Counterpoint, Ubuntu is popular because it usually has what you need. For home stuff especially the limiting factor is usually time, not processing power.
I’d challenge that asking what do you really need above base Debian?
I’ve got a script to set up my debian servers and it doesn’t include much beyond adding docker, assigning users to groups, and adding a couple tools (just looked them up: sudo ca-certificates curl gnupg ufw).
I saw a significant decrease in idle CPU and RAM load by switching from Ubuntu-server to Debian Bookworm + those tools.
Anyone who bashes distros hasn't really understood Linux. The fact that you can choose gives us the ability to choose the right tool for the job. Ubuntu has pushed a few weird things into the Linux world, but the distro itself is still legit.
Documentation is always outdated and useless. GNOME is crap. apt has a dependency issue every week. Repos have software ranging from bleeding edge to horrendously outdated. Netplan is next level stupid and also decides to break for no reason. Systemd waits for network to boot by default because reasons. Versioning and LTS adds more magic fun to doing anything because of the aforementioned documentation. Last time I used it, still had crap interoperability when switching DEs for some weird reason. Canonical is the big dumb dumb. All the downstreams inherit the same problems like PopOS and elementary.
I took all of that experience and thought it was the default linux expectations until I got to try Debian for server and Fedora for desktop.
Unfortunately, people make the same mistake as me and then assume broken Ubuntu is just how linux is.
Credit though, it did get to teach me the general ins and outs of linux because I needed to fix or change something every other week.
Not OP, I like gnome and all but I Ubuntu’s extensions/custom version of gnome is awful and makes trying to change settings so much worse because the gnome documentation doesn’t always match with all of the changes Ubuntu adds on top. Maybe they’re talking about that?
That’s true, but installing a whole new desktop environment also kind of goes against the whole “ease of use” part. If someone’s going to go to a whole different flavor they might as well just use something like Mint or Mint DE unless they specifically need Ubuntu for a dev environment or program/driver compatibility. That way they can still get the ease of use benefit but without dealing with all of the weird oddities that Ubuntu can introduce.
Yeah I just find for newer users the amount of Ubuntu support has always been a huge plus if you’re just getting in to messing with Linux. It’s a lot better now but it used to be things like “how to do x on Ubuntu,” there would always be some super easy to follow tutorial. My personal preference is just a Debian install but the more catered experiences like Mint and Ubuntu do a great job at presenting Debian to daily users without any hassle.
It most certainly does. It’s the only distro that I do not trust anymore to do a proper job of automatically partitioning your drive during setup, after getting complaints from my parents that Ubuntu refused to install updates. Turned out it had created a rediciously small boot partition and was now complaining that it had not enough space left to install new kernel versions as they kept around all old ones. “Because users might want to use those”, according to their documentation. Bitch, you market yourself as the distro suitable for absolute beginners, but you not only expect them to know what a kernel is, but also that they clean them up their selves? What an absolutely moronic decision.
I’ve had broken installations after upgrades to a major version in the past and I’ve seen a number of colleagues switch to plain Debian or Arch derivatives after Ubuntu decided to crap out after a major upgrade.
I’ve seen Ubuntu systems not being able to upgrade due to circular dependencies that couldn’t be resolved by Apt, package Foo requires Bar, Bar requires Baz, Baz requires Foo. Or even packages from their own repository that couldn’t be upgraded because some dependency wasn’t available anymore.
Just a handful of the issues I’ve encountered with Ubuntu. Personally I’m done with that distro. If it works for you, by all means use it. But I don’t help friends and colleagues (we all get to choose our own distro fortunately, but also have to fix issues ourselves) anymore when they decide to go Ubuntu. Use a proper distro if you want my help, not that Fisher-Price ‘My First Linux’ crap.
Seems like you’re currently using Pop! OS. Just wanted to give you some tips: Don’t install Manjaro, AFAIK their packages are mostly outdated and the distro says it supports the Arch User Repository when it clearly does not and breaks the system. Some more distros that you can use are Nobara (which is Fedora based so there is a chance you will face the same issues), Linux Mint, KDE Neon and Ubuntu.
After researching Nobara was actually my first choice of OS! Sadly, I couldn’t get the live USB off their site to work, all I ever got was a black screen when booting from the USB. When I did it in command line it threw some kernel errors.
Fedora KDEPlasma was my second choice as I liked the desktop layout. It didn’t like it when I installed the nvidia drivers.
Fedora 39 workstation was my last fedora. I actually got Nvidia working on it. But when I tried to play a video from my NAS server it was choppy and would crash when tracking within the video file. Which I’m guessing is some Nvidia compatibility issues based on what I was reading on the forums, which is apparently a known and unresolved issue in Fedora 39 as of now.
Pop!OS just worked. Off the rip, zero issues whatsoever with Nvidia or graphics issues. Most issues have been caused by my inexperience so far.
You can read about my experience with Fedora on my day 1 post if you’d like. Bottom line, there were a TON of issues with Nvidia compatibility, and VLC ran like garbage on it.
Linux users say that this is some kind of easy to use, can replace windows at any point in time, yet one of the most popular distros in existence is definitely not ready for prime time.
My day 2 and 3 posts have been pretty highly upvoted! Almost like linux users only like hearing the good and not the bad.
You came in here and started this saying it’s basically my fault I had a bad time with Fedora. Your condescending and pretentious attitude has been noted, but I’m a new user to Linux my man. None of this is familiar. As my day 2 and 3 posts show I can actually troubleshoot and fix things, if I couldn’t figure it out, I’d say it’s indicative of production and deployment issues on the developers end.
But please feel free to not respond, you’re exactly the kind of Linux user that gives the community it’s negative stigma.
[…] and started this saying it’s basically my fault I had a bad time with Fedora.
It is/was.
[…] Your condescending and pretentious attitude has been noted, […]
I’ll come back to this further down.
[…] but I’m a new user to Linux my man.
And evidently a very ignorant one at that. You come at it with preconceived notions of how distributions should work, and then get angry when they don’t, when five minutes of googling could have prevented your problems. Only to be followed by troll-level low effort rants on the internet.
None of this is familiar.
And blind trial and error is no good way to change that.
As my day 2 and 3 posts show I can actually troubleshoot and fix things, if I couldn’t figure it out, I’d say it’s indicative of production and deployment issues on the developers end.
Or, your aforementioned ignorance and wrong preconceived notions of how you think things should work.
As your day 1 post shows, you have the attention span of a squirrel and frustration tolerance of a toddler. Your assumption, that your opinion on a distribution, after spending less than one day with it, has any merit or value is plain arrogant.
But please feel free to not respond, […]
You can always walk away from this.
[…] you’re exactly the kind of Linux user that gives the community it’s negative stigma.
You are exactly the kind of person, why I’m in favor of something akin to a drivers license for computers.
[…] Your condescending and pretentious attitude has been noted, […]
There’s nothing noteworthy about your arrogance, ignorance, lack of frustration tolerance and attention span.
Then feel free to fuck off.
Your opinions have the substance of a vacuum and structural integrity of a house of cards. Do yourself and “us” (the linux community) a favor and kindly fuck off yourself.
I did. As someone who is also new to Linux and to programming, I’ve run into similar hurdles and it is frustrating. Now I’m not trying to build a gaming system, but just something to learn on. I’m still learning to read through and interpret documentation and it often get way too over my head that I need to ask the community for help; and honestly, I don’t like to because of reactions like yours.
It’s really disheartening to come to the community, try to ask for help and to be told that I should just do it right, or to catch flak for not asking the rifht question, or to have someone share a chunk of code and say, “just use this,” which doesn’t help me learn.
To be clear, my previous comment was a pre-coffee and just irked me in the wrong way; I do owe you an apology for that so, sorry.
I’m still learning to read through and interpret documentation and it often get way too over my head that I need to ask the community for help; […]
And there’s nothing wrong with that. And if you just ask, not even nicely, you’ll usually get productive help. I know I’ve provided help many times, no matter how “noobish” the question.
[…] and honestly, I don’t like to because of reactions like yours.
If you don’t act like a massive asshole, you don’t get such reactions.
It’s really disheartening to come to the community, try to ask for help and to be told that I should just do it right, or to catch flak for not asking the rifht question, or to have someone share a chunk of code and say, “just use this,” which doesn’t help me learn.
He didn’t come and asked. He ranted and shat on everything and everybody. He even received some help despite that. His reaction was offensive and more verbal diarrhea.
To be clear, my previous comment was a pre-coffee and just irked me in the wrong way; I do owe you an apology for that so, sorry.
I hear you I hear you. Whenever people ask me about my device I usually tell them that you just exchange the windows problems for linux problems. I don’t mind fixing things as much because the device really feels like my own so I am more forgiving than I was on my other devices. Don’t know how that is for other distros since there are so many but in my experience but yeah I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to repair my bluetooth audio.
Linux users say that this is some kind of easy to use, can replace windows at any point in time, yet one of the most popular distros in existence is definitely not ready for prime time.
Well should we consider device specific issues? First of all thoose device manufacturers never made it for linux and when a new device comes in, its likely broken.
What I would say linux can easily replace windows is when a working linux install(i.e. when its running in a fully compatible device), can do all computing needs. And I think linux actually does that.
I know you wouldn’t buy a new device for linux but even windows when you manually install in a device requires much setup and driver installs to get working well. But in the windows side, drivers are always availiable unlike in linux where community needs to reverse engineer and make the drivers themselves, which is always late than windows.
Yeah I think that’s kinda the point. Fedora does a bunch of things in really specific ways that aren’t at all like Debian based distros or Mac or windows. Eg - Selinux. So you, initial experience is pretty poor if you don’t know a decent amount about what’s going on
The fact that this exists makes me so happy. I doubt I’d ever use a smart buttplug, but I’m oddly relived that those who want Bluetooth up their ass can do so using open-source software.
Real question if I can sneak one in. If I want to buy a machine suitable to run Darktable for photo editing, which Linux distribution would be ideal for that? Other than photo editing, I might watch movies in browser while browsing other sites on a different screen. That’s all I really use PC to do these days. Advice? I don’t want to accidently use a butt plug.
Edit for additional context if it wasn’t immediately apparent: I am a casual who just doesn’t like Microsoft. But I don’t use anything else that concerns me for a switch to Linux. I just want easy setup and use for my purposes.
I always recommend mint. There are a lot of small convenience features that remove friction points for new users and because it’s based on the very popular Ubuntu there are a lot of documentation out there.
I’ve switched from Windows 11 to Pop!_OS and don’t have any complaints. It looks different to Windows (no start menu like windows) but that wasn’t a turn off for me. If you want something that looks closer to a windows machine, Mint is a great option
I recommend EndeavourOS primarily because of it’s ease of use and rolling distro means you’ll have access to the latest bug fixes and patches (and a very active and supportive community), whereas it does come with the drawback of requiring to fix things every now and then if you’ve installed packages from places other than endeavour/Aur or require packages/apps that are older.
Yay (package manager) is very easy to get using as a beginner, however, if you don’t want rolling updates and just large update packages similar in scope to windows service pack updates I’d recommend popos or the sister/base os ubuntu. (fedora apparently may be good in this instance as well but I’ve very little contact with the OS and have been avoiding RHEL-related products recently because of their anti-consumer and anti-open source actions recently).
Ultimately it’s definitely recommended that you try a few distro’s to get a feel for what you like and then customize to your hearts content.
distrowatch.com if you’d like a more in depth review of various distros and what their performance bonuses or problems are.
EndeavourOS with xfce4 is very clean and quick to pick up with their little introductory/learning module that they include (once installed or on live, it will provide a popup that includes the following):
I have no experience with Darktable. But, really any and every distro should do it. Every distro comes with a learning curve. My personal advice would be not to go with distro derivatives. In the early days, Ubuntu was quite good, for making Debian “more accessible” to a larger audience and people unfamiliar with linux. I still like it for being an African success story. But, I can’t recommend it anymore for a slew of reasons. So, I’d say, go with debian, fedora, or even Arch. If you want to go with debian, you should know about non-free. If you go with fedora, you should know about rpmfusion. If you want to go with Arch, you should be comfortable with a more bare-bones and hands-on experience and reading the Arch-wiki (which is one of the most extensive and best wikis out there, and even useful if you use another distro). If you want something stable that just works and don’t need the newest of the new software, use debian. If you want the bleeding edge, that mostly just works, go with fedora. If you want the bleeding edge, want maximum control, and are not afraid to stay on top of it, go with Arch. Of course, many other distros could be a good pick for you. They all have pros and cons.
Docker images should really be distroless most of the time. There’s way too much junk in the majority of Docker images when in most cases, you really just need your app and whatever dynamic libraries or runtimes it requires (if you can’t statically compile it). You don’t need an OS in there!
Also there’d be way more servers running Debian compared to Ubuntu.
You often (if not most of the time) need some infrastructure in OCI containers (while we’re at it, let’s get rid of the misnomer Docker image). And that’s going to be some subset of a distribution hand-crafted for that purpose. Most of the time, that should be Alpine, because they provide the slimmest base image.
Most of the time, that should be Alpine, because they provide the slimmest base image.
Distroless containers (e.g. github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless, Chiselled Ubuntu, etc) are often smaller than Alpine ones. Google’s smallest Debian-based one is around 2MB.
I have a Dockerized C# app… I’m going to try .NET Native AOT (which was improved a lot in .NET 8, released today) to compile it into a self-contained binary, and see how well it works with a distroless base container.
I’m curious to hear how that works out. I’m a big fan of C#; not so much the Microsoft ecosystem. I’d say for maximum scalability you’d want languages which compile to small binaries. So, Go, Rust, C++, C, and theoretically some others. The approach with Java and C# to bundle the framework, JIT, etc, and then try to shave off as much as you can get away with feels kind of backwards. And I get the excitement of the Java folks when they manage to create a self-contained binary with GraalVM and co of 12mb. Like, that’s impressive, but had you developed the same thing with Go it would be .5mb. Curious to see how .NET fares in that comparison to Java.
I’d love to agree but unfortunately with them pushing snaps I can’t. When I used snaps I found them to be extremely buggy and if I didn’t already know there were other distributions with other better package managers I would’ve straight up assumed it was a Linux problem and I’d just have gone back to windows. If there was no other Noob-friendly distro out there I could say “sure it’s an ok distro” but there are better alternatives that don’t do the same shitty decisions as canonical (like Linux Mint which is the one I recommend to every noob coming from windows or Pop_OS! for those who want something similiar to MacOS).
Just because it’s Lemmy, I’m gonna share my “shitty Ubuntu” story, which is less about Ubuntu being shitty and more about me being a noob.
I had a 2004 MacBook that my grandmother gave me for college when she upgraded. I didn’t hate it, but this being my first experience with a laptop, when the bottom 2/3 of the screen started blinking in and out, I thought maybe it was a software problem, so with the help of an SD card and my buddy’s old CRT setup I downloaded Ubuntu onto a thumb drive. When I went back to my parents’ place I decided that that was the moment to install, because my dad was really into jailbreaking his iPhone at the time, so I thought it’d be cool if we did kinda similar things together. Unfortunately because I couldn’t see the bottom of the screen, I had no idea about the progress of the install, got impatient, and just decided to turn the thing off. This had the effect of deleting the partition tables, and it would have been like $200 to get a new hard drive. I would have paid it, but before I could, the guy I had helping me fix the thing moved away and took my lappy with him.
I’d have gone with a spork. Not particularly good at anything it was built to do, but functional enough to get the job done, and pretty straight forward to use.
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