I literally just stopped using it yesterday but can’t remember why. I also think it had something to do with not being able to copy/paste. I know I also didn’t love that it doesn’t seem to have a memory function, though nor does the app I replaced it with.
All LTS releases get 5 years of updates. Ubuntu pro (which is free for non-commercial users FYI) extends the LTS support window to 10 years, which is 5 years more than any other Linux distribution I know of
Sorry, I meant „Additional security updates“. its not very useful for normal users and canonical is targeting enterprises with it but looking at it every day without a non hacky way to disable it just wore on me.
And constant non-optional pop-ups nagging you to upgrade to Ubuntu Pro during those five years. I’d actually be kinda okay with it if it were only after, an if just as a reminder that, hey, the LTS period is over, you need to switch to the next LTS release now.
This is on Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS, so well within the 5 year window. I’m complaining because I kept getting frantic calls from people using that who didn’t know what was going on.
Depends a lot on what kind of user. I specified “non-technical” with a reason. I have, in the past, recommended Ubuntu to a small number of friends and family members. These are people who aren’t particularly comfortable using computers in the best of times. They very much don’t need the newest, best and most shiny versions of everything. They need to do billing, taxes, correspondance, email and various other tasks related to their small business, they need that to work reliably, and if at all possible, to work exactly the same way as it did the last five years. And if there is any pop-up they don’t immediately understand (for example because it’s in English instead of their native language, yes that still happens in Ubuntu quite a bit), they will call me on the phone.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had to support non-technical end-users, but for some of them, even something as seemingly trivial as a menubar that has moved from the top to the side can be issue that needs explaining and training. For that kind of user, I really do want to postpone all updates beyond pure bug and security fixes for as long as reasonably possible. Five years sounds reasonable. Six months does not.
Ubuntu is not Arch Linux. The 6 month release doesn’t give you the “the newest, best and most shiny versions of everything” in the first place.
If they don’t like change so much as to not being able to handle some minor UI updates, then their better off using a Chromebook lol.
You’d just be making it harder for them move from the outdated software in the long run, because literally everything changes between moving LTS from the 5y EOL period instead of gradually over each major normal 6 month releases.
They do, including those that are in Debian, but they also have an additional source of faster security updates developed in house, which they hold back from the free path in favor of the pro package.
Personally, I feel a bit torn about this. On the one hand, this should be, officially at least, purely an additional service on top of what’s available in the baseline distro, and isn’t taking anything away from that.
On the other hand, I strongly disagree with holding back security fixes from anyone, ever, for any reason. Also, the claim that it will never take away anything from the free base distro is at least a little bit suspect. I would not be surprised if the existence of the pro path were to gradually erode the quality and timelyness of the base security upgrade path over time. Also, Ubuntu is now very annoying about nagging you to upgrade to pro, and the way to disable that is fairly involved and very much non-official. The whole thing goes against what I expect from a F/OSS operating system. I don’t quite understand why this topic hasn’t been a much bigger issue in Linux circles yet. It certainly doesn’t sit right with me…
Not that I’m a fan of Ubuntu here (I generally don’t run it when I can run anything else), but I do want to say I think you’ve missed the point of the Pro tier.
Ubuntu releases two stable versions a year which are supported for 2 years or so. This is like a slow rolling distribution, and makes the newest software’s available. It receives regular security updates from upstream, from Canonical, and from backports, again for up to about 2 years. Most users install this version.
Ubuntu LTS editions are similar to the above, but receive all the same security updates for 5 years instead of 2. These distributions are generally targeted for Enterprise users who value stability over having the newest software, and for whom upgrading comes with significant time, expense and risk. The 5 year window is customary among other distros, and is largely supported by and throughout the Dev community.
Ubuntu LTS Pro editions extend the LTS support editions for an additional 5 years, meaning a Pro distro enjoys 10 years of security updates from upstream, backports, and from Canonical where needed. Canonical might even open source their fixes back into upstream for other maintainers and distros to use, depending on the situation. However, since Canonical is providing the work, they charge subscription fees to cover their costs for it from their target audience: Enterprises who can’t or REALLY don’t want to upgrade
Why an Enterprise might not want to upgrade has to do with risk and compliance. Corporate IT security is a different world, where every bit of software may need to be reviewed, assessed, tested and signed-off upon. Major software upgrades would need to be recertified to mitigate risk and ensure compliance, which takes significant time and expense to complete in good faith. Not having to do it every 2 or 5 years is money in the bank, especially when the environment doesn’t introduce new requirements very often.
Canonical is meeting a market demand with their Pro tier by allowing these customers to spend a fraction of their recertification costs on a software subscription. It’s overall good for the ecosystem because you have what amounts to corporate sponsors pumping money into keeping older packages maintained for longer. This let’s them keep using the same software distro all the rest of us can use for free.
I’m not shy about calling bullshit on ANY distro that operates in bad faith, and they all get into some BS from time to time. Nevertheless, Canonical are acting in good faith on this, and are merely collecting money for their time and skill to provide maintenance on FOSS packages that might otherwise go unmaintained.
tl;dr: Pro tier is for Enterprise customers who need extra-long term support and are willing to pay for it. Canonical is meeting a market demand so they can remain competitive for use in those environments, which is good for everyone. It’s benign. Keep the pitchforks sharp and the torches dry for another day.
Pro tier is for Enterprise customers who need extra-long term support and are willing to pay for it. Canonical is meeting a market demand so they can remain competitive for use in those environments, which is good for everyone. It’s benign
Then please show me the button (and I mean button, not command-line exclusive settings or config file entries in /etc, and certainly not unofficial trickery like third party repositories that replace Ubuntu advantage packages with an empty decoy) that says “Thank you, I don’t need Ubuntu Pro, please stop nagging me about it”.
Oh, I never said they weren’t absolute prats about invading user space with advertising their bullshit. The Lens fiasco, Snaps, the popup warnings in apt breaking scripts, and the lack of UI toggles to easily disable those nag messages are all reasons I run other distros. There’s a big Mint colored button to turn on the Ubuntu experience without the nagging.
You have other choices that do no not shove that bullshit in your face. Canonical is gonna canonical. Nobody said you have to play their game.
My point was they are not withholding anything community-based from anyone. They are entitled to charge for their original work, even they are pushy about it. They even abide by the license and distribute it the changes when complete, but they’re not gonna just do it for giggles.
The additional Ubuntu Pro security updates are also open source, which means open source maintainers are free to adopt them for the regular security updates (and some do).
If Canonical didn’t charge for those additional security updates they wouldn’t be able to pay for developing them, which would result in only core packages getting patched again. Also it’s possible to make an account and get them for free on a few devices, so it’s really not so bad. This way of doing things is better than what RedHat is doing with RHEL.
If Canonical restricted maintainer from applying Canonicals patches, I’d change my opinion. For me I don’t need security updates that badly, so I’m fine with Debian, NixOS (or Ubuntu non-Pro).
You could try Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) it has timeshift installed in the live iso, useful to restore a system when it’s unbootable. Anyway it doesn’t come with KDE but Cinnamon or XFCE.
For me Debian or LMDE is good for a home server due to not continuous package update, just major security an important ones.
For a Deskop or laptop in my opinion Fedora KDE or Gnome is the best experience.
Interesting! I have not tried fedora yet. I really like to be able to get some time off gnome for now though. Is there a particular difference between debian based distros and fedora? I cant really say I know them. The biggest differences I see make the desktop environments. Everything else, like package managers are also flexible.
It also uses the Red Hat RPM package format and a different package manager. But it just amounts to a few different commands to learn if you manage packages on the command line.
Plasma 6 seems to be fixing a lot of the issues I currently have with Plasma - bugs, inconsistency, general jank. Looking forward to its release so I can give it another go
I decided to use a rolling distro, in order to get the newest kernel drivers My favorite rolling distros are OpenSuse Tumbleweed and Arch OpenSuse TW was great out of box on my old iMac, but you most likely have to get some proprietary firmware in order for WiFi to work (see dmesg for drivers missing their FW) I decided to use arch (install using archinstall python script) from now on because I prefer the installation of community packages if the AUR using yay instead of searching software.opensuse.org/packages and click “one click imstall” download the file, double klick the file, which opens YaST frontend for repo management and then klick multiple times until the package is installed 😄
Pro of that behavior of openSuse is, that you don’t have to touch the terminal even once (except for checking dmesg to see if all driver work as intended)
Maybe, it makes sense to upgrade wifi using a dongle (you may have only wifi 4 in the iMac and there are usb dongles for wifi 6) or just use Ethernet.
I had problems using suspend on my iMac (screen was glitchy after wakeup) so I prevented systemd to trigger suspend and always turn the iMac off after usage. Command to disable suspend: sorry forgot but was something with simlinking
But anyway, now that I searched for it, I found this: apparently you can prevent the glitchy screen if you boot via legacy BIOS instead of EFI, to achieve this, you have to install your Linux (and thus grub2) from a liveOS booted from a cdRom instead from a stick (old mac boot efi from stick and legacy bios from usbstick) once you have your Linux booting using legacy bios, you can from now on boot your ISOs using grub and you don’t have to use any stick or CDrom ever again on that machine, as long as you leave have your boot partition untouched 😇
Feel free to ask more (I love when people try to make old hardware usable and prevent eWaste that way)
Yeah WiFi requires proprietary drivers… it is less of an issue in 2024 as even purist distro like Debian now ship with those. The screen bug sounds annoying though… on which iMac did you experience this?
Yea, it ships with the driver but not with the firmware needed for that driver (/sys/firmware/) in Arch there is a AUR package to install the firmware and in openSuse you have to run a command, which is written in dmesg error, while connected to the internet. I don’t know how debian handles it.
I have to research that first 😂 but it’s one that has a AMD grafic card that runs on readon driver which seems to not support suspend if booted from EFI if understood that linked threat correctly. Some macs have nvidia grafic card, which don’t work at all, if you boot Linux from EFI. So I guess it’s ideal to boot Linux on any older mac via legacy bios instead of modern EFI.
anything that isnt very hard to run should be fine. ive personally ran a distro on an early 2012/2013 mac and it worked just fine. forgot what one but i know it was a very common mainstream one. i also somehow got kali on it so that was interesting too. if you want something easy and simple you should probably use mint or debian if they support imacs, otherwise? its really down to personal pref
Yeah, the idea is something simple and stable. Stable because I don’t want to babysit the OS (I already do that at work), and simple so my wife can also use it in case of need. She only know windows so anything the comes close in terms of UI is “ok” for her. The real choice was between KDE or cinnamon. Eventually opted for Mint/Debian
I have used arch on this same install since 2019, before that, 2016. (Just because I wanted to get my old system back ASAP and was comfortable with the process)
If I had to do it over, I would test out openSUSE tumbleweeb or endeavor, but if you have your system that works and you like it, there is absolutely nothing to gain by switching.
If you just want to explore or do it as a hobby, use an old SSD and test out different configs on a seperate drive (you can pick up a 128 or 240GB SSD for like $25) but the only differences are package managers and DE.
Surge XT is a must. Best FOSS synth there is IMO. 3 oscillators in 2 scenes. Filters, effects, all the LFOs and envelopes in the world, all the modulation, expression aftertouch, etc you need. A bunch of presets out of the box. Very flexible synth, though can be a bit learning curve to get going.
Honorable mentions to Dexed (basically a software DX7), GeonKick (for synthesizing drums), and pianoteq (proprietary, but best there is in piano synth with native linux support).
Budgie is my absolute favourite DE, and the first project I donated too, can’t wait to see what the future holds for it. Fedora Onyx is a great experience.
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