Ask HN: Switch to Ubuntu, or Stay with Fedora?
I've heard Ubuntu has improved over the years, is it worth switching to from Fedora?
If you are already using Fedora, there's no benefit to switching to Ubuntu. If you want to use something more similar to Ubuntu, I recommend Pop!_OS (downstream from Ubuntu and without Snap) instead of Ubuntu Desktop, and Debian (upstream from Ubuntu) instead of Ubuntu Server.
I hadn't really considered the philosophical issues around it but you have a good point about that.
For me it comes down to QA and QoL. Snaps are shit. I'm still getting those ridiculous "Close Firefox to update Firefox, this will expire in 13 days" nags that can't be dismissed. The other day snapd felt like hanging up my laptop for 90 seconds when I was trying to shut down and get out of the door.
Fuck this. 90% of what Canonical has done has never bothered me, oh there's an Amazon lens I don't like? 2 minutes to uninstall it, no prob. Oh there's a plug for Canonical services in the motd? That's fine, they need to make money.
But snapd is just trash software that's badly engineered, makes my system worse and is hard to remove (I'd have to replace a bunch of software that Canonical has pushed me into using snaps for). So barring some about face from Canonical I'm switching to another Debian variant on my next reinstall.
Has nobody reverse engineered or created a replacement yet? I assume that's because nobody with the ability has the desire.
If this spurs anyone into action; make it AGLP3 or some other similar license.
Considering this additional obstacle, it would be much easier to stop using Snap and switch to a package manager that supports multiple servers or repos in the first place.
I used both of these distros for a long long time. I enjoyed both of them for different reasons although they were both employed as desktop "Daily Drivers".
I used Fedora on my Lenovo T580 because that's what it's certified for. I used Ubuntu from 2006-2022 on more than one system.
I will tell you that I'd never go back to Ubuntu at this point. I was honestly prepared to "upgrade" to Debian at the next opportunity. I firmly recommend Debian over Ubuntu now.
The main reasons about Ubuntu are that it peaked around 2018, and their insistence on Snaps and other more-or-less proprietary stuff began to ruin stuff that was working fine. In contrast, Debian played catch-up and was no longer horrendously outdated or featureless, and as a result it's matured into a really respectable first choice.
I typically used the KDE environment, although my Raspberry Pi ran MATE quite nicely.
Had the same thought as of recently. Debian + KDE. At the end of the day one can just install whatever they need and WMs are distro agnostic anyway.
Having said that i think should go ahead and test run ubuntu for a while see how it feels.
That's how I feel also. I had a good run with Ubuntu on numerous machines local and remote, but the past few years have made me question Canonical's technical decisions and the future of this distro. Particularly due to Snap, I can't whole-heartedly recommend it to new users (or onboarding new employees, team members) anymore.
Debian, Pop OS, Linux Mint. I'm still exploring my own personal preference. In recent times, I've heard from people that Fedora is a good choice too.
On the other hand... I've used Ubuntu desktop consistently for about 15 years now. I'm not a power user by any stretch. I just want things to work, and the "just works" factor has improved considerably.
Installation is ridiculously easy. It's fast. It never crashes. It finds all the right drivers for me. Suspend works. Audio works great, including with recording software like Reaper/Audacity.
I just don't have time to mess around with stuff anymore. Gone are my Arch Linux days. I get about half an hour of time after putting our little one to bed, and I want to spend 0% of that on configuring stuff.
It just worked out of the box on both my desktop machine and Framework laptop. Detected all the necessary drivers meanwhile wifi, touchpad, and all the usual suspects just worked.
I've been doing most of my work on Debian for a pretty long time, even using Debian in WSL2 when I have to use windows, and I can't recall having met with a single problem that using Ubuntu would have solved.
What was wrong with Upstart? It was great, it improved boot times and everyone adopted it, even RHEL.
It was then superceded but it was a great improvement over SysV Init.
Systemd came as an evolution of Upstart, but Lennart and Kay claimed that there were design limitations to Upstart that prevented it from going as far as they want.
I'm not going into whether that was true, or just NIH, or whether Systemd is going in the right direction.
For people who want a slightly more polished/user-friendly Debian, I strongly recommend Linux Mint Debian Edition.
However, they now insist on Snaps so much that they'll install Snaps through apt and have replaced a number of packages this way. Its an incredibly stupid move, and unlike Flatpaks the backend isn't open and it only supports Canonical's own "app store" as a package source.
With Extensions Manager, you can disable all of the system extensions, install the User Themes extension and GNOME Tweaks, and in Tweaks, set every setting that is set to Yaru-* to Adwaita/Default, and you should get yourself a stock GNOME Shell. Except for the Ubuntu Font, of course.
(I'll never forget the time I ran GNOME and KDE at once and created KNOME. Lots of my friends got angry and claimed I "took KDE with my greasy GTK fingers." The horror.)
I used Ubuntu for many years but got tired of fighting with obnoxious snaps that I didn't ask for.
Mint doesn't use them, but supports flatpack instead. Not only that, but if you don't use them, you need not know they exist—unlike snaps.
Fedora on the other hand is fine. Although ultimately plays into the hand of Blue Hat, keep that in mind.
Snap is a good idea from the security and software packaging perspective, and different approaches are needed to find out what works best. Snap might be better than flatpak in some respects.
I prefer apt-based distributions.
I gave Ubuntu one last honest chance and I am done now. I switched back to Debian recently. Seriously I would not currently recommend Ubuntu to anyone. It was okay when Ubuntu was just fancy Debian but it's a hot mess now.
Never attempted to run apt accidentally, but as a joke, I took a script that was meant for Ubuntu, and ran it. It prompted me if I wanted to install apt, I was like WTF? I hit `y`, thinking it was a joke. Turns out, they apparently had an freaking apt package in the main repo ready for installation. I just found this really cursed. At least I get the Super Cow Powers[1] that comes with apt.
[1]: `apt moo`
It’s had incremental improvements, but as a desktop OS, it’s a bit rough in my recent (within the last 1.5 years) experience.
If there are specific issues you have with Fedora, and/or you simply want something Debian based, I would suggest a stable Ubuntu derivative like pop_os! or Zorin OS.
Seeking recommendations is great, but as a desktop Linux user myself, I don’t think there’s any better substitute for having a spare “play” computer (even a junker or a cheap mini PC) that you can just try a few distros out without affecting your main PC until you find your match.
Stick with what you have.
I wouldn’t switch. YMMV.
I got a few grips with Ubuntu.
It's very inconsistent with package updates, even on their non lts, certain packages can be quite out of date and take forever to be updated.
Apt I feel is a bit outdated, and while generally stable it'll at times do things you didn't want to (config getting updated without input despite having a feature where you can decide if you want).
General layout of configuration files in /etc is not my personal preference.
However the good of Ubuntu is:
Easy to jnstall gpu drivers
Multiple fs support at install (including zfs, f2ffs I believe)
Seriously though, the optimal distro just depends on what you are doing on linux.
But from my experience on Arch, all my pain from the rolling release model has mostly come from two sources
- Self inflicted pain from impatiance and poking things I should not be poking.
- Nvidia drivers.
If you want a "stable" rolling release, look into Clear Linux as well.
Open Build Service and Btrfs snapshots make for a very forgiving and stable experience.
- Linux Mint (Debian version)
- Debian
- NixOS
Looks wise, they're all the same (bar mint) since they all use stock GNOME and KDE.
Ecosystem, as in the specific tools available to make things a turnkey experience, I'd say NixOS takes care of you really well and is on par with arch and Debian.
All three of the above will vary with individual experience though.