Is Ubuntu deserving the hate?

Long story short, I have a desktop with Fedora, lovely, fast, sleek and surprisingly reliable for a near rolling distro (it failed me only once back around Fedora 34 or something where it nuked Grub). Tried to install on a 2012 i7 MacBook Air… what a slog!!! Surprisingly Ubuntu runs very smooth on it. I have been bothering all my friends for years about moving to Fedora (back then it was because I hated Unity) but now… I mean, I know that we are suppose to hate it for Snaps and what not but… Christ, it does run well! In fairness all my VMs are running DietPi (a slimmed version of Ubuntu) and coming back to the APT world feels like coming back home.

On the other end forcing myself to be on Fedora allows me to stay on the DNF world that is compatible with Amazon Linux etc (which I use for work), it has updated packages, it is nice and clean…. Argh, don’t know how to decide!

Thoughts?

I am not in the mood for Debian. I like the Mint approach but I am not a fan of slow rolling releases and also would like to keep myself as close as upstream as possible, the Debian version is the only one that seems reliable enough but, again, it is Debian, the packages are “old”. Pop Os and similar are two hops away from upstream and so I’d rather not.

Is Snap really that bad?

Edit: thank you all for sharing your experience !

chemicalwonka,
@chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

deleted_by_author

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    dewritoninja,

    Boy do I have news for you

    muhyb,

    I wouldn’t call it hate, more like disapprobation with Canonical’s choices. No one have to use Ubuntu, we have tons of distro to choose. If someone wants LTS, you can always go pure Debian way, it’s not hard to install as it’s used to be (for beginners), or there is Linux Mint Debian Edition. You can easily use flatpaks with these and keep your software up-to-date.

    Hexarei,
    @Hexarei@programming.dev avatar

    disapprobation

    TIL a new word. Thanks, stranger! 🙂

    electric_nan,

    I’m quite happy with Linux Mint Debian Edition. I think it is the future of Mint. It’s on a very recent kernel, and more and more software I use nowadays is in Flatpaks anyways. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on much new stuff, but maybe I’m just not aware.

    dan,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    How different is it from regular Debian? Like if I’m very experienced with Debian, does that equate to being able to easily use Mint Debian Edition too?

    electric_nan,

    I found normal Debian to be a little unpolished for my liking. Even using the Cinnamon DE, it was lacking some niceties that Mint brings. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble using Mint.

    vikingtons,
    @vikingtons@lemmy.world avatar

    They’ve embraced Wayland, pipewire, gnome and what not, but snap is really questionable, particularly in the Linux ecosystem.

    I gather it can be somewhat annoying to contend with (I.e. some apps on Ubuntu may only be available as snaps?)

    Numpty, (edited )

    Snap is a steaming pile of excrement. So much of the crap on the Snap Store is obsolete and out of date. Anyone and their monkey can post a snap on snapcraft, and… they do. Canonical is just as bad. They took it upon themselves to package up a lot of commercial-level open-source software 3 or 4 years ago… and then have done fuck all with it ever since. Zero updates to the original snaps they put there in the initial population of the Snap store (yes they do maintain a select few things, but only a small percentage of the flood of obsolete software in the Snap store). The result is people looking to install apps who poke the Snap store, go “oh hey, the application I want is there”, install it, and then get all pissy with the vendor… who looks about in surprise wondering how a potential customer managed to find such an old version (happened with at least 2 of my employers, and I’ve come across many more). Go search Reddit (or Google) for obsolete snap discussions. There’s no shortage people pointing at the same issue.

    vikingtons,
    @vikingtons@lemmy.world avatar

    I wasn’t aware of this situation, that’s really good to know.

    I’m not keen on the snaps being centralised behind a proprietary server. I don’t really get why anyone would put up with that in light of Flatpak.

    nakal,
    @nakal@kbin.social avatar

    This doesn't seem to be a problem with snap. Canonical probably tried to show vendors a way how to distribute software commercially. But vendors are on the level of cavemen and don't know shit about Linux even after serving a solution. Or they simply don't care about building up a market opportunity.

    I don't want to defend Ubuntu. I don't like Ubuntu especially, but it might be a simple explanation.

    Numpty,

    It’s a problem with Canonical. They stepped up and created the snaps and then abandoned them instead of maintaining them. They still maintain the core that they include with the distro… it’s all the extras they created to pad out the store… and then abandoned. “Look the snap store has so many packages”… yeah… no… it doesn’t.

    Why would a company who makes a commercial level open source package want to add snaps to their already broad Linux offering? They typically already build RPM (covering RHEL, Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, etc.) and DEB (covering Debian, Ubuntu, all Ubuntu derivatives, etc.)… and have a tar.gz to cover anything they missed. Why should they add the special snowflake snap just to cover Ubuntu which is already well covered by the DEB hey already make?

    Sure, show vendors what’s possible, but if Canonical stepped up to make the snaps, then they should still be maintaining them. It’s not a business opportunity… its more bullshit from Canonical that no one wants.

    EmilyIsTrans,
    @EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    I’m pretty happy using Ubuntu. Its got a decent UI and works well enough with little fuss. As much as I enjoy tinkering, I use my Ubuntu machines for work and I really only need something simple that works out of the box.

    EmilyIsTrans,
    @EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    Also, while the applications I use can be installed on other platforms, they’re only supported on Ubuntu.

    jimmy90,

    i heard all this shit about linux and nvidia

    i installed Ubuntu and EVERYTHING WORKS

    BiggestBulb,
    @BiggestBulb@kbin.social avatar

    For anything lower-spec (like, <4Gb of RAM), Ubuntu absolutely CHUGS because of Snaps. Flatpak has no such issue.

    Ironically, Lubuntu (a lightweight Ubuntu fork) worked the best for me while I was using it. No slowness, but I installed pretty much everything using Apt (didn't know about Flatpak back then).

    I ended up having it lock up and freeze on the sign-in page though, so I moved on to the slightly heavier Linux Mint.

    sovietknuckles,
    @sovietknuckles@hexbear.net avatar

    I have a desktop with Fedora

    IMO snaps aren’t bad enough to choose IBM instead

    CrabAndBroom,

    Personally I don’t really hate Ubuntu, but I tend to find that everything it does, there’s something else that does it slightly better.

    For example, it’s supposed to be a good ‘beginner’ distro or good for something that ‘just works’, but IMO things like Mint or Pop!OS do it a little better these days. Snap is supposed to be a nice simple way to manage packages without worrying about dependencies, but Flatpak does it better and so on.

    So yeah I don’t hate it, I just don’t see any particular reason to really use it. Opinions may vary though of course.

    pineapplelover,

    Snap is terrible. If you have a bunch of snaps on your system, it becomes very slow and sluggish

    Rosco,

    If you want something user-friendly, use Linux Mint. There’s really no reason to choose Ubuntu over this. And for any other use it’s outclassed by other distros, it does not fill a niche. And I personally think that GNOME is crap and quite hideous.

    banneryear1868,

    Ubuntu is fine it’s just a more bloated Debian geared towards being as user friendly as possible. Nothing wrong with that.

    neonred, (edited )

    Or just use Debian sid, which effectively is Debian in a rolling variant. 🚀

    akrot,

    Dietpie is a lightweight debian not ubuntu. And debian is still one of the top choices (if not the) for servers.

    Ubuntu is just debian with extra bad decisions.

    JoeKrogan, (edited )
    @JoeKrogan@lemmy.world avatar

    I used to use Ubuntu before unity and switched to Debian 👑 in 2012. I still have to use Ubuntu for work and I just get on with it. It could be worse… I could have to use windows.

    Anyway my main gripes with Ubuntu are snaps and how they keep swapping packages in apt to be installed as snaps .

    I dont hate it, its a tool and in most cases I can use it and there is no problem if not there are other options.

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