- Extremely slow at doing anything, even the most basic commands.
- Ridiculous auto-update mechanism (you can't even disable it wtf).
- Random, nonsense limitations (why can't I open dot files and dot directories???).
So terrible that for most apps that I installed with snaps I end up installing the deb version later on.
What an abomination, it is a devil that's hurting the Linux desktop everyday.
Guess what I got?
A freaking snap. Yes, try it.
I’m done with Ubuntu
Anyway, if you are looking for a noob distro, I recommend manjaro. (The AUR packages are extremely unstable, but other than that, it’s pretty competitive with what Ubuntu was 10-15 years ago.)
Is Manjaro really that noob-friendly? All I know about Manjaro is that it's based on Arch, which I always understood as being the LEAST noob-friendly distro besides LFS.
Now it's just adware and unstable crap, not near as bad as Ubuntu but I won't recommend Manjaro anymore.
There are several less noob friendly distributions than Arch, I'd say NixOS, Void and Alpine probably top that list. Theyre great distros but they deviate significantly from what you'd expect from mainstream Linux.
I personally have had them ship out WIP patches not meant for production, which has wasted a lot of my (volunteer) time chasing down phantom bugs in software I maintain. This has personally happened to me on at least four different occasions. A lot of other FOSS maintainers I know have similar stories.
More info: https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/
(I ask with actual curiosity; I'm ignorant to most distros.)
[0] https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images...
That's not enough. Some package could eventually drag it back in.
$ apt show firefox
Package: firefox
...
Pre-Depends: debconf, snapd
$ cat /etc/apt/preferences.d/no-snapd
Package: snapd
Pin: release a=*
Pin-Priority: -1
$Ubuntu had its place in popularising Linux but they jumped the shark a long time ago, now they are just another player jostling for their own niche.
And by server I mean that dusty NUC...
Ubuntu is just maddening.
Pop OS is nice out of the box too, but I just don't want to use Ubuntu derivatives at this point even if they've removed snaps
If it really is something that you have had problems with, maybe try PopOS instead of Debian. The restricting non-free repos by default out of principle with Debian can sometimes get annoying when you need to install certain non-free drivers (looking at you Nvidia), but PopOS is a really well-polished ootb experience that is trivial to install. Second to PopOS for a set it and forget it experience, OpenSUSE is a rock-solid distro that does not seem to get much praise.
And guess what? It works in KUbuntu. But ubuntu is just SO slow now. ( And I couldn't install it of my current dual-boot anyway because it does NOT have option to NOT TO install new bootloader. :-/ I love Linux (lie).
Try installing any Debian flavor on an Intel Mac. Keyboard, mouse, bluetooth, wifi drivers all incredibly hard to get working. Need to perform some voodoo extracting the drivers from a MacOS image then making them available during boot.
Ironically I was about to set up a new Linux Dev machine with Ubuntu and now I'm more inclined to go back to Mint since I never had a bad experience with it. I was fortunate to skip the Gnome 3 days and the Cinnamon and Xfce implementations have been very stable for a while now.
I've given-up on Debian-like systems on a laptop, because the drivers were never good, just decide one last try with bare Debian, and have everything work out of the box. In my experience, Ubuntu never works, and when you suddenly get most things to work, they break down again in a week or two.
No other distro ever gave me that experience.
But whenever I see someone running Ubuntu on a server I think that there is a very real competence issue. Ubuntu should be kept as far from the server room, data centre or cloud as possible.
Another firefox blunder to add to their growing list.
Meanwhile, Mozilla still maintains ppa (mozillateam) with apt version. There's also Flatpak version, which delivers what snap promised.
Alternately, I could shill for NixOS. It's also really nice. Eventually.
Honestly, I prefer NixOS. It's far more configurable, which is a nice thing to have in an immutable OS.
I can't move work off of Ubuntu; it's too embedded now, but I'm looking for something else for home. Switching distro-base isn't so easy when you've been using it for decades though; I tried NixOS but it wasn't comfortable (Nix is a steep learning curve), though their community is top notch, and everything I do is deb based.
Looking for a way to get a modern debian (something akin to non-LTS Ubuntu) or just go all out and switch to something Arch based like EndeavourOS.
Key differences I noticed:
- apt vs dnf
- Intalling on a new computer.
Would totally recommend.
I've had Fedora for over five years and I've never had my laptop get completely borked by an upgrade, but I've had just enough things break between releases in the past that I still get get the sweats every time I've gotta do the restart upgrade, whether it will come up completely and just work or whether my WiFi is now broken because resolve-d changed to systemd-resolved.
Key benefits: - Applications through flatpak don't depend explicitly on system libs so there's less chance of breakage. - If upgrading to new fedora version breaks anything, switching back is just one command away (rpm-ostree rollback). I don't think going back is so easy on normal fedora.
Still undecided though; I'm too old (read; jaded) for distro hopping now, but maybe I'll try find a Debian setup as another commenter suggested that'll work.
I really enjoyed the results of NixOS with flakes but a couple of things were a little more challenging than I have time for to switch it into my daily driver.
It was that steep curve that stopped me going back to date; I liked everything about it, the community was very welcoming and helpful, the declarative nature, and ability to define my machines' states in Git, the documentation, no complaints except the time I'd need to feel as proficient as I am elsewhere.
Not exactly sure what you mean by modern, but I'd recommend debian "unstable" (also called "sid"). Despite its name it's pretty stable. Normal debian stable releases are LTS style, unstable is where newly built packages show up first—so it will generally have the latest version of stuff and not be stuck a year or 2 back. It's basically a rolling-release style thing—I put in a little cron-job that does `aptitude safe-upgrade -y` every night to keep me up-to-date.
You can also use debian "testing", which one step back from "unstable"—packages are promoted from "unstable" to "testing" when if they've gone 2 weeks without a bug report of some particular severity (that I can't remember off the top of my head).
What's nice is you can have both testing and unstable in your apt sources—on my machine I set the priority on my testing higher than unstable so I generally get the testing packages, but I can grab unstable if I need to. I've been running this way for about 20 years now, and it seems the right balance of new but consistent.
I don't want things breaking left, right and centre but I want access to later versions of tools and libraries I'm using.
For example, at work we were told to upgrade Wireshark and VirtualBox to major versions that aren't available in apt on 22.04 after an audit due to vulnerabilities in older versions.
What you're doing sounds like it'll work nicely for me, thanks.
sudo tee <<EOF /etc/apt/preferences.d/firefox-no-snap >/dev/null
Package: firefox*
Pin: release o=Ubuntu*
Pin-Priority: -1
EOF
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install firefox
Here's how to properly install firefox on ubuntu
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/04/how-to-install-firefox-d...
and, once you're done:
apt-get purge snapd1: https://fostips.com/ubuntu-21-10-two-firefox-remove-snap/
When will these system designers realize that the system shouldn't do anything observable without me telling it to?
Imagine if a kitchen oven decided to perform a self-clean without any human interaction "because it hadn't performed one in awhile".
> When will these system designers realize that the system shouldn't do anything observable without me telling it to?
My vehicle changes gears without asking me. If someone makes a broad statement like "when are these vehicle designers going to realize that a vehicle shouldn't do anything observable without me telling it to?" I'm just going to laugh at them.
Just interested: why not Debian? i.e. still deb based distro?
I'm guessing the poster above you wants recent package versions as they went to Arch.
I usually run Fedora rather than Arch though, because in my limited experience with Arch it really doesn’t like to not be booted into for extended periods of time — if you do that the piled up updates are much more likely to break somehow or things like required config changes will slip through the cracks, whereas I have yet to experience this with Fedora.
I’ve switched all my laptops and workstations from Ubuntu to Arch.
There are rough edges here too, but on overall I’m much happier. I feel like I know how my machine works again. Ubuntu lately has been giving me that windowsy feeling with lots of things running for god knows what reason.
Also in arch the repos seems to not only contain more current versions of things. They seem to bundle more things altogether.
These days it's looking like Fedora holds that crown.
Next server though. Not Ubuntu for sure. Probably Debian?
Is it doable to setup Debian with a ZFS root file system?
When they decided to stop officially distributing debs, and promote Snap as distribution channel, that was the final straw. I don't understand what's their target audience anymore. Desktop users? My machines are sensitive about reboots, but pretty much sealed off the internet. Upgrades are tested, and happen in scheduled windows. Yet Snap auto-update insists on restarts, whenever it sees fit.
Sure, I can find workarounds [0], but the complete disregard on this issue and the reason that they probably forced the LXD project to promote the dumpster fire that is Snap just didn't sit well with me. I'm gone for good.
[0] https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...
Auto update happens and I can understand your pain here with sealed machines/testing updates. Most small to medium companies around don't care though (from what I see) and probably have unattended upgrades on anyways.
Bit more on autoupdates - just to align yourself with how people care on keeping versions, you can imagine and check yourself of how many dockerfiles contain `latest` or no any specification of versions of pulled images. Many, many, not giving a shit.
In practice, though, autoupdates are not bringing VEs/VMs down and I find update happened after my `lxc shell some-ve` sessions are disconnected from time to time (I tend to keep those in tmux and it could be attached for weeks or even months).
As for use cases and audience - both Desktop/Server works for me - on desktop I use LXD under my WSL (it has systemd support for ~ 6 months now) to quickly play around with something and on servers to split one big machine into smaller ones/limit access to system for other users. Even had the case using it in CI/CD - custom Linux software to be packaged and doing basic installation test for centos6/7/8, Ubuntu 16/18/20.04 and so on. Package installs were done via dynamic creation of fresh VE each time, to ensure system is "clean".
Arch is customizable, simple (in the sense that there are no surprises; things work as expected), and has a great community. Folks here can argue about snaps or flatpaks, and I can happily use AUR to install nearly anything. If it’s not there, I can publish it.
I’m not forced to adopt whatever GUI Canonical thinks is best for me in a given year or whatever their trendy new craze is. I can enjoy i3, tmux, vim, and ignore the rest.
Immediately formatted and switched to pop OS and I've never been happier.
For future reference, if you ever decide to switch back, breaking changes or ones which require manual intervention are usually announced on archlinux.org.
https://old.reddit.com/r/EndeavourOS/comments/wygfds/full_tr...
It's a user-friendly and maintained Arch with some goodies like kernel switcher and driver updater GUIs.
Have you tried OpenSuse Tumbleweed or Gecko Linux? Tumbleweed is a rolling distro but the maintainers apparently test all of the updates they push. OpenSuse can feel a but clunky (it asks for passwords for “everything” for instance), but theres Gecko, which acts a bit as a wrapper of a distro to make OpenSuse a bit more user friendly.
I've heard good things about tumbleweed and it even has support for WSL, so I might try that if I ever build a gaming pc and have to main windows.
I’ve tried adding desktop environments to a pop installation, but I really don’t like having all of the apps included with other desktop environments cluttering the taskbar menu and the like.
I avoid it because I find it hard to use and hard-or-impossible to configure adequately. It takes a "my way or the highway" approach. If you like how it does things, it's great. If you don't, you're better off using a different DE, which is what I do.
In regards to this specific incident, The Arch team did release a statement on how to handle the update.
Also I wanted a distro without systemd and the init system is the one thing you can't choose or change on arch. I tried it but didn't like arch, in the end I moved my stuff to alpine which still runs my docker server.
In the end I chose FreeBSD which has a really nice combo of stable OS but rolling packages which is not common on Linux at all. And the community is much nicer IMO.
I'm on Ubuntu for now because Snaps can be disabled but it does make me wonder since they also dumped Unity Desktop a few years back. It almost seems like they don't care about Linux Desktop users any more.
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in...
lshw tells me
description: Wireless interface
product: Centrino Advanced-N 6235
vendor: Intel Corporation
On a bit older desktop I have seen it take 5-10 seconds just to start Chromium. And not the initial start after fresh install, it happens every single time. Meanwhile Flatpak or local packages start instantly on the same machine.
They take bizarre risks and insist on reinventing things badly.
Security, infrastructure ecosystem integration, and defaults that don't work with reality.
The advantage of RHEL/Cent and sometimes Fedora server-side is it's boringly-reliable. The kernel especially. For development, the userland isn't great and the desktop is mediocre.
Qubes is interesting for security, containerization, and running apps isolation where Fedora, Cent, and Debian (possibly Ubuntu and Windows) are all side-by-side choices as app substrates.
I should've done it a long time ago but until recently Ubuntu has been "debian but with some nice little extra bits of effort here and there to help make it smoother". Now it's "debian but with a lot of spicy canonical opinions dumped on it".
However this seems pretty silly when what actually changed is the default OS installs will not have flatpak installed. Easily fixed with "apt install flatpak". It's just a default they are changing, not purging flatpaks or preventing them from working well.
Security improvements are welcome, but that was a feature that seemed important and reasonable to keep working. (Maybe it works now, but based on that experience, I gave up on Snaps until I heard more positive reports).
- Violates XDG Base Directory Specification
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/snapd/+bug/1575053
I ended up with Debian because I like stable but not ancient (CentOS?) and it comes with a release cadence similar to Ubuntu LTS.
We've been here before, of course - they pushed their own DE (the original Unity, not the current GNOME theme) for a while as a competitor to GNOME, and they also pushed Upstart over systemd. There are probably other cases I'm missing.
Eventually they gave up on those pet projects for pragmatic reasons, but Snaps seem to be the hill they want to die on (presumably for internal political reasons and/or some weak attempt at lockin).
The original Unity DE was released in 2010 prior to the release of Gnome 3.0 in 2011. Upstart was originally included in Ubuntu in 2006 to replace sysvinit, and writing upstart scripts was a huge breath of fresh air. Systemd was released in 2010.
As a developer and user, I hate snaps _and_ flatpak. Both are user-hostile and constant source of problems requiring hours of Googling (especially the Flatpak sandbox!). I ended up purging both from my system a month ago and have been much happier since.
Don't you just remove it if you're using Ubuntu, never install it if you use Debian/Fedora/Arch, and pretend it doesn't exist? I've never run into an app I want that is only packaged for Snap.
Canonical has money to do lots of good, too bad they waste it on terrible engineers and terrible projects.
I tried about 10 times to get mysql workbench running, but it depends on some key store backend through dbus, I haven't be able to get the conncetions working through snap so i cannot access a database since, for whatever reason, it has to go through the keystore.
The failure message? 'dbus-launch' does not exist.