4 ms·

> Ubuntu LTS This is why I try to encourage new Linux users away from Ubuntu: it's a laggard with, often important, functionality. It is now an enterprise OS (

by zamalek 9mo ago

> Ubuntu LTS This is why I try to encourage new Linux users away from Ubuntu: it's a laggard with, often important, functionality. It is now an enterprise OS (where durability is more important than functionality), it's not really suitable for a power user (like someone who would use Zed).

adithyassekhar 9mo ago
Which one would you recommend for regular users and power users?
- jauntywundrkind 9mo ago
  Debian/testing, with stable pinned on at low priority. It slows down for a couple months around release, but generally provides pretty reliable & up to date experience with a very good OS. Dance dance the red spiral.
  - r_lee 9mo ago
    You can go for sid too :)
    - jauntywundrkind 9mo ago
      I run sid (debian's unstable branch) on all my systems, it's great! With experimental pinned on at low priority! It's great, I love it! I'm not quite bold enough to recommend it to people but if anyone asks I would definitely say yes to running sid. Apt-pin for testing at low priority is good to have, just because sometimes there's lag when one library updates for everyone using it to update, and you can get unsatisfiable dependencies.
  - gspr 9mo ago
    A stable-testing mix is quite exotic. What are you trying to achieve here?
    - jauntywundrkind 9mo ago
      It's rare but every now and then testing has an unsatisfiable dependency. It's usually resolved within a day or so. But I keep a lower distro around basically to insure I have a fallback, so I'm not blocked now. The next update should likely get me back to testing.
      - gspr 9mo ago
        The conventional way to resolve temporarily unsatisfiable dependencies in Testing is to include Unstable at a lower priority, since that's where packages migrate to Testing from. Stable is a distinctly different distribution, and you're far more likely to see e.g. library ABIs from there incompatible with Testing.
- horsawlarway 9mo ago
  Not joking, Arch. Pick Gnome/KDE/Sway as you please. Arch is a wonderful daily driver distro for folks who can deal with even a small amount of configuration. Excellent software availability through AUR, excellent update times (pretty much immediate). The only downside is there's not a ton of direct commercial software packaged for it by default (ex - most companies they care give a .deb or a .rpm) but that's easily made up for by the rest of AUR. It's not even particularly hard to install anymore - run `archinstall` https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall make some choices, get a decent distro. Throw in that steam support is pretty great... and it's generally one of the best distros available right now for general use by even a moderate user. Also fine as a daily driver for kids/spouses as long as there's someone in the house to run pacman every now and then, or help install new stuff.
- zamalek 9mo ago
  If you want something relatively uninteresting: Fedora or Debian (honestly, stable is fine). If you want something extremely reliable, more modern, but may require some learning to tweak: Silverblue or Kinoite.
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    Debian updates even less frequently than Ubuntu and stays with years old versions of packages. If you're looking for fresh, Debian is not it. Maybe Arch?
    - horsawlarway 9mo ago
      Yeah, the folks in here recommending Debian as a solution to this problem are insane. I love Debian, it's a great distro. It's NOT the distro I'd pick to drive things like my laptop or personal development machine. At least not if you have even a passing interest in: - Using team communication apps (slack/teams/discord) - Using software built for windows (Wine/Proton) - Gaming (of any form) - Wayland support (or any other large project delivering new features relatively quickly) - Hardware support (modern linux kernels) I'd recommend it immediately as a replacement for Ubuntu as a server, but I won't run it for daily drivers. Again - Arch (or it's derivatives) are basically the best you can get in that space.
      - r_lee 9mo ago
        Debian has multiple editions, if you want Arch, go for sid/testing. Stable is stable as in "must not be broken at all costs" kind of stable. basically everything works just fine. there's occasionally a rare crash or gnome reset where you need to login again, but other than that not many problems.
        akdev1l 9mo ago
        No Debian is stable as in “it shall not change”. There are times where there are known bugs in Debian which are purposely not fixed but instead documented and worked around. That’s part of the stability promise. The behaviour shall not change which sometimes includes “bug as a feature”
- stalfosknight 9mo ago
  Arch or Endeavour
BadBadJellyBean 9mo ago
You don't have to run LTS. There is a new release every 6 months.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- esseph 9mo ago
  I've been running Linux for a very long time. Ubuntu has never ever been the most stable or useful distro. What it did have was apt and more up to date stuff than debian. I would never willingly choose Ubuntu if allowed other options (Fedora, Debian, maybe CoreOS, etc)
  - horsawlarway 9mo ago
    I have a lot of respect for Canonical for driving a distro that was very "noob friendly" in an ecosystem where that's genuinely hard. But I mostly agree with you. Once you get out of that phase, I don't really see much value in Ubuntu. I'd pick pretty much anything else for everything I do these days. Debian/Fedora/Alpine on the server. Arch on the desktop.
  - BadBadJellyBean 8mo ago
    I have been running Linux for a long time as well (I used Mandrake linux) and I find Ubuntu mostly nice. What I would not say is that it is not stable or useful. The long LTS cadences give it much time to be very stable and you can also be more on the edge when you use the in between versions. So I'd say it is very much a personal preference but just saying it is not stable is just not generally true. I could say the same about Fedora that shipped graphics drivers so new that all my software was broken for a while. To each their own I guess.
- fulafel 9mo ago
  Especially a 4 year old LTS. But I guess the point was that you will run into some users that do when you ship to the general audience. You run into the same problem on other platforms too of course (eg Android)
6SixTy 9mo ago
My understanding with Mesa is that it has very few dependencies and is ABI stable, so freezing Mesa updates is counterproductive. I'm not sure about Snaps, but Flatpak ships as it's own system managing Mesa versions.
- tambre 9mo ago
  > My understanding with Mesa is that it has very few dependencies Some of the shader compilers require LLVM which is a giant dependency to say the least. But with Valve's ACO for RADV I think that could technically be omitted.
- fc417fc802 9mo ago
  > Flatpak ships as it's own system managing Mesa versions. Mixing and matching the kernel and userspace mesa components is subject to limitations. However it will transparently fall back to software rendering so you might not notice if you aren't doing anything intensive. Related, being a container flatpak has no choice but to ship the mesa userspace component. If it didn't nothing would work.
- marcthe12 9mo ago
  Unfornately that is llvm which is not stable (abi break every 6 months).
fsloth 9mo ago
" It is now an enterprise OS" You really want enterprise standards support for your graphics API. Bleeding edge ...is not nice in graphics. Especially the more complex the systems get, so do the edge cases. I mean in general. If you are writing a high end game engine don't listen to me, you know better. But if you are a mid-tier graphics wonk like myself 20 year old concepts are usually quite pareto-optimal for _lots_ of stuff and should be robustly covered by most apis. If I could give one advice for myself 20 years ago. For anything practical - focus on the platform native graphics API. Windows - DirectX. Mac - OpenGL (20 years ago! Predates metal!. Today ofc would be metal). I don't think that advice would be much different today (apart from Metal) IF you don't know what to do and just want to start on doing graphics. For senior peeps who know the field do whatever rights for you of course. Linux - good luck. Find the API that has best support for your card & driver combo - meaning likely the most stabilized with most users.
yxhuvud 9mo ago
Ubuntu's perfectly fine if you avoid LTS versions.
plagiarist 9mo ago
I encourage them away from Ubuntu because of the Snaps. If people want an enterprise distro that lags upstreams by a lot they should go with Debian.
superkuh 9mo ago
And this is a prime example of development-centric thinking prioritizing developer comfort over the capabilities and usability of the actual software. Rather than targeting stable older feature sets it's always targeting the bleeding edge and then being confused that this doesn't work on machines that aren't their own and then blaming everyone else for their decision. 4 years is not a long time (LTS). 4 years is the minimum that software should be able to live.

by zamalek 9mo ago

adithyassekhar 9mo ago

Which one would you recommend for regular users and power users?

jauntywundrkind 9mo ago
Debian/testing, with stable pinned on at low priority. It slows down for a couple months around release, but generally provides pretty reliable & up to date experience with a very good OS. Dance dance the red spiral.
- r_lee 9mo ago
  You can go for sid too :)
  - jauntywundrkind 9mo ago
    I run sid (debian's unstable branch) on all my systems, it's great! With experimental pinned on at low priority! It's great, I love it! I'm not quite bold enough to recommend it to people but if anyone asks I would definitely say yes to running sid. Apt-pin for testing at low priority is good to have, just because sometimes there's lag when one library updates for everyone using it to update, and you can get unsatisfiable dependencies.
- gspr 9mo ago
  A stable-testing mix is quite exotic. What are you trying to achieve here?
  - jauntywundrkind 9mo ago
    It's rare but every now and then testing has an unsatisfiable dependency. It's usually resolved within a day or so. But I keep a lower distro around basically to insure I have a fallback, so I'm not blocked now. The next update should likely get me back to testing.
    - gspr 9mo ago
      The conventional way to resolve temporarily unsatisfiable dependencies in Testing is to include Unstable at a lower priority, since that's where packages migrate to Testing from. Stable is a distinctly different distribution, and you're far more likely to see e.g. library ABIs from there incompatible with Testing.
horsawlarway 9mo ago
Not joking, Arch. Pick Gnome/KDE/Sway as you please. Arch is a wonderful daily driver distro for folks who can deal with even a small amount of configuration. Excellent software availability through AUR, excellent update times (pretty much immediate). The only downside is there's not a ton of direct commercial software packaged for it by default (ex - most companies they care give a .deb or a .rpm) but that's easily made up for by the rest of AUR. It's not even particularly hard to install anymore - run `archinstall` https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall make some choices, get a decent distro. Throw in that steam support is pretty great... and it's generally one of the best distros available right now for general use by even a moderate user. Also fine as a daily driver for kids/spouses as long as there's someone in the house to run pacman every now and then, or help install new stuff.
zamalek 9mo ago
If you want something relatively uninteresting: Fedora or Debian (honestly, stable is fine). If you want something extremely reliable, more modern, but may require some learning to tweak: Silverblue or Kinoite.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  Debian updates even less frequently than Ubuntu and stays with years old versions of packages. If you're looking for fresh, Debian is not it. Maybe Arch?
  - horsawlarway 9mo ago
    Yeah, the folks in here recommending Debian as a solution to this problem are insane. I love Debian, it's a great distro. It's NOT the distro I'd pick to drive things like my laptop or personal development machine. At least not if you have even a passing interest in: - Using team communication apps (slack/teams/discord) - Using software built for windows (Wine/Proton) - Gaming (of any form) - Wayland support (or any other large project delivering new features relatively quickly) - Hardware support (modern linux kernels) I'd recommend it immediately as a replacement for Ubuntu as a server, but I won't run it for daily drivers. Again - Arch (or it's derivatives) are basically the best you can get in that space.
    - r_lee 9mo ago
      Debian has multiple editions, if you want Arch, go for sid/testing. Stable is stable as in "must not be broken at all costs" kind of stable. basically everything works just fine. there's occasionally a rare crash or gnome reset where you need to login again, but other than that not many problems.
      - akdev1l 9mo ago
        No Debian is stable as in “it shall not change”. There are times where there are known bugs in Debian which are purposely not fixed but instead documented and worked around. That’s part of the stability promise. The behaviour shall not change which sometimes includes “bug as a feature”
stalfosknight 9mo ago
Arch or Endeavour

BadBadJellyBean 9mo ago

You don't have to run LTS. There is a new release every 6 months.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
esseph 9mo ago
I've been running Linux for a very long time. Ubuntu has never ever been the most stable or useful distro. What it did have was apt and more up to date stuff than debian. I would never willingly choose Ubuntu if allowed other options (Fedora, Debian, maybe CoreOS, etc)
- horsawlarway 9mo ago
  I have a lot of respect for Canonical for driving a distro that was very "noob friendly" in an ecosystem where that's genuinely hard. But I mostly agree with you. Once you get out of that phase, I don't really see much value in Ubuntu. I'd pick pretty much anything else for everything I do these days. Debian/Fedora/Alpine on the server. Arch on the desktop.
- BadBadJellyBean 8mo ago
  I have been running Linux for a long time as well (I used Mandrake linux) and I find Ubuntu mostly nice. What I would not say is that it is not stable or useful. The long LTS cadences give it much time to be very stable and you can also be more on the edge when you use the in between versions. So I'd say it is very much a personal preference but just saying it is not stable is just not generally true. I could say the same about Fedora that shipped graphics drivers so new that all my software was broken for a while. To each their own I guess.
fulafel 9mo ago
Especially a 4 year old LTS. But I guess the point was that you will run into some users that do when you ship to the general audience. You run into the same problem on other platforms too of course (eg Android)

6SixTy 9mo ago

My understanding with Mesa is that it has very few dependencies and is ABI stable, so freezing Mesa updates is counterproductive. I'm not sure about Snaps, but Flatpak ships as it's own system managing Mesa versions.

tambre 9mo ago
> My understanding with Mesa is that it has very few dependencies Some of the shader compilers require LLVM which is a giant dependency to say the least. But with Valve's ACO for RADV I think that could technically be omitted.
fc417fc802 9mo ago
> Flatpak ships as it's own system managing Mesa versions. Mixing and matching the kernel and userspace mesa components is subject to limitations. However it will transparently fall back to software rendering so you might not notice if you aren't doing anything intensive. Related, being a container flatpak has no choice but to ship the mesa userspace component. If it didn't nothing would work.
marcthe12 9mo ago
Unfornately that is llvm which is not stable (abi break every 6 months).

fsloth 9mo ago

" It is now an enterprise OS" You really want enterprise standards support for your graphics API. Bleeding edge ...is not nice in graphics. Especially the more complex the systems get, so do the edge cases. I mean in general. If you are writing a high end game engine don't listen to me, you know better. But if you are a mid-tier graphics wonk like myself 20 year old concepts are usually quite pareto-optimal for _lots_ of stuff and should be robustly covered by most apis. If I could give one advice for myself 20 years ago. For anything practical - focus on the platform native graphics API. Windows - DirectX. Mac - OpenGL (20 years ago! Predates metal!. Today ofc would be metal). I don't think that advice would be much different today (apart from Metal) IF you don't know what to do and just want to start on doing graphics. For senior peeps who know the field do whatever rights for you of course. Linux - good luck. Find the API that has best support for your card & driver combo - meaning likely the most stabilized with most users.

yxhuvud 9mo ago

Ubuntu's perfectly fine if you avoid LTS versions.

plagiarist 9mo ago

I encourage them away from Ubuntu because of the Snaps. If people want an enterprise distro that lags upstreams by a lot they should go with Debian.

superkuh 9mo ago

And this is a prime example of development-centric thinking prioritizing developer comfort over the capabilities and usability of the actual software. Rather than targeting stable older feature sets it's always targeting the bleeding edge and then being confused that this doesn't work on machines that aren't their own and then blaming everyone else for their decision. 4 years is not a long time (LTS). 4 years is the minimum that software should be able to live.