (e.g., at least once, it made a workstation unbootable). So I moved home and then startups to Debian Stable, which has much fewer surprises, mostly only security updates. Debian Backports (a supplementary package repo that provides newer versions of some packages) sometimes makes Debian Stable easier, in the rare care you really need a new version of a package (and not something you'd normally get from PyPI, NPM, Cargo, etc. or mirror&vet in your code repo).
- 9dev 3y ago
  I’m not sure if the classical distro model still has merit. There is just too much software now to package it all, properly, in time, by a handful of unpaid contributors, with badly documented ways. That just doesn’t scale, at all. I’d wish we could finally settle on some kind of universal packaging mechanism, be it containers or flatpak or snaps, and get it over with. Too much time has been sunk in reinventing this wheel over and over again.
  - johnny22 3y ago
    that's the way the distro that you're commenting on works mostly! Although their documentation says they plan on supporting snap alongside flatpak.
- troad 3y ago
  I like the balance this strikes. I think the future is moving towards some combination of super stable distro + containerised bleeding edge packages, where required (and isolated, where possible). I'm still on a *buntu variant for now, but I would like to migrate to a set-up like this soon.
voytec 3y ago
> Ubuntu provides a modified version of the GNOME desktop, which does not match how GNOME envisions its desktop At one point I didn't understood what the deal is with default WM being Gnome. I was happily using compton+i3 on Ubuntu Server customized for lightweight workstation. That's until Fortinet VPN Client or similar crap didn't refused to work w/o some Gnome libs. Weirdly, installing Gnome from apt (or the snap garbage, don't remember) was not a clean solution and this software would not work on Ubuntu Server + Gnome while running with no issues on Ubuntu (Desktop) shipped with Gnome. I'm happily Ubuntu-free now (went with Debian) and impatiently waiting for increasingly commercial Ubuntu to lose its popularity as it clearly makes some developers lazy.
geokon 3y ago
There are distros like Linux Mint that are desnapped. Wouldn't it be more sensible to base off of something like that? I really like Debian. I love making minimal riced desktops with it. You can make a system that runs without Python :)) But Debian has two main issues: First is the reality that everyone targets Ubuntu first and all online instructions are Ubuntu first. If you build off Ubuntu then you can be relatively sure the instructions work for you as well. The latest Ubuntu LTS package/library version set is one most projects will support Second is that Debian doesn't have PPAs, nor really any equivalent mechanism. You end up having to resort to Appimages for end-user executables and who-knows-what for everything else. Prompt updates are then sorta out and it turns into a manual pain in the butt
- MindSpunk 3y ago
  Relying on AppImages/flatpack/etc for apps is a feature of immutable distros like VanillaOS, not a bug. The point is you never mess with the base system image. The goal is to leave the root as untouched as possible, with a transactional modification system when you absolutely must poke at the base system image, and install everything using your app packing format of choice. Fedora Silverblue is another distro following the same 'immutable' principle based on OSTree. Silverblue wants the base system to be immutable, bundling in toolbox (similar to distrobox) to create a container with a regular mutable sysroot that can use the regular package managers. If you break the container you can tear it down and build a fresh one without nuking your host OS. The goal is a reliable base system image that you can't break. It's something I've had happen many times with standard distros. Updating when too far behind is fairly likely to break something. 'Compatibility with Ubuntu' doesn't really matter as the system is already different enough even when based of Ubuntu for just googling 'issue Ubuntu' isn't going to be applicable. Do that stuff in a distrobox container.
  - geokon 3y ago
    Okay after reading more about VanillaOS I can see my concerns aren't relevant. Thanks for pointing it out... Wish I could delete the comment now
0x69420 3y ago
can i just point out the sublime, crystalline irony of something called “vanilla os” using one of the most spuriously patch-happy distros in existence as a base?
- jacooper 3y ago
  Its mainly meant Vanilla as in the UI.
Sujeto 3y ago
>Is there any telemetry "No, we don't care about your data. Ours is better." Ha ha
- gooseyman 3y ago
  I love this too. https://vanillaos.org/faq https://vanillaos.org/faq
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  Wow, almost makes me want to give them my data to prove them wrong. :')
mmsnberbar66 3y ago
Is it possible to have an i3-like experience on a modern GNOME desktop? I just really like the keyboard-based and predictable navigation between windows (no alt-tab hell). What can I do here? I am pretty used to Debian+i3 minimal installs (arandr, pavucontrol, etc) but some things will always be a pain in the ass
- satysin 3y ago
  Something like Regolith perhaps? https://regolith-linux.org/ https://regolith-linux.org/ Or did you mean just GNOME but with more keyboard driven window management? If so there is tiling assistant extension for GNOME that isn’t bad from what I’ve heard.
- blameitonme 3y ago
  check this gnome plugin https://github.com/material-shell/material-shell https://github.com/material-shell/material-shell
- rollcat 3y ago
  > Is it possible to have an i3-like experience on a modern GNOME desktop? Unfortunately GNOME doesn't care about customisability or power user needs. They meticulously remove features they deem unnecessary, while actual people who rely on those features kick and scream "no". In the old days, you used to be able to use a different window manager with your desktop environment, which meant you could just substitute Metacity for the actual i3. I think it's (maybe) still possible with X11/Mutter, but most likely no chance under Wayland, as the compositor combines several other roles in the stack, and the resulting desktop is much less modular. If you're used to i3, stick to i3 (or Sway). If you need bits and pieces of another desktop environment, you can probably run GNOME or KDE apps just fine; or maybe you can try running the XFCE panel or similar. Also have a look at XFCE, LXQt or Lumina. They all start off with an integrated UX, but should be easier to replace whichever bits you don't like.
- AndroidKitKat 3y ago
  One of my best friends uses the Pop Shell [1] GNOME extension to bring in an i3-like experience. It seems to lag behind a few GNOME versions, but system76 has instructions on how to use it on other distributions if you don't want to use Pop!_OS [2] [1] - https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell [2] - https://support.system76.com/articles/pop-shell/ https://support.system76.com/articles/pop-shell/
fbnlsr 3y ago
As a long time user of PopOS it looks really cool!
phneutral26 3y ago
This is great news! I just yesterday installed VanillaOS, and I did kinda miss the "Vanilla" aspect. I have that when I install Gnome on Arch. But you can really feel the Ubuntu under the hood.
rubicks 3y ago
Good. I have too many scars from upstart and snapd to remain on Ubuntu. I'm glad to see others making similar decisions for other reasons.
WhyNotHugo 3y ago
Their reasoning is pretty solid. Ubuntu is a terrible upstream for a distribution; it relies on Snap, which is [partially] proprietary. So if a distro is a derivate of Ubuntu, it can't have its own Snap repository, so it either uses the upstream repositories with no changes, or has to de-snap. If they're going to de-snap Ubuntu, you might just use Debian as a base. I wonder if these guys are considering joining forces with the Mint guys, since many of their efforts seem to be in the same direction. I definitely hope this brings some extra hands into Debian, which seems to be much in need of it these recent times.
johnchristopher 3y ago
Is it ready for day to day usage ? The atomicity thingie looks really cool if it means I can easily move my installation+home from a machine to another machine and have the exact same apps running with the same settings.

122 points by teleforce 3y ago

As a long time Debian user, I agree with their choice. Their thought process is logical and sound. Not sure I agree with their continued use of GNOME, though; seems the land of the Linux desktop has abandoned GNOME's years of user-hostile actions and moved to either KDE or to increasingly more obscure build-a-desktop stuff (ie, sway + waybar, or river, or bspwm, or w/e). Some major distros already do KDE by default, and basically phone in their GNOME support by virtue of "GNOME claims it 'just works', so let it 'just work' and hang themselves on that claim". But yeah, having a Debian-based atomic image distro seems to be very interesting. Would be more useful in enterprise than in the user desktop, but I guess they can do that in the future.

unmole 3y ago
> seems the land of the Linux desktop has abandoned GNOME's years of user-hostile actions and moved to either KDE or to increasingly more obscure build-a-desktop stuff (ie, sway + waybar, or river, or bspwm, or w/e). This is a bizzare take. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RedHat and its spinoffs all default to GNOME.
- easrng 3y ago
  Last time I installed Debian it gave me a list of DEs and I could pick as many as I wanted to, no default. Did something change?
  - johnny22 3y ago
    which one would be selected if you didn't make a choice. I don't use debian, but I thought the answer was GNOME.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      IIRC, if you don't choose one, no DE is installed at all.
  - 6581 3y ago
    If you don't choose a specific DE (which is the default setting), it installs GNOME.
    - George83728 3y ago
      I'm quite sure the last time I installed Debian, a year or two ago, I didn't choose a DE so it installed no DE at all. Are you people talking about installing from a GNOME-based live image or something? I think most people use the netinstall image, which uses no DE and, I'm about 90% sure, has no graphical environment selected by default.
      - reportgunner 3y ago
        Perhaps you used the minimal image, I remember both having a DE when installing debian and not having a DE when I installed it again later.
      - goosedragons 3y ago
        If you choose the desktop environment task then by default it gives you GNOME.
      - DiabloD3 3y ago
        This is correct, but lacking context: If you don't select the desktop task, no desktop is installed; if you select the desktop task, but no specific version of it, it installs GNOME. There are also KDE, XFCE, LXDE, and maybe others, to also install; but the user has to select those instead of the default desktop task.
  - stonogo 3y ago
    Check again. That list of DEs comes with GNOME checked by default.
- pojntfx 3y ago
  Yeah. If anything, the exact opposite has happened, and KDE and GNOME work together on almost all new developments through FreeDesktop/XDG and they even have a shared conference now (LAS)
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Only base Ubuntu uses GNOME.
- huggingmouth 3y ago
  Aren't those just the older distributions who are already saddled with their defaults? What are the more recent distributions doing (steamos,popos,..etc)? Dismissing things as "bizzar takes" is a good way to miss very clear signs.
  - packetlost 3y ago
    ...????? what? Distros are not saddled with any obligation towards defaults (for DEs at least). Were you not around for the whole Ubuntu + Unity debacle?
    - huggingmouth 3y ago
      Doesn't the unity debacle show how hard it is to switch out the desktop default. Anyway, I think looking at the de defaults of newer distributions, especially those established after the gnome 3 disaster might give a more accurate picture about the popularity of the de.
      - taskforcegemini 3y ago
        maybe the issue wasn't switching it, but how canonical implemented it, like many other things they start. and they had even aquihired the compiz creator, if I remember correctly. and compiz was a huge thing, probably the best thing ever to happen to linux desktop
        DiabloD3 3y ago
        90% of Ubuntu's mistakes are "a little of column A, a little of column B". As in, they sometimes have good ideas, and then just entirely butcher the implementation: either they do it directly (Unity and Mir's in-house development), or they adopt an external source of bad implementations (Redhat's pulseaudio and systemd initiatives; both good ideas on paper, but then just become a thorn in everyone's side for a decade until better alternatives appear ).
        3y ago
accelbred 3y ago
You should give modern Gnome a good honest try. I felt like you before, but ended up using it at work since it was what IT supported. After using it for a month, I switched all my personal machines over. For me, modern Gnome is the most usable, consistent, and smooth desktop experience I've used. And this is from someone who has used KDE, Windows, MacOS, and custom desktop environments with i3 and bspwm.
- Nursie 3y ago
  Can I rearrange visual elements so my desktop is similar to how it has been in gnome 2, mate and xfce for the last 20 years? Can non-blessed apps get into the systray/notification-area/whatever? Genuine questions, I've not tried Gnome since the early days of gnome 3 when they broke everything and more or less made out you were a luddite and unwanted loser if you weren't up for a massive change in workflow.
  - pmontra 3y ago
    There are enough extensions to do whatever you want. My Gnome desktop has no top bar. Activities are totally hidden: I don't have any mouse or keyboard event that shows them. I use 5 virtual desktops and switch between them with hotkeys. I have a bottom bar with status icons, task bar, application menu, a menu of bookmarked directories, a menu of the last notifications, a menu of recent files. Notifications popup from the bottom. I alt tab between windows on the current desktop. Possibly other stuff but that's the most I can remember. If I remember well I stayed with Gnome Fallback until there were enough of those extensions to rebuild my desktop with Gnome shell. That was about at the time of Ubuntu 20.04.
    - grunfelder 3y ago
      In my experience, with every update, half the extensions stop working. And then it's unclear if they will ever come back, how supported they actually are, and now and then the whole thing crashes and I don't know if it's because of a rogue extension or something else..
Double_a_92 3y ago
What's the issue with gnome? If you can live with the "desktops" workflow, it seems to me like the most polished DE there is...
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I have two main issues with Gnome. The first is that I find it unintuitive and difficult to use. The second is that it's really hard, sometimes impossible, to configure it to remove some of the pain points and add missing functionality.
teekert 3y ago
FWIW, I really like Gnome, on my Laptop, on my desktop I currently use Plasma, because it has an ultra-wide monitor so the build-in tiling is really great (turn on wobbly windows and watch that jelly window snap into its grid position, it's glorious).
- petre 3y ago
  I currently use Gnome 3.22 and really like it, especially the one in Ubuntu. I also have a Debian 11 with Gnome at home on my laptop. Used to be all against it. But then I used MacOS X for a few years and then switched to another box with Linux and Gnome. Such a breath of fresh air compared to the Mac. Now I can switch virtual desktops with simple keybindings, without using the mouse. Most actions are a no brainer. I guess Gnome 4 is even better. Vanilla's decision to base their distro on Debian is a good one. I am going to install Debian as well when this Ubuntu 18 LTS version reaches EOL.
  - johnny22 3y ago
    gnome 4 didn't happen. they abandoned their previous numbering of even/odd for the minor version being release or devel (like 3.22, 3.23) in favor of whole new numbers and patch. The current release is 44.1
    - teekert 3y ago
      Maybe she/he refers to v40, which had some changes in the way multiple dekstops are presented (now more Mac like where it was vertical).
spookie 3y ago
GNOME is alright, I really like what they've done with it recently and for me it's almost perfect for daily use. I just wish it had a better file manager. If I were to pick a DE I would use KDE/XFCE or Cinnamon though. Seriously, they managed to make a good user interaction flow, one that dismisses a lot of Windows idiosyncrasies. If they manage to port everything to GTK4, it will work out great. The biggest issue lies in going against the norm, and most software is built against that norm. There are plenty of extensions to fix that however. But I do agree that they go overboard sometimes, like the inability to select the terminal that appears on nautilus' right click menu. That's were a lot of it breaks down for me, I should be able to select the tools I want, and not go through hacks to do something that's so simple to implement.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I tried it again recently, and I still find Gnome to be pretty horrible. It's very hard for me to use out of the box, and it very strongly resists being configured. I get that some people love it -- and more power to them -- but I really don't understand why. I suspect that there's something fundamental about Gnome philosophy that I just don't understand.
jakkos 3y ago
> seems the land of the Linux desktop has abandoned GNOME My perception has been the opposite. The distros that I see people using are Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch. I use NixOS and Gnome is the recommended DE. Gnome has sane defaults and in my experience does actually "just work" on a surprisingly wide variety of modern hardware.
strzibny 3y ago
Not true. GNOME is well used and liked. Personally I think it's the best thing that happened to Linux.
interlinked 3y ago
Does kde still have that bug in its bug reporting tool that makes it unusable
skerit 3y ago
I actually always kind of liked the Gnome look & feel, but I agree they dumb things down way too much. Even to the detriment of the user experience, where you have to go dive into dconf to work around the bugs they introduced. And anyway, that was only until the new libadwaita crap, with yet another "flat look" they would look to force upon us. I'm just looking forward to Cosmic DE.
pjmlp 3y ago
XFCE is also quite good, if you like classical UNIX desktops. It integrates with D-BUS, uses Gtk+, has several extension points, nice set of apps, plugins,
rbut 3y ago
> seems the land of the Linux desktop has abandoned GNOME's years of user-hostile actions and moved to either KDE Moved from mac to Ubuntu and feel right at home in Gnome. Not sure what you're talking about here, but it seems quite opinionated.
tortoise_in 3y ago
Kde is so choppy! Kde doesn't work properly even with 16gb Ram and useless options. GNOME is far better in smoothness and switching apps even.
- DiabloD3 3y ago
  This is false. Sounds like you've accidentally compared Wayland to X11 (which has nothing to do with your choice of DE; GNOME and KDE continue to support both for now, and both are looking to remove X11 support over the next two-three years (=major version cycle)); Wayland may be failing to accelerate compositing on your system due to missing driver stack features. If you're on an Nvidia GPU and are trying Wayland, either use an up to date distro and stop using the Nvidia binary driver, or stop buying from Linux-hostile companies like Nvidia. If we could force Nvidia to pull it's collective head of it's ass, we would; the entire Linux community has been trying for ~15 years, and it hasn't budged an inch.

jraph 3y ago

I didn't know about Vanilla OS. So it's a distro that wants to provide a stable and coherent set of packages, with as few modifications as possible from upstream? And they opted for deb for the compatibility? I see the appeal of being Ubuntu-based. They do the bulk of the work of releasing stabilized snapshots of Debian Sid. But indeed you need to revert a lot of stuff if you do this, and increasingly so. > Ubuntu provides a modified version of the GNOME desktop, which does not match how GNOME envisions its desktop As a KDE user on openSUSE that spend a lot of time on Ubuntu (before Gnome 3), I think this is the one thing that seems nice about Ubuntu customizations. This Unity-like version of Gnome seems appealing. Basing on Debian seems like a good idea. Debian is great. Releasing stable snapshots of Debian Sid while handling security seems painful. Good luck to them, I hope it works out well for them!

pjmlp 3y ago

I didn't even knew they existed, so whatever makes them happy.

neilv 3y ago

Kudos on moving to Debian. And it'll be interesting to see what they settle on for vetting package updates to Debian Sid (Debian's constantly-updated track). A long time ago, I ran Sid at home, but it was eating up time and presenting risk (e.g., at least once, it made a workstation unbootable). So I moved home and then startups to Debian Stable, which has much fewer surprises, mostly only security updates. Debian Backports (a supplementary package repo that provides newer versions of some packages) sometimes makes Debian Stable easier, in the rare care you really need a new version of a package (and not something you'd normally get from PyPI, NPM, Cargo, etc. or mirror&vet in your code repo).

9dev 3y ago
I’m not sure if the classical distro model still has merit. There is just too much software now to package it all, properly, in time, by a handful of unpaid contributors, with badly documented ways. That just doesn’t scale, at all. I’d wish we could finally settle on some kind of universal packaging mechanism, be it containers or flatpak or snaps, and get it over with. Too much time has been sunk in reinventing this wheel over and over again.
- johnny22 3y ago
  that's the way the distro that you're commenting on works mostly! Although their documentation says they plan on supporting snap alongside flatpak.
troad 3y ago
I like the balance this strikes. I think the future is moving towards some combination of super stable distro + containerised bleeding edge packages, where required (and isolated, where possible). I'm still on a *buntu variant for now, but I would like to migrate to a set-up like this soon.

voytec 3y ago

> Ubuntu provides a modified version of the GNOME desktop, which does not match how GNOME envisions its desktop At one point I didn't understood what the deal is with default WM being Gnome. I was happily using compton+i3 on Ubuntu Server customized for lightweight workstation. That's until Fortinet VPN Client or similar crap didn't refused to work w/o some Gnome libs. Weirdly, installing Gnome from apt (or the snap garbage, don't remember) was not a clean solution and this software would not work on Ubuntu Server + Gnome while running with no issues on Ubuntu (Desktop) shipped with Gnome. I'm happily Ubuntu-free now (went with Debian) and impatiently waiting for increasingly commercial Ubuntu to lose its popularity as it clearly makes some developers lazy.

geokon 3y ago

There are distros like Linux Mint that are desnapped. Wouldn't it be more sensible to base off of something like that? I really like Debian. I love making minimal riced desktops with it. You can make a system that runs without Python :)) But Debian has two main issues: First is the reality that everyone targets Ubuntu first and all online instructions are Ubuntu first. If you build off Ubuntu then you can be relatively sure the instructions work for you as well. The latest Ubuntu LTS package/library version set is one most projects will support Second is that Debian doesn't have PPAs, nor really any equivalent mechanism. You end up having to resort to Appimages for end-user executables and who-knows-what for everything else. Prompt updates are then sorta out and it turns into a manual pain in the butt

MindSpunk 3y ago
Relying on AppImages/flatpack/etc for apps is a feature of immutable distros like VanillaOS, not a bug. The point is you never mess with the base system image. The goal is to leave the root as untouched as possible, with a transactional modification system when you absolutely must poke at the base system image, and install everything using your app packing format of choice. Fedora Silverblue is another distro following the same 'immutable' principle based on OSTree. Silverblue wants the base system to be immutable, bundling in toolbox (similar to distrobox) to create a container with a regular mutable sysroot that can use the regular package managers. If you break the container you can tear it down and build a fresh one without nuking your host OS. The goal is a reliable base system image that you can't break. It's something I've had happen many times with standard distros. Updating when too far behind is fairly likely to break something. 'Compatibility with Ubuntu' doesn't really matter as the system is already different enough even when based of Ubuntu for just googling 'issue Ubuntu' isn't going to be applicable. Do that stuff in a distrobox container.
- geokon 3y ago
  Okay after reading more about VanillaOS I can see my concerns aren't relevant. Thanks for pointing it out... Wish I could delete the comment now

0x69420 3y ago

can i just point out the sublime, crystalline irony of something called “vanilla os” using one of the most spuriously patch-happy distros in existence as a base?

jacooper 3y ago
Its mainly meant Vanilla as in the UI.

Sujeto 3y ago

>Is there any telemetry "No, we don't care about your data. Ours is better." Ha ha

gooseyman 3y ago
I love this too. https://vanillaos.org/faq https://vanillaos.org/faq
mardifoufs 3y ago
Wow, almost makes me want to give them my data to prove them wrong. :')

mmsnberbar66 3y ago

Is it possible to have an i3-like experience on a modern GNOME desktop? I just really like the keyboard-based and predictable navigation between windows (no alt-tab hell). What can I do here? I am pretty used to Debian+i3 minimal installs (arandr, pavucontrol, etc) but some things will always be a pain in the ass

satysin 3y ago
Something like Regolith perhaps? https://regolith-linux.org/ https://regolith-linux.org/ Or did you mean just GNOME but with more keyboard driven window management? If so there is tiling assistant extension for GNOME that isn’t bad from what I’ve heard.
blameitonme 3y ago
check this gnome plugin https://github.com/material-shell/material-shell https://github.com/material-shell/material-shell
rollcat 3y ago
> Is it possible to have an i3-like experience on a modern GNOME desktop? Unfortunately GNOME doesn't care about customisability or power user needs. They meticulously remove features they deem unnecessary, while actual people who rely on those features kick and scream "no". In the old days, you used to be able to use a different window manager with your desktop environment, which meant you could just substitute Metacity for the actual i3. I think it's (maybe) still possible with X11/Mutter, but most likely no chance under Wayland, as the compositor combines several other roles in the stack, and the resulting desktop is much less modular. If you're used to i3, stick to i3 (or Sway). If you need bits and pieces of another desktop environment, you can probably run GNOME or KDE apps just fine; or maybe you can try running the XFCE panel or similar. Also have a look at XFCE, LXQt or Lumina. They all start off with an integrated UX, but should be easier to replace whichever bits you don't like.
AndroidKitKat 3y ago
One of my best friends uses the Pop Shell [1] GNOME extension to bring in an i3-like experience. It seems to lag behind a few GNOME versions, but system76 has instructions on how to use it on other distributions if you don't want to use Pop!_OS [2] [1] - https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell [2] - https://support.system76.com/articles/pop-shell/ https://support.system76.com/articles/pop-shell/

fbnlsr 3y ago

As a long time user of PopOS it looks really cool!

phneutral26 3y ago

This is great news! I just yesterday installed VanillaOS, and I did kinda miss the "Vanilla" aspect. I have that when I install Gnome on Arch. But you can really feel the Ubuntu under the hood.

rubicks 3y ago

Good. I have too many scars from upstart and snapd to remain on Ubuntu. I'm glad to see others making similar decisions for other reasons.

WhyNotHugo 3y ago

Their reasoning is pretty solid. Ubuntu is a terrible upstream for a distribution; it relies on Snap, which is [partially] proprietary. So if a distro is a derivate of Ubuntu, it can't have its own Snap repository, so it either uses the upstream repositories with no changes, or has to de-snap. If they're going to de-snap Ubuntu, you might just use Debian as a base. I wonder if these guys are considering joining forces with the Mint guys, since many of their efforts seem to be in the same direction. I definitely hope this brings some extra hands into Debian, which seems to be much in need of it these recent times.

johnchristopher 3y ago

Is it ready for day to day usage ? The atomicity thingie looks really cool if it means I can easily move my installation+home from a machine to another machine and have the exact same apps running with the same settings.