The overlap of people that will not remove the initial bloat (even if it’s a button displayed prominently on first start) and people inclined to use Linux in the first place is not that great.
You don’t have to be a beginner to love Mint. I am very happy that they are putting more energy into the Debian edition. I’ve tried lots of other distros over the years, and I am just comfortable in Mint.
I honeslty haven’t had any issues with it. But I’m sire others are. I feel like that’s the biggest challenge since there’s a ton of distros and architectures
I am a Linux user for over a decade but I have no idea what this discussion is about. Can someone give me a tldr? I install some software using apt and some using the store and never have any issues.
I believe snaps are only installed by default on Ubuntu at this point. Debian has apt and I don’t think it installs a snap version unless you asked for that.
Snaps are ways to ship software where everything is bundled together and the developer doesn’t need to sort out dependencies on the distribution. This often makes the package bloated. It has no direct benefits for users, but it makes life easier for developers. Thus, indirectly, users might get access to some software they would otherwise need to compile if no one’s got it readily available for the user’s distribution. Ubuntu appears mostly to be using it because they don’t want to bother sorting out dependcies. On Ubuntu, and only on Ubuntu as fast as I know, some packages in apt will install the snap version silently, which, I think rightfully, annoys a lot of users.
There are similar alternatives, like flatpak, which also bundle dependencies. Some aspects of snap are proprietary to Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu, so you’ll find people who are ok with the somewhat bloated software if it makes software more widely available, but aren’t happy with a proprietary format in what is largely an open community.
I want to see Debain users and Fedora users faces when they noticd they don’t have access the AUR or PKGBUILDs.
I want to see them running sudo make install to install stuff from git.
Also reading the Arch wiki for so long is something new arch users probably do. I installed arch for tens of times btw and for me the system already runs with the installation media.
I am very sure no Debian or Fedora user is done after the installer finishes. Then comes the tricky part of the setup. The one that takes days. Adding ppas and making stuff work fedora doesn’t package.
This process starts with arch right away. From the moment i chroot into my installation.
I actively maintain ~9 computers in my house running arch. Many of them have dual boot arch. E.g. one arch for work, one arch for everything else. One arch for music production, one arch for everything rlse. I run arch on my webserver. I run arch on my home sevrer. I run arch on my wifes gaming desktop. I run arch on my wifes laptop. I run arch on my kids netbook. i run arch on rasberry pi.
I am always a bit disapointed when I install debian every couple of years.
Like, after 1.5 hours, I am like “what, that was all?” Most of the stuff I need is installed by default, just add Jetbrains toolbox, install my ide, add a few more packages and git clone my current project.
Used archinstall too 3 years ago, btw. The result is still running with no noticeable performance degradation if not rather performance improvements. Games continue to get snappier and look better, I find.
Also it’s stable af. Can coun’t on one hand where I had to intervene on OS updates. On those only one case where I had a terminal after reboot. All were resolved within an hour or so. Driver updates for nvidia just run through. The only time I had to mess with them was when Valve rolled out Steam’s new UI. That’s when I learned about Arch’s downgrade mechanism.
Did 2 manual i3 installs with BIOS boot mode and GRUB before I started using archinstall. I would bitterly fail with manually installing ESP/GPT/UEFI, Dual- and SystemD-boot, KDE, BTRFS, PipeWire. Used archinstall on a few PCs now and had 1 out of 4 where it wouldn’t install. On the 1 archinstall-fail an EndeavourOS Jellyfin/Emulationstation is alive and rocking now.
Ubuntu, Mint or Fedora might be better for beginners than Arch-based but a colleague without prior linux knowledge installed it himself for work and seems to have no problems. The welcome dialogue with update-starter and notifier, package cleaner, arch news reader, nvidia-installer, logviewer, mirror ranking, and links to relevant topics is good stuff. IMO they should pre-install Octopi or Pamac instead of their rudimentary graphical package manager. Endeavour is as stable as Arch so far.
Edit: exchanged PulseAudio with PipeWire which is even better ofc
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