I'm glad they're not an official flavor, canonical hasn't been doing a great job on their consumer desktop sector because their money is made via the server installs and distributions.
Joking aside, Pop is generally liked for its easy-to-use interface. System76 has made a well-polished suite of software, and they are in the process of replacing GNOME with their own DE to make it an even smoother experience.
Of course, if you use something else (I prefer openSUSE Tumbleweed), you can just stick to Flatpaks entirely without having to get concerned about snaps.
You can basically set up Ubuttnu or most other common Linuxes to be just like Pop OS by spending a few hours on it.
For people using another distro without customizing it much after the installer is done, then I would usually recommend Pop OS. I think it's the best "out of the box" Linux for most general-purpose computing like programming, email/web, Slack, etc.
But if you already switched to Debian and are happy, then there's probably no huge benefit to moving to Pop unless you are sick of tinkering and just want automatic system updates that keep you pretty up to date with recent kernels and packages without you having to do anything.
I’ve been dailying Pop on all my main machines for years now without any problems. Think of it as Uncononical’d Ubuntu in a way but they’re really committed to making a unique footprint
I've tried it. I really did not like it.
May I suggest that you try to separate your personal preferences, which are your own business and 100% fine but are yours, from a general canonical announcement such as "best consumer... experience" which is a sweeping generalization and is not true?
The existence proof that Pop OS is not the best consumer experience is this: the most widely-used desktop Linux in the world is ChromeOS.
It has something around 200-300 million happy users, and ChromeBooks now outsell Macs and have been doing since 2017 in the USA and 2020 worldwide.
ChromeBooks are pure Linux machines, with a desktop Linux based on Gentoo.
There are about 10x more ChromeBooks in use than all other desktop Linux distros PUT TOGETHER.
So, that proves by sheer numbers that the most popular consumer Linux is ChromeOS. It sells, for money, more than all the free distros put together.
> straight up bad faith.
You do not know my motivations, so kindly do not question them.
> Google is a tech giant with immense marketing capabilities.
So?
So is Red Hat, for instance.
> They sell laptops which obviously outsell anything like framework/purism/system76/pine64
[1] Wrong: not only Google sells Chromebooks. In fact I submit that it is a minority vendor of Chromebooks.
[2] Obviously outsell etc.
Why is this obvious? What do you feel is obvious here, and why?
> they would even if the product was garbage.
Evidence, please? On what basis do you make this claim?
> mechanical consequence of what google is
What is a "mechanical consequence"?
> they happen to have a product running it
"happen to have" is bogus. This took years, major effort, and the people behind it had to fight for it.
> it doesn't say anything about chromeos.
It 100% does. It says that Linux is ready for the desktop, and that it has been for years. It outsells the only other rival product to MS Windows; how much more ready can anything be?
The year of Linux on the desktop came and went and the Linux world was, as ever, too busy squabbling and arguing with itself to even notice.
Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of consumers are happily running Linux laptops and Linux phones and just use it, all day every day...
And all the distros are a rounding error.
I don't understand why you're choosing this hill to die on and what point you're trying to make. You mentionned chromeos is gentoo underneath. Why don't you attribute it's success to gentoo? You're nitpicking on everything i said even irrelevant stuff (who cares who actually builds chromebooks? they are still google-stamped). And come on, are you really comparing the power and influence of redhat and google on consumers? Virtually no-one on the street knows about redhat (or any kind of linux corp), now google...
Something as fundamental and basic like consumer operating systems is basically unmovable and what people use has little to do with what's available and mostly with historical inertia and the state of worldwide tech politics. You're saying it yourself, linux was ready for years. To move anything you will have to exert tremendous social influence. People don't choose their OS, they are mostly conciliating between their job, their education and their family's or friend's tradition. So once again: chromeos being widespread is not an indicator of it's qualities (i'm sure it's perfectly fine tho), but just a measure of google's influence.
You are imputing to me things I am not saying.
All I am saying is that ChromeOS is proof that Linux _is_ ready for the desktop. We can say it's ready because hundreds of millions of people are using it.
As such, all the noise about packaging systems is just nerds fighting. It doesn't make any difference. The revolution came and it went past and all those most bothered didn't even notice.
Some have said Android is the proof, but it's not a normal Linux distro and it's not on the desktop in significant numbers. It's its own thing.
And we're not talking about servers, which are a whole other battle in another place, where Linux has also won but in ways that don't directly affect Joe Q Public at all.
It's not about marketing. It's not about brand names. It's not about adverts. I don't think I've ever seen an advert for a Chromebook outside of places that already target techies anyway, and few of them.
As I said: I disagree, with your reasoning and your conclusions. But you seem to be be talking about something else entirely, and I am not even sure what.
FWIW, my unrequested opinion, is that I largely agree that Pop!_OS is one of, if not the, best consumer distros.