Semi-related:
Does anyone else feel like Ubuntu has lost a lot of its momentum over the past few years? I don't hear about things they're doing nearly as often anymore.
Does anyone else feel like Ubuntu has lost a lot of its momentum over the past few years? I don't hear about things they're doing nearly as often anymore.
- still engaging with vendors into making hardware work on Linux
- they're contributing optimizations to gnome 3
- their still massive user base is testing stuff, discovering bugs and then those things get fixed upstream or at least get into Debian
- making bad decisions so people jump off Ubuntu and go back to Debian, my beloved distro
Amen. Debian is the best.
I just really wish they had an answer to Ubuntu's HWE stack[1] for mid-Stable hardware updates :(
(Backports don't count due to their ad-hoc & unsupported nature)
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sed -i 's/buster/testing/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt dist-upgrade
1. Pin unstable lower than testing.
2. Configure apt/debsecan as outlined here: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=725934
Even in Debian 10, swap is enabled by default in the installer (maybe depending on system RAM) and the encryption guide will refuse to proceed in that case. Only way out of that is switching to another TTY and disabling it manually. The situation and docs around networking and DNS are a bit of a mess with regards to the not-yet-complete migration to systemd services from ifupdown and resolveconf. At least it's not defaulting to networkmanager.
At the same time, selecting UTC as timezone from the installer is weirdly hard to find, a lot is predetermined from "select your location".
It's like it's still designed with the use case of non-technical desktop users from 15 years ago in mind
I'm suspecting very few Debian lovers actually use the installer and instead prepare their own installation with self-built images ready for flashing or upload. It says something that Arch Linux, which doesn't have a guided or graphical installation, is a smoother installation experience for a user new to the distro. The wikis for each are night and day.
Don't get me wrong, I love Debian too but there's some areas where it's unnecessarily confusing for those who haven't grown accustomed to its quirks over the years.
They've got their shit together in terms of documentation.
* well-maintained and large user-share
* lowest common denominator for most deployments; regardless on if it's cloud, SBCs, bare-metal servers or desktop, Debian's default installation has a base set of packages for any scenario; just enough that you don't miss anything vital but not making opinionated choices when there is one to be made. For anything I use it for, the only additional things that go on all machines is userspace utilities like vim/tmux/htop. I never felt a need to remove anything.
Snap: Loved only by Canonical devotees. Zero distros supporting Snap exclusively by default.
Red Hat: SystemD
Canonical: Upstart, dead to SystemD.
Red Hat & Others: Wayland
Canonical: Mir. Dead to Wayland.
Red Hat & Others: GNOME 3
Canonical: Unity1-7. Dead to GNOME.
RHEL added support for Upstart as a hybrid with SysV, however it was never heavily used and not by most of their own packaged RPMs. Spin up a CentOS 6 server, install a bunch of daemons then go compare /etc/init/ to /etc/rc.d/init.d/.
SystemD has managed to gain near-ubiquitous usage, to the point where plenty of upstreams now only ship systemd unit files, but I would argue that this change was first initiated by the introduction and adoption of Upstart in both Ubuntu and RH.
For example, Upstart. RH invents SystemD, Canonical stays with Upstart until, like, 2017 before giving up.
You do want to know the alternative is stable and better for a few years before even thinking to make the change.
It's easy to laugh at the history after it took place.
They then pivoted to Snaps, where they are so proud of themselves on their echo chamber of a forum that they can't see that the end users are less than impressed.
Honestly, I've stopped paying attention because Ubuntu is great at building technology with critical, mind-bogglingly obvious flaws that sink the project every time.
I think the "problem" is that Canonical has figured out - correctly - that all their worthwhile stuff needs to be done upstream of Ubuntu. Even their packagers know to try to get things in Debian first and to reduce diffs when they can. Unfortunately, that means that the unique Ubuntu secret sauce is all the weird stuff that no upstream wants, and if you're in no hurry to upgrade, you may as well run Debian.
This is pretty good for the world but I worry about the sustainability of Canonical as a company. I'm worried they'll end up like Mozilla - senior management finally realizes that doing excellent technical work in upstream communities isn't a net positive for their bottom line and has no idea how to remediate that other than layoffs.
My first "cup of ubuntu" was well over 10 years ago now and I've always wanted to see it succeed. It's repeated squandering of so much potential.
Edit: I was referring to LXD usage on Ubuntu-20.04 and versions going forward (I should have made that clear in the post). Sure, snap isn't technically required since you can "change distros" or "compile it yourself." Those just aren't great options IMHO (and doubly sad since I'm using the distro of the company that makes the product and the better experience is on another distro).
I think Arch has it in their repositories, for example.
lxd - Transitional package - lxd -> snap (lxd)I compile new versions, test it out in staging, and then ship the update to production servers, which is currently a mix of Ubuntu, and OpenSUSE.
Do not get me wrong, I do not like snap (or flatpak for that matter), and would much prefer if LXD was available through a PPA, or the default Ubuntu repositories, but LXD itself does not require snap, it is just the default distribution method.
* Void Linux
* Alpine Linux
* Arch Linux
* NixOS
* openSUSE
* Gentoo
There could be more. None of those distributors are using Snaps for LXD.
even Arch Linux listed it in their default repo.[0]
[0]:https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/lxd/
On the server if anything it seems like Ubuntu has gotten stronger.