6 ms·

Dear Ubuntu

67 points by Alupis 3y ago

quaintdev 3y ago
If you are new and reading this and are now confused what distro to choose. Go for Fedora. I chose it a while back and I'm not switching back.
- fensizor 3y ago
  Or Nobara Linux, which is a modified version of Fedora that strives to be more user-friendly.
  - themodelplumber 3y ago
    In which aspects is it more friendly? Are there distro-specific desktop user config tools a la Puppy? Or more on the admin / install side?
  - FullyFunctional 3y ago
    I appreciate the suggestion, but I tend to stay with my choices for decades, so I need something that has been around and will stay around. As best I can tell my options are (in random order): openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu. There are a few that are runners-up, like Arch and Pop_OS! (hate the name). Switching distribution is a lot of overhead (I have a too-large and quite diverse collection of iron, with x86 being minority).
    - neltnerb 3y ago
      Yeah, playing with novel distributions is a young person's game =) I'm glad someone is doing it, but I just want to not fight my computer to get tools I actually use to work. I've been using Ubuntu 20 years like this author. I tried Pop_OS for a few years out of curiosity, but it kept being buggy. The Debian LiveCD I tried next failed to let me setup the partitions properly to install, so back to Ubuntu I went again... I wish I had the energy to file a proper bug report, but what are the odds anyone would honestly benefit? It's almost always just a very niche me issue, so may as well not fight it.
  - rcarmo 3y ago
    Nobara adds a little veneer, but is not really a good choice unless you really like their opinionated package bundle.
- taskforcegemini 3y ago
  fedora is run by ibm though. wouldn't trust them after what happened to CentOS
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    This. It's like no matter what you have to fight the intentions of the maker to get what you want. On ubuntu you have to expunge snapd and now that ubuntu pro nagger, where in both cases they went out of their way to make these dofficult to remove by making half the os depend on them but only artificially through package manager declarations, nothing really depends on them. You can still get them out, but you're fighting the will of the supplier which did not go away. They or something else will always come back and need to be faught again. On redhat it's less about the architecture of the distro and more about the company since beingvsold to ibm. destroying centos shows that they really do not want a centos to exist. centos-alikes have sprung up to replace it, but ibm's wishes did not go away, and so as soon as they can figure out a way to, they will make a centos (alma, rocky) users life a pain again. I'm starting to think the answer to finding a distro that has no interest in controlling you and getting something out of you inwillingly is actually arch. Maybe nix but the indirection seems like the old programmer joke about the overengineered hello world. But they don't seem to be doing their annnoying weird thing to get anything out of you at least, more a genuine engineering experiment.
chaps 3y ago
Came to the same conclusion over the past year. If they got rid of snap, I'd stay. But god damn snap is such a poorly implemented nuisance. It feels barely out of alpha.
- rcarmo 3y ago
  I moved to Fedora. Haven’t looked back other than for servers (where snaps are less of an issue).
  - Alupis 3y ago
    If you're daily driving Fedora, wouldn't it be easier to use Rocky/Alma/CentOS for your servers?
    - rcarmo 3y ago
      Not really. I don't see the need to align both when I mostly run containers, Python or Go.
themodelplumber 3y ago
Snaps...again. Which snaps are loading that slow? Granted I'm using AppImage or binaries for so much stuff these days, from Firefox to Openshot to Crystal, but I'm really curious. One of my machines runs 22.04 and has tons of software installed via repos, so some huge chunk of that experience must be slow, or painful, I think I'm to believe? Yet I'm not noticing anything out of the ordinary compared to my other distros. What are you seeing? Specific examples?
- red_trumpet 3y ago
  I had big problems with Spotify.
- bandrami 3y ago
  All of them. Literally every single one. It's why the first thing I do when I am on an Ubuntu system is remove snapd.
  - throwaway2990 3y ago
    It’s too painful to remove snap now because the apt packages try to put it back. I’m on fedora now and love it.
    - bandrami 3y ago
      Yeah, the only form I actively take Ubuntu in anymore is Neon, 100% because of the lack of snaps.
  - Lorkki 3y ago
    Used to be that way for me too, but I believe with the latest LTS the slowdowns just went away. I'm using Firefox through the default Snap packaging every day, and it's just fine. This is also with the distro installed with all default choices. If memory serves me right, using btrfs for one can result in any number of weird performance issues.
    - 3y ago
ghshephard 3y ago
I empathize, but haven't given up the faith yet. With a little bit of effort, I'm able to strip out the pain an misery (and latency) that is snap from Ubuntu distributions that I use, but I do see a future in which the OS becomes crippled enough that I'll need to finally bite the bullet and join the arch crowd.
jnwatson 3y ago
I just don’t use snap. They don’t force you.
- qbasic_forever 3y ago
  They kinda do, like if you apt install Firefox it's actually setup to force install the snap version of Firefox (even though you used a apt CLI command). It's getting more and more aggressive about pushing snaps like this with each major Ubuntu release.
  - chaps 3y ago
    I followed some steps to prevent firefox from being installed through snap... it worked (after WAY too long troubleshooting).... and sometime between then and now it re-enabled itself and I'm back to square one. It's so maddening.
  - imp0cat 3y ago
    Uninstall Firefox snap to end the pain, then d/l Firefox from mozilla.org, unpack to your home directory and launch it from there. It will work just fine and even auto-update itself. You can use `alacarte` or manually create a .desktop file to add a menu item for your new Firefox instance if you need it.
    - hackmiester 3y ago
      I'm sorry but that is pretty awful. If I wanted to do all that, I'd run Windows.
      - imp0cat 3y ago
        Isn't it the other way around? In Windows you'd usually download an installer and run it to install software, whereas Linux would have you download, unzip/untar an archive and then just launch it directly.
        3y ago
kahnclusions 3y ago
Their hideously awful interview process leads me to believe there are deeply rooted problems in Ubuntu’s company culture and it’s not getting better anytime soon. They ask insightful questions like, “How did you do in your native language at high school?” or “How did you do in maths, physics or computer science at high school?”, followed by long written essays and “psychometric” personality testing. That’s a hard nope from me.
- sergiomattei 3y ago
  Sounds like standard behavioral questions to me.
  - bitwize 3y ago
    Remember to Strongly Agree with things your boss wants to hear and Strongly Disagree with anything that sounds like you might be a functional human being with aspirations outside of the job.
    - water-data-dude 3y ago
      You mean “create a business-sona and engage in some text/live-action roleplay”
- toadi 3y ago
  Lol yeah the insightful questions. I don't remember that much from high school anymore to make it relevant. Like I have been working for 25 years in IT maybe that is a bit more relevant? Another one was the GPA. First of all after a how many years in your career is that number still relevant? Also in my country there is no GPA. You pass your degree or you don't. You call it long written essays. I felt I needed to write the magnum opus about my life. It was a hard nope from me too. Must be hard to be a recruiter for them. Everyone dropping out of the funnel at step 1 :)
  - jvermillard 3y ago
    I did the full interview process (11?) it didn't worth the time spent
r-spaghetti 3y ago
Dear Jenny, although less common I suggest you start dating the father of Ubuntu; Debian. Kind regards, Roberto
- jojobas 3y ago
  Debian was Very Hard some 15 years ago while Ubuntu was rather easy. These days there's not much in the way of difference on that facet, or at least not enough to tolerate Snap/Wayland/whatever other madness.
  - red_trumpet 3y ago
    Apparently [1] Debian used Wayland as a default with Gnome since 2019? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol)
    - hackmiester 3y ago
      Sure. I got seamlessly migrated from X as well, when I upgraded my Debian major release. I am not "that kind of hacker" anymore (hence running GNOME), so I was OK with this. Didn't even notice the change for a while.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    Honestly there weren't that many difference. When first ubuntu was released, it just used the experimental debian installer that anyone could download and use from the Debian website. Besides, ubuntu never provided real tools to free users from command line configuration. Since the late 90's the main distros which provided real control panel for nearly everything were Suse/OpenSuse with Yast and Mandrake/Mandriva. Ubuntu has never been easier or more straightforward to use it, it was just a Debian with a default Gnome, some different colors. The only thing Ubuntu did differently at the time was having a very simple website with a single download button and sending free CDs for free to anyone asking for it which was a big deal when nobody had decent internet connection. Or you'd need to buy magazine offering installation CDs. But the thing is, every single family has an enthusiast cousin, uncle, who in the early 2000's ordereds tenths of CDs from ubuntu for free and gave them out to anyone pulling his hair out of because of an MS windows issue. All that made ubuntu a bit different from Debian like unity, upstart and now snap, only appeared years later after Ubuntu had that reputation of easy distro for beginner. And this is what really put ubuntu in the limelight and the default goto distro for every new linux user. It was just the most advertised distro, with the simpler website, a general color palette that made it easily recognizable and a nice slogan borrowed from the meaning of its name in Nguni's languages.
ivolimmen 3y ago
I am still using Ubuntu on both my work laptop and my home workstation. Om my laptop I now have disk shortage due to snaps. Plus my workstation has an AMD videocard that had a weird bug. All snaps are glitching, you can not see anything. But I still use Ubuntu. It's the most used and catered for Linux distribution so when I want to use something there is always an Ubuntu deb or snap or whatever. Plus on my work laptop, which is a Dell, I get firmware updates when I do an apt-get no other os does this...
- harry8 3y ago
  > I get firmware updates when I do an apt-get no other os does this... Be so very careful about this. Ubu did that for me behind my back on my dell laptop and bricked the thing by silently making it so that if you closed the lid and put it in your bag it would fry. Expensive way to find out about that bios feature, uh, change. I was spending a lot of time by a hospital bed when it happened and needed my laptop to be a goddamn laptop, close the lid, in the bag 10 seconds notice because this is important. Sure that's 99% dell's fault and you can't even contact them to ask if this is really what they consider acceptable in any way, sure. But yes I'm angry and bitter about it still. Why are ubu pushing an update like that at me implictly saying "this is fine" when it's not remotely close to fine? eh bitter.
  - gonzo41 3y ago
    I had a funny experience like this. I got a lenovo bios update via ubuntu. I didn't really notice until I rebooted. Which took a bit of time. So I did what every impatient programmer does. I disconnected the power, took out the battery, did a hard reboot. I did everything you shouldn't do during a bios update. Not my smartest moment. Though, the update worked and everything's been fine since.
  - miyuru 3y ago
    Pretty sure its a dell bug, because it happened to my dell laptop running windows as well.
    - 3y ago
pmontra 3y ago
This dependency hell, it never got me because I'm using LTS versions or I never realized that I am deep into it? I've been using Ubuntu 2008 to 2020, then Debian.
__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
> I understand that Snap is meant to release us from dependency hell and I know why you’ve put each one in its own little sandbox, but honestly, even ChromeOS running a Linux application in its virtual machine is faster than this, and it doesn’t require everything to come from one distribution hub This mess is why I'll probably never leave NixOS. It ain't heaven, but it's at least not packaging hell.
ajb117 3y ago
I honestly don't know how people can stand Gnome/Unity. I've been running Xubuntu LTS with the Plank dock and have had nothing but smooth sailing save Nvidia drivers.
- AbraKdabra 3y ago
  I recently got my new upgreded notebook at work, which I asked to have GNU/Linux installed instead of Windows. First thing I did was get rid of Gnome/Unity as I did with my last work notebook, what an abomination of a software.
amanzi 3y ago
Are there any Snap fans out there that are championing the technology? I only ever hear bad things about it (and I too, have experienced pain from it), but perhaps there's a bit of an echo chamber here. My most recent sneaky Snap experience happened on my Pop_OS laptop. I decided to enable that extra Ubuntu Pro security repository since it's free for 5 devices. I followed the steps to enable it but then noticed that apt was installing the snapd package and a whole heap of dependencies! I quickly cancelled it, reverted the steps and decided to not bother with the Ubuntu Pro stuff again.
- wrenky 3y ago
  "championing" it? probably not, but I'm a huge fan of the goal. Flatpack/Snap both try to take an application and isolate it from the system. Its like docker but for userspace application rather than services. Package managers like apt/yum modify the system at a root level, a bad package here (or a bad library) can cause problems if its a mistake, or compromise if malicious. You should only use them for stuff that needs root hardware access or root permissions at some point- everything else should be sandboxed and isolated from that critical portion of your system. [Shutteworth makes a pretty good argument for snap](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z3yusiCOCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z3yusiCOCk) (and by proxy, flatpack) and the why we need virtual machines/docker/LXD/(snap/flatpack)/package managers. So I wouldn't say I'm championing snap, but I do believe the concept should be used everywhere. Flatpack? snap? Something new? Dont really care, I just want the containerization benefits at the userspace level.
  - amanzi 3y ago
    Thanks for the link - watching it now. I guess I was referring to complaints about Snap specifically. My distro of choice (Pop!_OS) and many others have specifically excluded Snap in favour of Flatpak and I hardly ever hear complaints about Flatpak.
Lapsa 3y ago
read it in anticipation - will Arch get a mention or not. was not disappointed. BTW I Use Arch
frankreyes 3y ago
I have two Microsoft Surface tablets, one on Windows 10 and one Windows 11. The Windows 10 is like a decade ago and Windows 11 is from a year ago. Windows 10 feels faster and more responsive. Did Ubuntu become Windows?
djha-skin 3y ago
> I understand that Snap is meant to release us from dependency hell and I know why you’ve put each one in its own little sandbox, but honestly, even ChromeOS running a Linux application in its virtual machine is faster than this Absolutely. Snap is Ubuntu's metaverse. Insisting something is the future doesn't make it any less useless.
neuromute 3y ago
I can fully relate with the author on this one. For a bit of background, I initially started out using Linux with Slax in 2005, moving on to Fedora Core 5 and then installing Ubuntu when Feisty Fawn was released. For a long time, Ubuntu just felt right. Don't get me wrong, in those days there was plenty of work to do to get a system working well (getting working drivers, configuring xorg, etc), but overall it seemed like Canonical had a real focus on delivering an easy to use, stable Linux desktop OS for people that didn't want to build everything from scratch. Since then I’ve occasionally run other bare metal installed distros/derivaties (elementary, mint, pop, debian) for a while, but I always found my way back to Ubuntu. I’ve tried dozens of other distros through VMs and live disks over the years, just to see what they have to offer too. The world of Linux is vast and wonderful, and there's always the potential for temptation on the horizon. That said, I've been running Ubuntu 18.04 on my main desktop PC for about 5 years now and it's been a relatively reliable daily driver OS during that time. However, snaps leave a very bad taste in my mouth. Canonical seem dead set on force-feeding this crap down users' throats too, which is another trait that doesn't sit well with me. With 18.04 reaching the end of its shelf life, I decided—like the author of the article—to part ways with Ubuntu (and, by extension, Canonical). I spent a good while searching for the right replacement OS and finally came up with the following shortlist: Fedora, Nobara, OpenSuse Tumbleweed and Arch. I wanted a decent low-latency experience for audio production, and to be able to run the Bitwig digital audio workstation software. I wanted Steam, BTRFS, Pipewire, and various other relatively standard packages like Firefox, Kodi, Inkscape, Blender, Spotify, Bitwarden, etc. Initially, I was thinking of using KDE Plasma too. I tried out all of the shortlisted distros above, and finally went with Arch. So far it's been an incredible experience. There were too many niggles in the end, with KDE, and I decided to give the latest Gnome (44) a shot, once it landed in the Arch repos. That was a surprise, as I wasn't expecting it to be anywhere near as great as it is. So far this is probably the best desktop Linux experience I've ever had. There's close to zero chance I will ever install another Ubuntu OS on any of my machines. So long, Ubuntu, and thanks for the good times.

67 points by Alupis 3y ago

If you are new and reading this and are now confused what distro to choose. Go for Fedora. I chose it a while back and I'm not switching back.

fensizor 3y ago
Or Nobara Linux, which is a modified version of Fedora that strives to be more user-friendly.
- themodelplumber 3y ago
  In which aspects is it more friendly? Are there distro-specific desktop user config tools a la Puppy? Or more on the admin / install side?
- FullyFunctional 3y ago
  I appreciate the suggestion, but I tend to stay with my choices for decades, so I need something that has been around and will stay around. As best I can tell my options are (in random order): openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, and Ubuntu. There are a few that are runners-up, like Arch and Pop_OS! (hate the name). Switching distribution is a lot of overhead (I have a too-large and quite diverse collection of iron, with x86 being minority).
  - neltnerb 3y ago
    Yeah, playing with novel distributions is a young person's game =) I'm glad someone is doing it, but I just want to not fight my computer to get tools I actually use to work. I've been using Ubuntu 20 years like this author. I tried Pop_OS for a few years out of curiosity, but it kept being buggy. The Debian LiveCD I tried next failed to let me setup the partitions properly to install, so back to Ubuntu I went again... I wish I had the energy to file a proper bug report, but what are the odds anyone would honestly benefit? It's almost always just a very niche me issue, so may as well not fight it.
- rcarmo 3y ago
  Nobara adds a little veneer, but is not really a good choice unless you really like their opinionated package bundle.
taskforcegemini 3y ago
fedora is run by ibm though. wouldn't trust them after what happened to CentOS
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  This. It's like no matter what you have to fight the intentions of the maker to get what you want. On ubuntu you have to expunge snapd and now that ubuntu pro nagger, where in both cases they went out of their way to make these dofficult to remove by making half the os depend on them but only artificially through package manager declarations, nothing really depends on them. You can still get them out, but you're fighting the will of the supplier which did not go away. They or something else will always come back and need to be faught again. On redhat it's less about the architecture of the distro and more about the company since beingvsold to ibm. destroying centos shows that they really do not want a centos to exist. centos-alikes have sprung up to replace it, but ibm's wishes did not go away, and so as soon as they can figure out a way to, they will make a centos (alma, rocky) users life a pain again. I'm starting to think the answer to finding a distro that has no interest in controlling you and getting something out of you inwillingly is actually arch. Maybe nix but the indirection seems like the old programmer joke about the overengineered hello world. But they don't seem to be doing their annnoying weird thing to get anything out of you at least, more a genuine engineering experiment.

chaps 3y ago

Came to the same conclusion over the past year. If they got rid of snap, I'd stay. But god damn snap is such a poorly implemented nuisance. It feels barely out of alpha.

rcarmo 3y ago
I moved to Fedora. Haven’t looked back other than for servers (where snaps are less of an issue).
- Alupis 3y ago
  If you're daily driving Fedora, wouldn't it be easier to use Rocky/Alma/CentOS for your servers?
  - rcarmo 3y ago
    Not really. I don't see the need to align both when I mostly run containers, Python or Go.

themodelplumber 3y ago

Snaps...again. Which snaps are loading that slow? Granted I'm using AppImage or binaries for so much stuff these days, from Firefox to Openshot to Crystal, but I'm really curious. One of my machines runs 22.04 and has tons of software installed via repos, so some huge chunk of that experience must be slow, or painful, I think I'm to believe? Yet I'm not noticing anything out of the ordinary compared to my other distros. What are you seeing? Specific examples?

red_trumpet 3y ago
I had big problems with Spotify.
bandrami 3y ago
All of them. Literally every single one. It's why the first thing I do when I am on an Ubuntu system is remove snapd.
- throwaway2990 3y ago
  It’s too painful to remove snap now because the apt packages try to put it back. I’m on fedora now and love it.
  - bandrami 3y ago
    Yeah, the only form I actively take Ubuntu in anymore is Neon, 100% because of the lack of snaps.
- Lorkki 3y ago
  Used to be that way for me too, but I believe with the latest LTS the slowdowns just went away. I'm using Firefox through the default Snap packaging every day, and it's just fine. This is also with the distro installed with all default choices. If memory serves me right, using btrfs for one can result in any number of weird performance issues.
  - 3y ago

ghshephard 3y ago

I empathize, but haven't given up the faith yet. With a little bit of effort, I'm able to strip out the pain an misery (and latency) that is snap from Ubuntu distributions that I use, but I do see a future in which the OS becomes crippled enough that I'll need to finally bite the bullet and join the arch crowd.

jnwatson 3y ago

I just don’t use snap. They don’t force you.

qbasic_forever 3y ago
They kinda do, like if you apt install Firefox it's actually setup to force install the snap version of Firefox (even though you used a apt CLI command). It's getting more and more aggressive about pushing snaps like this with each major Ubuntu release.
- chaps 3y ago
  I followed some steps to prevent firefox from being installed through snap... it worked (after WAY too long troubleshooting).... and sometime between then and now it re-enabled itself and I'm back to square one. It's so maddening.
- imp0cat 3y ago
  Uninstall Firefox snap to end the pain, then d/l Firefox from mozilla.org, unpack to your home directory and launch it from there. It will work just fine and even auto-update itself. You can use `alacarte` or manually create a .desktop file to add a menu item for your new Firefox instance if you need it.
  - hackmiester 3y ago
    I'm sorry but that is pretty awful. If I wanted to do all that, I'd run Windows.
    - imp0cat 3y ago
      Isn't it the other way around? In Windows you'd usually download an installer and run it to install software, whereas Linux would have you download, unzip/untar an archive and then just launch it directly.
      - 3y ago

kahnclusions 3y ago

Their hideously awful interview process leads me to believe there are deeply rooted problems in Ubuntu’s company culture and it’s not getting better anytime soon. They ask insightful questions like, “How did you do in your native language at high school?” or “How did you do in maths, physics or computer science at high school?”, followed by long written essays and “psychometric” personality testing. That’s a hard nope from me.

sergiomattei 3y ago
Sounds like standard behavioral questions to me.
- bitwize 3y ago
  Remember to Strongly Agree with things your boss wants to hear and Strongly Disagree with anything that sounds like you might be a functional human being with aspirations outside of the job.
  - water-data-dude 3y ago
    You mean “create a business-sona and engage in some text/live-action roleplay”
toadi 3y ago
Lol yeah the insightful questions. I don't remember that much from high school anymore to make it relevant. Like I have been working for 25 years in IT maybe that is a bit more relevant? Another one was the GPA. First of all after a how many years in your career is that number still relevant? Also in my country there is no GPA. You pass your degree or you don't. You call it long written essays. I felt I needed to write the magnum opus about my life. It was a hard nope from me too. Must be hard to be a recruiter for them. Everyone dropping out of the funnel at step 1 :)
- jvermillard 3y ago
  I did the full interview process (11?) it didn't worth the time spent

r-spaghetti 3y ago

Dear Jenny, although less common I suggest you start dating the father of Ubuntu; Debian. Kind regards, Roberto

jojobas 3y ago
Debian was Very Hard some 15 years ago while Ubuntu was rather easy. These days there's not much in the way of difference on that facet, or at least not enough to tolerate Snap/Wayland/whatever other madness.
- red_trumpet 3y ago
  Apparently [1] Debian used Wayland as a default with Gnome since 2019? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(protocol)
  - hackmiester 3y ago
    Sure. I got seamlessly migrated from X as well, when I upgraded my Debian major release. I am not "that kind of hacker" anymore (hence running GNOME), so I was OK with this. Didn't even notice the change for a while.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  Honestly there weren't that many difference. When first ubuntu was released, it just used the experimental debian installer that anyone could download and use from the Debian website. Besides, ubuntu never provided real tools to free users from command line configuration. Since the late 90's the main distros which provided real control panel for nearly everything were Suse/OpenSuse with Yast and Mandrake/Mandriva. Ubuntu has never been easier or more straightforward to use it, it was just a Debian with a default Gnome, some different colors. The only thing Ubuntu did differently at the time was having a very simple website with a single download button and sending free CDs for free to anyone asking for it which was a big deal when nobody had decent internet connection. Or you'd need to buy magazine offering installation CDs. But the thing is, every single family has an enthusiast cousin, uncle, who in the early 2000's ordereds tenths of CDs from ubuntu for free and gave them out to anyone pulling his hair out of because of an MS windows issue. All that made ubuntu a bit different from Debian like unity, upstart and now snap, only appeared years later after Ubuntu had that reputation of easy distro for beginner. And this is what really put ubuntu in the limelight and the default goto distro for every new linux user. It was just the most advertised distro, with the simpler website, a general color palette that made it easily recognizable and a nice slogan borrowed from the meaning of its name in Nguni's languages.

ivolimmen 3y ago

I am still using Ubuntu on both my work laptop and my home workstation. Om my laptop I now have disk shortage due to snaps. Plus my workstation has an AMD videocard that had a weird bug. All snaps are glitching, you can not see anything. But I still use Ubuntu. It's the most used and catered for Linux distribution so when I want to use something there is always an Ubuntu deb or snap or whatever. Plus on my work laptop, which is a Dell, I get firmware updates when I do an apt-get no other os does this...

harry8 3y ago
> I get firmware updates when I do an apt-get no other os does this... Be so very careful about this. Ubu did that for me behind my back on my dell laptop and bricked the thing by silently making it so that if you closed the lid and put it in your bag it would fry. Expensive way to find out about that bios feature, uh, change. I was spending a lot of time by a hospital bed when it happened and needed my laptop to be a goddamn laptop, close the lid, in the bag 10 seconds notice because this is important. Sure that's 99% dell's fault and you can't even contact them to ask if this is really what they consider acceptable in any way, sure. But yes I'm angry and bitter about it still. Why are ubu pushing an update like that at me implictly saying "this is fine" when it's not remotely close to fine? eh bitter.
- gonzo41 3y ago
  I had a funny experience like this. I got a lenovo bios update via ubuntu. I didn't really notice until I rebooted. Which took a bit of time. So I did what every impatient programmer does. I disconnected the power, took out the battery, did a hard reboot. I did everything you shouldn't do during a bios update. Not my smartest moment. Though, the update worked and everything's been fine since.
- miyuru 3y ago
  Pretty sure its a dell bug, because it happened to my dell laptop running windows as well.
  - 3y ago

pmontra 3y ago

This dependency hell, it never got me because I'm using LTS versions or I never realized that I am deep into it? I've been using Ubuntu 2008 to 2020, then Debian.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago

> I understand that Snap is meant to release us from dependency hell and I know why you’ve put each one in its own little sandbox, but honestly, even ChromeOS running a Linux application in its virtual machine is faster than this, and it doesn’t require everything to come from one distribution hub This mess is why I'll probably never leave NixOS. It ain't heaven, but it's at least not packaging hell.

ajb117 3y ago

I honestly don't know how people can stand Gnome/Unity. I've been running Xubuntu LTS with the Plank dock and have had nothing but smooth sailing save Nvidia drivers.

AbraKdabra 3y ago
I recently got my new upgreded notebook at work, which I asked to have GNU/Linux installed instead of Windows. First thing I did was get rid of Gnome/Unity as I did with my last work notebook, what an abomination of a software.

amanzi 3y ago

Are there any Snap fans out there that are championing the technology? I only ever hear bad things about it (and I too, have experienced pain from it), but perhaps there's a bit of an echo chamber here. My most recent sneaky Snap experience happened on my Pop_OS laptop. I decided to enable that extra Ubuntu Pro security repository since it's free for 5 devices. I followed the steps to enable it but then noticed that apt was installing the snapd package and a whole heap of dependencies! I quickly cancelled it, reverted the steps and decided to not bother with the Ubuntu Pro stuff again.

wrenky 3y ago
"championing" it? probably not, but I'm a huge fan of the goal. Flatpack/Snap both try to take an application and isolate it from the system. Its like docker but for userspace application rather than services. Package managers like apt/yum modify the system at a root level, a bad package here (or a bad library) can cause problems if its a mistake, or compromise if malicious. You should only use them for stuff that needs root hardware access or root permissions at some point- everything else should be sandboxed and isolated from that critical portion of your system. [Shutteworth makes a pretty good argument for snap](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z3yusiCOCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z3yusiCOCk) (and by proxy, flatpack) and the why we need virtual machines/docker/LXD/(snap/flatpack)/package managers. So I wouldn't say I'm championing snap, but I do believe the concept should be used everywhere. Flatpack? snap? Something new? Dont really care, I just want the containerization benefits at the userspace level.
- amanzi 3y ago
  Thanks for the link - watching it now. I guess I was referring to complaints about Snap specifically. My distro of choice (Pop!_OS) and many others have specifically excluded Snap in favour of Flatpak and I hardly ever hear complaints about Flatpak.

Lapsa 3y ago

read it in anticipation - will Arch get a mention or not. was not disappointed. BTW I Use Arch

frankreyes 3y ago

I have two Microsoft Surface tablets, one on Windows 10 and one Windows 11. The Windows 10 is like a decade ago and Windows 11 is from a year ago. Windows 10 feels faster and more responsive. Did Ubuntu become Windows?

djha-skin 3y ago

> I understand that Snap is meant to release us from dependency hell and I know why you’ve put each one in its own little sandbox, but honestly, even ChromeOS running a Linux application in its virtual machine is faster than this Absolutely. Snap is Ubuntu's metaverse. Insisting something is the future doesn't make it any less useless.

neuromute 3y ago

I can fully relate with the author on this one. For a bit of background, I initially started out using Linux with Slax in 2005, moving on to Fedora Core 5 and then installing Ubuntu when Feisty Fawn was released. For a long time, Ubuntu just felt right. Don't get me wrong, in those days there was plenty of work to do to get a system working well (getting working drivers, configuring xorg, etc), but overall it seemed like Canonical had a real focus on delivering an easy to use, stable Linux desktop OS for people that didn't want to build everything from scratch. Since then I’ve occasionally run other bare metal installed distros/derivaties (elementary, mint, pop, debian) for a while, but I always found my way back to Ubuntu. I’ve tried dozens of other distros through VMs and live disks over the years, just to see what they have to offer too. The world of Linux is vast and wonderful, and there's always the potential for temptation on the horizon. That said, I've been running Ubuntu 18.04 on my main desktop PC for about 5 years now and it's been a relatively reliable daily driver OS during that time. However, snaps leave a very bad taste in my mouth. Canonical seem dead set on force-feeding this crap down users' throats too, which is another trait that doesn't sit well with me. With 18.04 reaching the end of its shelf life, I decided—like the author of the article—to part ways with Ubuntu (and, by extension, Canonical). I spent a good while searching for the right replacement OS and finally came up with the following shortlist: Fedora, Nobara, OpenSuse Tumbleweed and Arch. I wanted a decent low-latency experience for audio production, and to be able to run the Bitwig digital audio workstation software. I wanted Steam, BTRFS, Pipewire, and various other relatively standard packages like Firefox, Kodi, Inkscape, Blender, Spotify, Bitwarden, etc. Initially, I was thinking of using KDE Plasma too. I tried out all of the shortlisted distros above, and finally went with Arch. So far it's been an incredible experience. There were too many niggles in the end, with KDE, and I decided to give the latest Gnome (44) a shot, once it landed in the Arch repos. That was a surprise, as I wasn't expecting it to be anywhere near as great as it is. So far this is probably the best desktop Linux experience I've ever had. There's close to zero chance I will ever install another Ubuntu OS on any of my machines. So long, Ubuntu, and thanks for the good times.