Seriously though, just install Debian. It's not hard, the netinstaller may be text-mode but it walks you through the simple steps one by one just like Ubuntu's GUI installer. Anybody who's comfortable using Ubuntu in the first place should be able to get through the Debian installer just fine.
Running with the crowd has some advantages. Many feet passing on the path before you trample more bugs before you get there etc.
For anyone looking to use debian I highly recommend it and prefer it to any other distro.
This is nice if you're dual booting Windows 11. It's also probably going to increase the Ubuntu's representation in desktop Linux by virtue of booting without any EFI setup tinkering, because a lot of people's patience ends exactly where things cease to work as expected.
Since there are so many people that don't have this problem, I understand that it's something I'm doing wrong -- but I have never been able to figure out what that is.
This was well over a decade ago though :)
What I mean is that I can't get Ubuntu to work at all. On my luckiest tries, I've managed to get the desktop to show, but everything is still highly unstable and I've never pushed on to trying to install software.
I used to think it was driver issues, except I've had similar symptoms on three different machines. And before people jump down my throat -- I'm not saying this is a problem with Ubuntu. I admit that I must be doing it wrong. But it's a showstopper deal for me anyway.
Admittedly, the last time I tried was a few years back. Eventually, I just had to give up and move on with my life.
As a fairly begrudging Ubuntu user (I put it on a laptop because I didn’t want to screw around with finding drivers, memories of trying to get wifi working on Arch with some dongles haunt me), I have to say I don’t really like it much overall but they’ve got the “getting to the desktop” experience down pretty well.
No. I do tend to use old hardware, but tried it on a mainstream new laptop one time. On that, I couldn't get the WiFi to work with it.
What baffles me is that on all of these machines, Debian works out of the box. In fact, Debian's never failed me on any of the many machines (including laptops) I've put it on.
Ubuntu is based on Debian, so I can't explain the difference. As I said, it's been a while and perhaps they've fixed issues, but I've moved on. My life is no poorer for it.
The only thing is that it means I can't recommend Ubuntu to people (not only because I wouldn't be able to support them if they have trouble, but what am I supposed to say? "I can't make it work, but use this!"?)
In my experience, the stability concerns are overblown, and it makes for a really nice rolling release system. I've had individual systems run for over a decade on a Debian testing install with rolling updates, and it's generally been far less of a headache than Ubuntu releases.
Edit: I just checked for the classic case of latest Python (3.11), and the answer for Debian is to build from source, which is annoying (not difficult to compile, but then future updates can't be pulled in via apt). Does Debian not have a vibrant PPA community to fill the gaps like Ubuntu?
Yeah, it does: the Ubuntu PPA community. (See https://wiki.debian.org/CreatePackageFromPPA, and similar.)
Nowadays you can get a full featured, well integrated and properly working user land on Linux with next to zero customisation with systemd and Gnome. I really recommend using a distribution which stays as close to vanilla as possible.
Debian would still patch far too much to my taste without the integration anyway.
They remove/rebrand what they don't find free enough, want to make things "modular", want to split development and base packages, want to support a ton of architectures upstream doesn't care about and want to integrate things in their historic tooling. It has introduced some severe bugs in the past.
I like Debian, but after (free)Ubuntu pro, it really became attractive for me as a small server operator, its even better than free RHEL.
Its also much easier to install on cloud servers than RHEL.
"Ubuntu pro" is basically trying to fix this shortcoming compared to debian and to pay for a security team for universe. It is available as a subscription.
TLDR: If you use software from main it is completely irrelevant. If you use stuff from universe it is now as good as debian, if you pay (first 5 devices are free).
(For work, where I just want something that won't make me "the asshole who chose [non-standard thing]". I prefer Void or FreeBSD or, sometimes, Debian, for my own stuff)
[EDIT] Oh, right, specifically for desktop? Yeah, I'd go Void or Arch probably. Buuuuuut if it were for work, I'd just use Ubuntu, even on the desktop, so it wouldn't be my fault when it misbehaves.
I meant more so for people who are somewhat active on these discussions but still go with Ubuntu.
systemd was actually inspired by launchd, not Windows. But I guess systemd, Windows and launchd do share one thing in common which is not having a bunch of bandaid shell scripts hanging the system together.
I don't think I've seen anyone complain about systemd's init system or service manager; it's always about the remaining 90% of systemd's scope and its tight coupling between all its parts (the tight coupling being the main problem).
Prevent dynamic linking?
Offer strong backwards compatibility?
Add support for a very wide range of hardware?
Put advertisements in the start menu?
Cause unexpected reboots for updates?
Send telemetry to the OS manufacturer?
Force users to get an online account unless they know the secret way to bypass the prompt?
Or is there a differentiator between Windows and Linux I am overlooking?
What you should look at is the difference between Debian and Devuan. Or between Debian and OpenBSD, to understand what the systemd project is doing, and how it’s doing it.
There are many of us that prefer Linux as it was before systemd.