Every couple of years I think to myself “You know, I can’t actually remember why I don’t like Ubuntu. It must have just been some weird one-off thing that soured me on it last time. Besides, I’ve got N more years of Linux experience under my belt, so I know how to avoid sticky situations with apt, and they’ve had N more years to make their OS more user friendly! I pride myself on not holding grudges, and if this distro still gets recommended to newbies, how bad can it possibly be, especially for someone with my level of expertise?”
Try Ubuntu Mate, it’s actually ok. I’m alot not the biggest fan of snaps. I try and get .debs or apt get, where I can. App Images seem a little odd to me, but Flatpack seems alright.
Would you mind to explain why? I have yet to try it, but the concept seems nice: predisposing a set of tools useful for linux gamers/creators for those who are not technical
While it has a bunch of patches that can boost gaming performance and such it’s stability takes a hit in some areas. It’s also not quite as user friendly as other options. It can be better for those looking for a fedora base if that’s what they prefer, tho.
It’s also extremely opinionated & while it’s a great fit for those who have a matching use case, for general uses it’s a bit too opinionated.
It’s neither the worst, nor the best. It just highly depends on use case.
I’ve watched a few comparison videos, and the performance gains are negligible when compared to other common distros, so that’s definitely not the point in installing it.
The good part about nobara is the set of tools that come preinstalled and the wecome program which lets you update the system, the drivers and the codecs.
Nothing you couldn’t replicate in a few minutes on another distro of course
Admittedly, it’s been a few years and I’m coming due, but let’s see what I can remember…
apt will brick itself if it gets interrupted mid transaction with no clear recourse apart from a total reinstall, so try not to get greedy and Ctrl+C if it looks like dpkg is hung
trying to install any software that isn’t already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you’re quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile
snapcraft, need I say more? Firefox takes several minutes to start up, we don’t talk about disk usage, installing a package with apt will sometimes install the snap version anyway requiring a Windows-registry-edit-esque hack to disable, and the last time I checked in, the loop devices it creates didn’t even get hidden in the file manager.
I’ve also definitely encountered my fair share of bugs and broken packages which are always fun to fix
What do you recommend for ubuntu alternative? I want to leave for something else, but I also want all my programs to install and work fine. If an app supports ubuntu, would it support debian as well?
You can start by trying Linux Mint, it’s based directly on Ubuntu but with most problematic bits of Ubuntu removed. Mint comes in several sub-flavors that mostly change the way your desktop looks and acts, start with the Cinnamon edition as it’s the safest bet.
apt will brick itself if it gets interrupted mid transaction with no clear recourse apart from a total reinstall, so try not to get greedy and Ctrl+C if it looks like dpkg is hung
You can dpkg -r the package you tried to install then apt won’t complain about missing dependency packages for your app as it won’t be marked for to be installed
trying to install any software that isn’t already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you’re quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile
There isn’t a big global community repo per say like aur but anyone can host their own repos with PPAs, you just need to add them to your lists
Most apt quirks are there with Debian too, not just an Ubuntu thing. The rest of the things you mentioned are fair.
trying to install any software that isn’t already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you’re quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile
In fairness it does have the PPA system which predates the AUR and does provide a good job of providing third party amd semi-third party software.
But you’re right that Ubuntu has sold out on building snaps for software instead of ppas.
The PPAs weren’t that useful. I mean they worked fine for the purpose, but if you used too many of them you’d eventually get your system into a dependency hell. That meant packages were stuck without updates and also blocking others from updating.
The other thing was that even if you kept clear of PPAs it was anybody’s guess if you could upgrade to the next release. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t and you’d have to reinstall from scratch.
Put together it meant after a while you didn’t bother upgrading period, or upgraded only major releases but by reinstalling from scratch every single time (and preserving /home). It was a chore and I resented it and kept putting it off.
That Ubuntu would install the snap version of certain apps when I installed them directly in the terminal was the main reason I left Ubuntu after a few years. So annoying!
Debian world - apt sucks. For something with a sole purpose of resolving a dependency tree, it’s surprisingly bad at that.
Redhat world - everything is soooo old. I can see why business people like it, buy I rarely, if ever, agree with business people.
Opensuse world - I’ve only tried it once, probably 15 years ago. Didn’t really know my way around computers all that much at the time, but it didn’t click and I’ve left it. Later on I found out about their selling out to Microsoft and never bothered touching it again.
Arch - it was my daily for a year or two. Big fan. It still runs my email. At some point the size of packages started to annoy me, though. Still has the best wiki. I’ve never really bothered with the spinoffs, as the model of Arch makes them useless and more problematic to deal with.
I’ve got the Gentoo bug now. For the first time I genuinely feel ~/. A lean, mean system of machines :)
Later on I found out about their selling out to Microsoft and never bothered touching it again.
Ah yes, when Microsoft looked for a contractor to develop FOSS implementations of some Windows technologies to meet demands by the EU and Mark Shullteworth made a big fuss of it until making deals with Microsoft himself…
What about that time Suse supported Microsoft’s claim that Linux infringes on their patents? Ms got enough grounds to sue everyone even marginally related to Linux for over a decade, Suse got a contract to sell licences that prevent Ms from suing companies for using Linux.
The wider company, that included Novell at that time, entered some cross patent licensing deal. It happens all the time. Didn’t kill Linux as we can comfortably say these days.
With enough sophistry anything can seem insignificant. The Linux we use today has developed within the constraints of Microsoft threatening to sue anyone and everyone. The only reason they could do that was due to suse, as the longest running commercial distro, publicly saying that Linux infringes on those patents.
I need to try Gentoo again. The installer used to be absolute garbage and required a ton of work to get the a usable system if you deviated too far from a normal computer setup.
There is no installer as such. You copy an archive, extract it and rebuild @world. Anything beyond that is up to you. I’m sticking to openrc - haven’t had any issues since libxcrypt news item. Can’t even recall what it was.
Mind to elaborate a little bit more about the Manjaro problem? I am driving it since a couple of years without any issue but I keep hearing this… now I am afraid :)
I hope it works for you forever. I am not going to get in an argument with the other Manjaro users here that will come to argue with you.
Just keep in mind that most of the people warning you away from Manjaro have a story that basically sums up as “I used to love Manjaro until, one day, it totally broke on me. Now I won’t touch it.” Sadly, this includes me. Will you join us one day? I hope not.
People who do stuff they shouldn’t, like using non-recommended kernel or driver versions or replace critical system components from AUR, then blame it on the distro when stuff breaks.
People who don’t understand how AUR works and think that Manjaro holding back binary packages for a couple of weeks has any effect on AUR (which is built from source…)
People who can’t get over the times when they didn’t renew their certs or when they accidentally DDoS’ed the AUR. It doesn’t matter if the distro is good or not. Those instances of carelessness should be held against it forever.
People who can’t stand the fact it’s a commercial distro.
People who can’t stand the thought of any Arch-based distro that dares to do anything different from Arch (other than make the install easier, that one seems to be acceptable for some reason; but there are more extreme people who dislike that too).
I am trying to think of how to respond to this without being a jerk.
Let me skip to the end. Until very recently, I thought of Manjaro users as innocents that just did not understand the risk. Like islanders living next to a volcano that had never erupted in their lifetime.
I still view most Manjaro users that way. Manjaro defenders though I now think of as dog owners whose animals have bitten multiple times. When told, the owner insists that “my dog would never do that” or “if it did, you must have done something wrong”. I am done arguing with those people. All I can do is warn others that this dog has bitten several of us and you may not want to enter that yard. If you do, who knows, the dog may be friendly. Or not. Again, all I can tell you is that many of us have scars. Use that information as you will.
Most “Manjaro detractors” I have encountered have years of experience with both Manjaro and other Arch distros. Their tales come from experience. When they share their cautionary tales, there are often Manjaro defenders whose best defence is just to deny that what the “detractors” are saying ( about their own experience ) is real.
My core question for the defenders would be, if it is our fault, why do we only encounter the problems on Manjaro?
Let’s go through the bullets above one by one:
I never did that on Manjaro. I probably do it more on EOS. Why only problems on Manjaro?
why does my lack of knowledge of how the AUR works only break things on Manjaro?
this bullet is the best. It admits that Manjaro has repeatedly broken things but we should not hold it against it. Literally this is saying that “Manjaro breaks things” is wrong because, while it does, we should just get over it. Hilarious.
how does attacking the “detractors” address the claim that Manjaro breaks things?
how does attacking the “detractors” address the claim that Manjaro breaks things?
I got in a lengthy back and forth with a Manjaro fan the other day where I repeatedly related the ways that Manjaro used to break on me and how that does not happen for me on vanilla Arch or EndeavourOS. They just kept coming back telling me that it could not have happened and, if I thought it could, that I did not understand how the AUR works. It was insane. Basically, this guy could not follow what I was saying to him. His response to his inability to understand the scenario that I was describing was to insult my intelligence and expertise.
Look loser. I don’t care if you believe me that your dog bites. I will continue to warn people and they can decide if they want to risk it or not.
Isn’t it funny how none of the people who claim that Manjaro “just broke” on them can recall what the problem was? They can’t point at a bug report. It’s nothing they did, naturally (they’re “experienced” users, after all). It just broke.
Meanwhile, it never broke for me or others, in years of use, with dozens of AUR packages installed. So yeah. I think I’ll stick to concrete evidence like a rational person, thanks.
A few years ago I wanted to get away from Ubuntu on my desktop PC so I sat down and considered about a dozen of the most recommended Linux distros install images.
My requirements were:
Image should be live so I could test it without installing.
Should work out of the box with everything I could think to throw at it: wifi, Bluetooth devices including controllers, network shares, play music/video out of the box, printing, audio devices on USB etc.
Easy to install and maintain. No need for brain-dead install or zero maintenance, I’m a seasoned Linux user and anyway I don’t want to be absurd, but I also don’t want to spend my spare time debugging or maintaining the desktop system. I have a server for that.
Recent packages and frequent updates, but stable.
Usable for everyday use, work (mostly Citrix and other forms of remote desktop) and of course gaming.
Rolling release.
Guess which distro ticked absolutely every single box.
Suit yourself. I’m telling you that you’re sleeping on one of the most user-friendly, up to date, gaming-ready, stable and generally hassle free distros out there, and it’s coming from someone who actually tried all the popular ones.
In exchange you just have to stick to a LTS kernel and not replace critical system components from AUR. Which I think you’ll agree are reasonable conditions for all Arch distros, heck, all distros.
Gentoo all the way since 20 years, on all kind of devices, going strong and never looked back.
Ubuntu, I hate you. A messy complex windows-esque caricature in the Linux world, where “somebody else” knows better than me and shoves it down my gully.
So there you go, my best and worst distros choice.
Been usig Debian for home and work and on hundreds of servers for 2 decades and it have been near flawless. Any issues i have had have always been my own fault.
While debian is the least offensive, I did explicitly say world. Add your buntus, mints, whathaveyou into the mix and shit hits the fan very quickly. Yes, real world runs that bollocks in prod. No, I do not agree with it.
I daily drive Fedora, but I’ve used Arch, OpenSUSE, Debian, and more. Once you get used to how Linux works, distro doesn’t really matter that much aside from edge case distros that operate totally differently like Nix. I chose Fedora because I like the dnf package manager.
The only distro I don’t like is Ubuntu. I had to setup a Linux VM at work so I figured Ubuntu would be a good choice for that. Firefox is painfully slow to open because of Snap, so I uninstall it and run “apt install firefox” which Ubuntu overrides and installs the Snap again.
Fuck. That. Deleted the VM and installed Debian instead.
Yeah, over the years they’ve all become largely the same except for package management and the locations of some config files and system binaries (/bin,/sbin,/usr/local/sbin, etc…). Some attempt to be a one size fits all model and contain everything that you’d want, while others give you the bare minimum.
As someone who hates Windows with a passion, once everyone recommend Linux Mint, I knew I had to try it.
I immediately had negative first impressions. I simply don’t wanna use something with a desktop environment that reminds me of something that I hate. I get that it makes transitioning a lot easier for many, but for me it simply looks too similar to Windows.
Swapping out KDE/Plasma for Gnome or anything else is dead simple most of the time. The DE isn’t locked to the distro, you can have multiple DEs and windowing systems (X and Wayland) installed at once. You can select them from your login manager.
Heh, no problem, never too late to learn. If you’re coming from Windows or OS X it’s easy to think that the WM/DE is tied to the OS but due to the way Linux is written, the entire GUI stack is separate from the base system. I use SDDM as my login manager and in the upper left-hand corner there is a drop-down to choose the DE and Windowing System.
Heh, no problem, never too late to learn. If you’re coming from Windows or OS X it’s easy to think that the WM/DE is tied to the OS but due to the way Linux is written, the entire GUI stack is separate from the base system. You can have both the old school X Windowing system and the new Wayland installed at the same time, along with many different Desktop Environments and Window Managers. I use SDDM as my login manager and in the upper left-hand corner there is a drop-down to choose the DE and Windowing System.
No one ever said learning something completely new was gonna be quick and easy. Take it piece by piece and follow tutorials. Installing Arch Linux will give you a good idea how everything fits together instead of just “click, click, click, reboot” and it’s installed. You don’t learn anything that way.
Manjaro - used to love it. Now the only distro I actively advise against
Garuda - just too much ( I prefer Arch / EndeavourOS )
Elementary - wanted to love it - just too limited
Gentoo - realized I just don’t want to build everything
RHEL Workstation - everything too old
Bhodi - honestly do not remember - long ago
Ubuntu - ok, let’s expand…
These days, I dislike Snaps. Ubuntu just never hit the sweet spot for me though. I was already an experienced Linux user when it appeared and preferred RPM based distros at the tome. Ubuntu always seemed slow and fragile to me. Setting things up, like Apache with Mono back in the day, was “different” on Ubuntu and that annoyed me. For most of its history, it is what I would recommend to new users but I just never liked it myself.
Debian Stable - ok, let’s expand
I really like Debian. It was also a little “alien” when I was using Fedora / Mandrake and the like but it never bothered me like Ubuntu. I ran RHEL / Centos as servers so I did not need Debian stability. As a desktop, Debian packages were always just a little too old ( especially for dev ). The lack of non-free firmware made it a pain.
These days though, Debian has been growing on me. The move to include non-free firmware has made it much more practical. With Flatpaks and Distrobox, aging packages is much less of a problem too. I could see myself using Debian. I am strongly considering moving to VanillaOS ( immutable Debian ).
I basically do not run any RHEL servers anymore. At home, I have a fair bit running Debian already ( Proxmox, PiHole, PiVPN, and a Minecraft server ).
EndeavourOS is my primary desktop these days ( and I love it ) but it is mostly for the AUR. A Debian base with an Arch Distrobox might be perfect. Void seems quite nice as well.
I have been an Open Source advocate forever ( and used to say Free Software and FLOSS ). I have used Linux daily since the 0.99 kernels and I even installed 386BSD back in the day. Despite that, the biggest “not for me” distros right now are anything too closely associated with the politics of the GNU project. It has almost made me want to leave Linux and I have considered moving to FreeBSD. I would love to use Haiku. OCI containers and the huge software ecosystem keep me on Linux though.
The distribution that intrigues me the most right now is Chimera Linux. I run it with an Arch distrobox and it may become my daily driver. The pragmatism of projects like SerenityOS really attracts me. Who knows it may be what finally pulls me away after 30+ years of Linux.
Apparently there’s a lot of hate for the devs/packaging team, people say updates break their systems all the time. I’ve used it on and off for a while years ago, personally and have had no issues. I put it on my parent’s computer over two years ago and they haven’t had any issues either.
Yep there seems to be a lot of hate for stupid reasons (“omg they forgot to renew the SSL cert of the archived forum”). I’ve been using it for 4+ years now and had zero major problems. I have even installed some exotic software from the AUR and am using them without any issues.
No downvote here my friend. I love arch, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. Plug-and-play distros are great too, they just have different strong points.
Haha, I’ve been daily driving slackware since the late 90s. I like to tinker and install a lot of stuff. I seem to break anything with an automated package manager and dependency resolution.
Nah, I’m just a hobbyist. I’m a n00b compared to all the regulars in the slackware channel on IRC. But I love tinkering and learning. I’d need your help to install vanilla arch, just like you’d probably need mine to get started on slackware. (The slackware install is actually super easy).
I’ve been trying to distrohop the past couple months, see what else is out there. I wasn’t paying attention installing Garuda and borked my EFI partition. I did manage to chroot into my still working slackware partition, but I couldn’t figure out how to re-install grub. So I formatted and did a fresh slackware install.
NixOS… for now. I was on Fedora and was looking for something new. Thought I’d try these new „immutable” distros. Then realised I didn’t know enough about normal ones yet, so I switched to Arch instead. Plus, Nix’ docs are horrendous imo
I tried NixOS too, and their docs are horrible for new users. I found myself looking for anything but the docs to get started. I decided to stay with my EndeavorOS install.
I ditched Ubuntu LTS for my homelab virtual machines around 20.04 when they started to push snaps, netplan and cloud-init, meaning I would have to spend a significant amount of effort redoing my bootstrap scripts for no good reason and learning skills that are only applicable in the Ubuntu ecosystem. I went with debian stable instead, and was left wondering why I hadn’t done that sooner. It’s like Ubuntu without all the weirdness.
Gentoo - too long compile time, especially on my dated CPU. I prefer my system to update quickly.
Linux Mint - don’t like apt, some packages I installed refused to work properly (like Lutris), and the color scheme which is admittedly customizable but I prefer rolling with defaults except when using WM.
Void Linux - after installing it I realized how much I actually missed systemd, couldn’t be arsed to symlink services manually. And yes, I realize that’s the whole point.
NixOS - realized how much there is to learn with the flakes and separating home configurations and whatever, and just gave up
Manjaro - I tried it twice at the beginning of my Linux journey, and both times the nvidia driver shat itself and gave me different problems that I couldn’t fix.
Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Arch though, as most of my problems probably boil down to “not the same packages”, “not pacman”, “need to learn new skills that weren’t in Arch” and so on. Though admittedly, I did try to explore with an open mind to find a new “cool” distro, but I’d always go back.
Ubuntu. Started out great but every release got worse with time.
I’ve always used KDE, so always was on kubuntu, or mint, but my latest kubuntu install managed to piss me off badly with its systemd taking over. A simple 10 seconds port=number config in sshd_config change now requires 20 minutes of searches, documentation readup, cursing, and jumping systemd hoops
FUCK systemd
Also FUCK SNAP. Absolute horrid garbage.
My next distro will be debian or some derivative, bye bye Ubuntu
I’ve learned to like systemd over time, but not snaps and how Canonical handles things.
Debian also uses systemd nowadays, maybe you can try devuan (I think that’s how it’s called,) which is debian based but without systemd. I only tried it once on a server but came back to debian.
Most distributions are fine honestly. Ubuntu is clearly not my thing. Not a fan of Redhat-based distribution either. I wanted to appreciate OpenSuse as they’ve been supporters of KDE for a long time but wasn’t comfortable with Yast.
Apart from that, Manjaro is awesome, Arch amazing, Debian brilliant, etc.
I don’t even remember how many years it’s been when Yast was actually needed. It’s optional since quite some time. Even installing the OS itself could technically be done through Calamares but I don’t think that’s worth the effort.
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