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Comment by severino | Hacker News Reader

I also use Ubuntu a lot, and while I'm disappointed about this Snap thing, I'm still not looking for alternatives.

At least until 22.04 I could dodge snaps pretty easily, but now, since Firefox is now a snap package, things went worse, at least for me. I gave it a try and, while the experience was not as bad as I feared, I soon encountered problems with things like trying to use a smartcard reader for signing documents, something that used to work out of the box with the non sanboxed version of Firefox and now it's broken with snaps (or at least some weeks ago).

I ended up downloading a Firefox tarball from the official site. I know you can use a PPA for that, but I don't feel comfortable having software as critical as a web browser from a third-party Ubuntu PPA.

Maybe I should give Pop OS a try...

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Firefox ESR is available in a PPA that is maintained by Mozilla. Even though that's a third party, that's as close to an official package as it gets.

I'm just hoping that it will remain available until this snap thing subsides, or until I make the switch to GNU Guix or something.

Edit: It seems that the latest stable Firefox is available, too.[1] I thought it was only ESR and that Ubuntu's switch to snap was requested by Mozilla. I'm confused.

[1] https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/ppa/+pack...

It seems like they've been including stable, non-ESR builds for at least the last few releases (I only went back a few pages of previous builds). Launchpad is confusing for me, but my impression is that they're using that PPA to build the stable release using the Launchpad service and then packing that build as a snap. It seems like they're just uploading the snap package rather than building it using Launchpad.

If that's the case, maybe it's a limitation of Launchpad?

AFAIK, that PPA is not maintained by Mozilla. Source: I work for Mozilla.

That ... is good to know. Do you know if Mozilla takes issue with it being called "mozillateam" then?

That's what I was afraid of about that PPA (and every PPA I ever used): you can never be sure who's behind a PPA, and who may push an update there :-)

I run Debian on all my systems, and to be honest firefox is something I always maintain separately.

/opt/firefox contains the latest binary download from the official site.

The application is one that updates frequently enough that the gain is worthwhile.

This. The packages make sense for the apps that don't change frequently, but browsers don't match this description.

It's the opposite of the way things should be. Package managers should have the most utility for applications that update frequently, because isn't the raison d'etre of a package manager to make updating programs easier?

Some distros manage to get it right. I haven't had any trouble using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed's packaged Firefox.

I've discovered a workflow I'm happy with.

I run Debian stable on my workstation, and manage most of my packages with `apt`. As such, everything "just works," and flawlessly.

For the handful of packages that I want to upgrade aggressively, I manage them with Nix[1].

I've been doing this for maybe two or three years, and despite a little extra complexity, it feels like a best-of-both worlds scenario. I get the rock-solid stability of Debian stable, but the one or two packages that need to stay cutting-edge are able to do so.

I also don't have trouble with package conflicts, because the entire point of Nix is to prevent those kinds of problems.

This has been great for me. Do recommend.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_(package_manager)

The package repository should be the off-the-shelf items in the grocery store, while installing separately is the big-ticket and custom made items. Installing apps separately doesn't scale very well, but it makes sense to just do it for firefox and certain others. IMO.

Firefox is "big ticket", but not "custom made"; one firefox package or installer should suit everybody fine. I think package managers can do very well with Firefox if the package is managed well.

Exactly. I use Linux mint (without snaps) and Firefox works great. It updates pretty frequently through mint’s software update tool, which is just running apt and installing package updates.

All this talk of snaps and using PPAs sounds like a an unnecessary headache. What’s the point of a package manager if it doesn’t keep your packages up to date?

It's the user's choice how to install Firefox for sure. The opa works fine on ubuntu

You are right its not the fact that it updates frequently. It is when the distro package is an inferior option either because of version or build options.

How do you handle updates? Do you download the new version from the official site from time to time and replace the old one? I know Firefox can "auto-update" itself but I guess it won't (or shouldn't) be allowed to modify things under "/opt" when running as a user process.

Yes, I have /opt/firefox-1.2.3 with the various binary downloads, and I have a symlink /opt/firefox which gets updated to point to the latest release.

I tend to see new releases announced on lwn.net, and this site, so I just make sure I download it a day or two later so that I'm always current.

> Maybe I should give Pop OS a try...

I'm a big fan: it's like Ubuntu, but with much of Canonical's divisive changes reverted, and with a few other improvements.

I switched from Ubuntu to Pop!_OS a few releases back when I got a System76 computer. (I also use it on my Lenovo laptop.)

I wish Pop OS would tackle KDE. It's a much better DE (particularly if you like to customize), but there are very few (if any) distributions which have an opinionated tuned experience out of the box.

KDE would be superb if it weren't so buggy. KDE is aimed in the right direction, trying to do and be all the things a desktop environment should do and be. But unfortunately the implementation is frequently deficient. Even seemingly basic things frequently break, like re-applying mouse preferences when you unplug and replug your mouse: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435113

A couple more recent annoyances, of many: Plasma looks great but frequently my panels go missing and don't reappear until I restart plasma shell. Dolphin has all the functionality I want and looks great, but frequently fails to watch directories for new files, forcing me to F5. Lots of little things like this turn into death by a thousand papercuts.

That might be the case, but is there an alternative with a similar feature set?

The latest GNOME versions are even buggier, and when it does work, it feels like a toy project compared to KDE. It's baffling to me that it's been years since the v3 controversy, yet the project still doesn't feel as mature and polished as KDE Plasma.

All v2 forks also feel like someone's hobby project to bring disparate tools together, rather than a cohesive desktop. I'm sure some MATE and Cinnamon fans would disagree, but IMO the modern desktop experience has moved on since 2010.

Similarly with LXDE, Fluxbox and a myriad of others. These are great for certain environments, but none of them can compare to the polish that KDE has, let alone something like macOS.

To be fair, I'm not bashing on minimalistic or window manager-only setups. I've been using bspwm on Void Linux for many years now as my main working environment, and wouldn't change it for the world. But when I want to stop being productive, consume content, and not have to troubleshoot issues on my machine, I prefer to use a more featureful environment with a friendlier UI. Since macOS is out of the question, and Windows is purely for gaming (and even that is going away, thanks to Valve), KDE is pretty much my only choice on Linux. Which I've been enjoying for a few months now on NixOS.

But I do wonder if there is really a DE that can compare to it. AFAIK more ambitious projects like elementary OS, Deepin and Solus are still experimental, to the point where I don't even keep track of their updates.

> The latest GNOME versions are even buggier, and when it does work, it feels like a toy project compared to KDE.

This is an interesting viewpoint. My ideal DE is one that is "invisible", so to speak, and I've found that GNOME comes closest to it. I want to launch whatever program I'm using and focus on it's window. KDE has too much chrome, too many elements, so many options. It feels too "busy" to me. Ditto its apps, e.g. comparing okular to evince. Too many buttons, too many UI elements (I know I can remove them, but I don't want to have to, and all the functionality they expose I can do on evince using keyboard shortcuts), and all I'm interested in is the document I'm reading.

To each their own, I guess, I just wanted to put forth the alternative viewpoint.

That's fair, I can see how KDE is busier. But if I wanted to use a DE that's "invisible", I wouldn't pick GNOME either. All the animations, for one, would be too distracting, though I suppose you can turn these off.

Like I said, I use a WM-only setup for productive work to avoid any distractions, but when I want to consume content, connect peripherals and prioritize ease of use over efficiency, then I prefer to use a more polished DE. I enjoy KDE precisely because it gives me all the options to customize it however I like, so I prefer having access to all the knobs to do so, which GNOME purposefuly hides. Other features like desktop widgets are a nice bonus.

KDE is not perfect; it sometimes freezes on me, which might be specific to my hardware or due to an unrelated driver or Xorg issue. This is why I wanted to know if there are alternatives with the same feature set. GNOME, unfortunately, isn't it.

I'm afraid I don't have a great answer. Right now I'm using LXQt with Kwin as my window manager; LXQt replaces Plasma and solves a lot of my problems with KDE, but isn't as slick as Plasma when Plasma is working. I replaced Dolphin with PCManFM, which isn't quite as slick either but it's adequate and seems to reliably watch directories for updates. I've stuck with some KDE applications, like Okular which has never disappointed me.

Yeah, hence my wish that somebody with strong opinions, financing and some energy would adopt KDE as the main DE for their distro.

There are some very prolific people involved in the KDE project, but from my understanding some of the largest KDE distros, e.g. Kubuntu, are conservative and slow to contribute anything.

My prediction is that Gnome is gonna leave KDE in the dust.

GTK 4 along with Gnome’s decision to limit customization is a massive step forward IMO.

Gnome will be able to build a consistent and stable desktop and developers building apps using GTK will not be bombarded with bugs caused by random user customizations, which are usually hard to reproduce, hard to debug, hard to fix, affect a small number of users, and are likely simply frustrating to deal with for devs.

But, maybe that’s not the right choice. Great thing about Linux is that if that’s the case Gnome will wither away and KDE (or other DEs) will quickly surpass it.

My bet is on Gnome however.

They are transitioning COSMIC from gnome to be it's own standalone DE built on rust

I'm myself using cinnamon because I find gnome 3+ too different of what I'm used and KDE too clunky. I like my software to stay simple and not overwhelm me under thousands of option

>I'm a big fan: it's like Ubuntu, but with much of Canonical's divisive changes reverted, and with a few other improvements

Hmm, I assumed that PopOS pretty much just added their own extra stuff to an Ubuntu install. I didn't realize they got rid of the default snap cruft?

Anyways, the last time I used Pop it had this weird upgrade to nowhere thing happened where it prompted me to update and then the update files were nowhere to be found.

Does System76 have a sustainable business? My concern would be putting time invested into their tech, then later finding support gone wrong.

Recently converted to their hardware after a rather long line of Macbooks. Completely happy - everything. just. works. First Linux laptop I've had where I didn't need to fiddle with anything, way less than macOS.

Regarding their business model, they do design the laptops (even if they don't produce them themselves), but I get their impression their competitive edge are two different things:

1. Branding/marketing (to non-mainstream users, but we're talking about them right now, so I guess it's working)

2. Software: Ensuring everything works smoothly. It's not just firmware and drivers - having their own distribution seems quite key, otherwise it's trickier to cater to _their_ users needs. Keeping it close to the most popular distributions seems smart to me.

Pop OS clearly is a big deal for (2), but I think it even contributes to (1). Since they make money (apparently sustainably so) from selling hardware, and given that it appears Pop OS is an important driver of that business, I'd wager it's not going anywhere as long as they have a working hardware business.

They seem to. They sell computers (with Ubuntu or Pop!_OS). I'm at least the 2nd one to get one at my work (that I know of). They're not "cheap", and if you know what they are and what you are doing you could just buy a similar model for a bit less and install linux on that.(they're rebadged clevos, I've replaced a fan on one..)

But if you buy from them it comes with linux pre-installed (yeah!) which saves time and stress. It was easy and they do support you, and my 2 experiences with support where very good (Os and hardware). Plus Mat screens.

I was skeptical about yet another distro, but after using I kinda like Pop!_os despite the name. Its my daily driver now. The "Pop shop" where it does upgrades and software installs is decent enough. It seems to let me choose "flatpack (flathub)" or "debs" for most software. I haven't had any issues with either, though looking though my list its vscode and gimp which are my flatpack installs..

One great thing about Ubuntu and variants is that it’s got a lot of software that works well with it.

I've had a System 76 laptop for a few months now and I'm pretty happy with it. They've done a good job with Pop!Os, it's the only distro I've found that has made Gnome usable for me out of the box.

The only downside over my previous laptop (Dell XPS) is that I can no longer run 2 external monitors, the System 76 hardware just doesn't seem to be able to handle it.

Clevo is apparently German, whereas System76 say they're based in Colorado.

https://clevo-computer.com/en/ https://system76.com/about

Wonder how the hardware supply chain works?

Aside: For a little over $1200, you can get a "desktop" with ECC RAM. And not have to assemble and test it yourself. Sweet.

Its actually made by a different company also named clevo in in China (TW)

https://www.clevo.com.tw/clevo_prodetail.asp?id=1609&lang=en

Its a little wierd but they seems to exist only to sell to resellers, although clevo-computer.com seems to order a whole bunch. in my case the "clevo" id is on the sticker on the back (along with a lot of other info). I think System 76 specs the parts the work with linux and orders the machines that way. I have no idea how the supply chain works in this case.

They're a 17 year old company. I think they're pretty stable.

I have no idea how healthy System76 is, but at least for my work, I could pretty trivially revert to Ubuntu if I needed to.

Well they've been in business for over a decade, so that's something. Does that translate into maintaining PopOS indefinitely? Eh....

I just switched to Chrome, it's available as a .deb from Google.

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