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Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

Wow. Just wow.

Now I'm REALLY glad I switched my entire infrastructure over to Debian last year.

Why people use ubuntu over debian on servers will never cease to amaze me. Ubuntu is a literal downgrade.

I dont because of documentation. I know I can google anything about ubuntu and I dont want to spend a lot of time figuring it out myself. Safe reason I moved back to x86 from ARM, had a lot of issues with ZFS on a Pi4b.

Specifically about Debian. I find more than 1 year old versions pretty outdated. I couldn't try Go generics because the version was too old... that pissed me off.

My solution is to run Debian stable as the host operating system and to build containers on the occasion that I want a more recent version of something.

The learning curve for something like podman really isn't that steep, and a relatively small investment in learning that has paid many dividends for me through the last few years.

16-17 years ago, Debian was infamous for having old versions of many popular packages (e.g. Python, gcc). Ubuntu caught on for being "just like Debian" except kept more up to date with the latest and greatest.

Nowadays Debian isn't lagging behind anymore, thankfully.

Most of the software that is in the Debian release from this December was released in 2020. Examples include: go 1.15, gcc 10.2, postgresql 13, systemd 247. Ubuntu 20.04.1 has go 1.18.1 and gcc 9.4. It's all a mixed bag and somewhat disappointing.

Have Debian Unstable and Testing ever really been that musty?

Stable was mummified, Testing was musty, and Unstable had the opposite problem and was named Sid for a reason.

Ubuntu used to fit between Testing and Sid.

I find that description overly negative. I was running Testing on my work laptop for years (up to 2017) and I only had to build like 5 packages myself where I needed a bleeding edge version. Definitely didn't feel worse than any Ubuntu release after a few months into the cycle.

How was Ubuntu worse than Debian on servers prior to this change?

Snap. Just horrible. Constant source of headaches, frustration, and disappointment.

Snap drives users away. Here are some recent relevant HN threads:

Ubuntu Snap update spoiled my World Cup Final - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34041272

Ubuntu: “How are we improving Firefox snap performance?” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32702062

Ask HN: Is it safe to remove snap from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS completely? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31198675

Firefox now only available via snap on Ubuntu - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30776698

Ubuntu to Make Firefox Snap Default in 21.10 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28564600

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24383276

I agree snap is awful, but isn't it almost entirely a desktop problem, since you're not usually running Firefox or Signal Desktop on a server?

> isn't it almost entirely a desktop problem, since you're not usually running Firefox or Signal Desktop on a server?

snap is installed on ubuntu server too, and if some junior engineer comes in, how are they supposed to know not to use it?

How are they supposed to know that after googling some variation on "install docker ubuntu" and getting "snap install docker" (https://snapcraft.io/docker), they should ignore those very official looking instructions which will give them a broken and buggy docker installation?

Perhaps the problem's theoretical, but canonical certainly encourages using snaps on servers, such as in the microk8s docs (https://microk8s.io/docs/getting-started), and I expect if canonical keeps pushing it, it'll become more and more of a server problem in reality too.

My issues with Snap involved LXC. I stopped using Ubuntu for that project because it was such crap. I couldn't even control what version was running unless I went to great lengths, because snap would automatically and silently upgrade to the latest available (which brought in breaking API changes).

Once my current 20.04 snowflakes fall out of security patch support and need a major OS upgrade, I won't be using Ubuntu at all ever again. There's no advantage over Debian, quite the contrary. Sadly, now Ubuntu is the disadvantage OS.

Creeping snapification of more and more packages (.debs that actually install a snap). It was somewhat bearable when it was only desktop, but they've been creeping more and more into server-side stuff.

ZFS support: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/01/ubuntu-zfs-support-statu...

It's hard to put ones finger on a particular thing, but I've felt for some time now that Ubuntu is becoming increasingly user-hostile in the pursuit of money.

It was a similar kind of user-hostility that drove me away from Red Hat (when they started locking user-supplied support forums behind subscriptions).

ZFS

I only have Ubuntu server on my NAS. Everything else is Debian.

Considering switching the NAS to FreeBSD

debian has zfs support no? That being said a nas running freebsd is probably the best choice

+1 I've always ran Debian and pitched for it and it hasn't let me down yet.

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