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Comment by pqb | Hacker News Reader

What is a moat of Ubuntu (Desktop) today? Don't say snap, please :)

Being the Debian-based distro that's willing to bundle proprietary drivers. For someone like me who doesn't want to deal with driver issues, Ubuntu generally* just works out of the box.

* Looking at you, Nvidia

Isn't there any PPA for Debian with proprietary drivers, for example for aforementioned Nvidia graphic cards?

Probably, but that's exactly the kind of research and juggling that I'm trying to avoid. The Ubuntu installer has just has a checkbox that says "please give me proprietary drivers".

Also, to be clear, my asterisk is that Nvidia drivers seem to be no easier on Ubuntu than on Debian (you have to seek them out), and for me they've often caused problems once installed.

The most stable solution to Nvidia drivers on Linux has always been "download the deb when you set it up, hope it was a "good" release, and forget about it for a year until something requires a newer driver.

It always felt like going through the distro's included stuff was a waste of time.

Debian relaxed their policy here for the latest release.

There is firmware in the main ISO, which means your WiFi might work. The Nvidia driver is an `apt install` away.

Either way, Nvidia needs to be installed by you on Debian or Ubuntu, and GUI vs CLI is no different to me.

That's good to know! Wifi has been the main dealbreaker, so I might give it a shot next time.

And yes, I was calling out Nvidia as the exception to "it just works" even on Ubuntu. I realize that wasn't clear.

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