What should I use if I like Ubuntu but not snap, just Debian? Or are there alternatives around? Seems like Ubuntu has the best hardware and driver support so just curious what's new in Linux land.
Linux Mint is widely praised for being basically Ubuntu without the worst Canonicalisms (such as Snap). They maintain a Debian edition in parallel to their main one, as an exit strategy in case Ubuntu ever becomes unsuitable for their base. Some people already use that as their daily driver.
Just in case you're not aware, the default desktop environment on whatever distro you pick doesn't have to be what you use. I switched to KDE Plasma when Gtk-based desktops became intolerable, and haven't looked back.
Do the Mint team treat fixing the other half of the problem, the GNOMEisms, as out-of-scope?
Asking because I maintain my own pile of gsettings and .gtkrc tweaks as mitigations yet pain points remain, apparently unfixable outside the source code.
If you want more detail, you should ask someone who still uses Gtk-based desktops, or try them yourself. I gave up on Gtk a couple years ago.
MX Linux also looks interesting. Like Ubuntu, it's a Debian derivative. It offers a supported path for avoiding systemd and has an official KDE Plasma edition, both of which appeal to me. I haven't had a chance to try it yet.
If you feel the need for newer packages, try other alternatives (or Debian unstable). I’ve set down on Fedora with XFCE, it’s really stable yet packages feel new.
Dunno about the this release, but till 24.4 it was simply a matter of removing some packages then holding/masking the primary snapd one, followed by manually adding the official PPAs for Mozilla’s stuff (or just use the Flatpak).
Of course, there’s still the philosophical and long term issues with staying on a distro that’s promoting and continuosuly expanding the thing you dislike…
I initially tried to just use snaps but firefox was crashing quite often so I had to go with adding the mozilla's repository and of course configure the fake "firefox" package that actually installs the snap to be low priority for apt.
My choice for now is Debian, didn't finish transition yet, very annoying to plan this in my schedule. I'll churn from Ubuntu after more than 15 years of daily driving... I also don't like ubuntu user with uid:gid 1000 in their Docker images. It's a cancer.
It was painful, with an endless laundry list of things to troubleshoot, tinker with, and add to my digital notebook in attempt to get anything resembling a personally ergonomic workflow.
I implore anyone to just go with Mint or anything else that takes care of ripping out snaps for you if you don't want snaps (but otherwise still like or are used to most things about Ubuntu). There were too many downstream and other issues, related and unrelated, for my sanity.
I was merely saying that you a couple commands you can uninstall snap and disable it from appearing ever again.
They have been working on a custom Desktop Environment which sadly still isn't very stable yet. Promising development, but putting me off of using Pop for a while.
Ubuntu 24.04 currently comes with 590, which is the most recent working driver.
I see the latest—580, 590, 595—available (scroll to bottom):
* https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=nvidia-dkms
Am I missing something?
Anyway, the main issue with Debian, Ubuntu, and Nvidia is about licensing. GNU/Linux is free software, and Nvidia drivers are not. Loading a non-free driver is known as “Tainting the Kernel”.
https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
The information on their wiki may be a year out of date. But the principles still apply.
If you want something desktop oriented and Ubuntu based without the focus on snaps, take a look at Linux Mint: https://www.linuxmint.com/ (there's Cinnamon, Xfce and MATE versions; personally I think Cinnamon is pretty good nowadays)
You get all the driver support and tools from the Ubuntu base, with some nice additons. However, not all desktop environment are supported.
Make a list of all ppa before proceeding.
What is your use case?
I haven't tried it in a few LTS releases and I'm away from a computer. Still, I'd bet this release continues the pattern. Fat chance Canonical decided to go back to more build targets/backporting/testing.
Do you mean you just don't follow instructions?
Yes, the control to be able to tweak the system to my liking is one of the attractions or Linux, but not when I have to in order to avoid behaviours that I don't want being reasserted.
[not that I expect nor particularly want Ubuntu to change, I just accept that I'm not part of its target audience and I'll be better served elsewhere - choice is a great thing!]
----
[0] heading back there now as Windows11 is not happening on my home machines¹, I feel that I shouldn't have let Windows10 happen, looking back.
[1] aside from the laptop that came with it that I'll keep there for Office and DayJob compatibility for a while.
[2] Currently running Debian³ on the other laptop, main desktop will likely go that way if it isn't decommissioned completely, and I use a dock with the laptops instead.
[3] As that is what I use server-side more often than not.
I was using Ubuntu and installed the apt version of Firefox as the snap version would not open html files in locations like /var/tmp and would not work with USB devices. Every time I ran `do-release-upgrade`, all of that work would need to be redone. It was very annoying.
Use Fedora if you dislike snap. Canonical has made their stance clear and are hostile to users for a long time now on this matter.
2. Install the kernel from Backports.
I don't think of such a simple process as "fiddling", but to each his own I guess.
Even though I very much intenseley dislike the completely unintuitive idiosyncratic package management that Arch has. Which is further not helped by the fact that Cachy's default GUI for it isn't even integrated properly.
But my recent upgrade to Pop version 24.04 has been a bit of a step back in terms of desktop experience.
I suspect it's growing pains from (switching to Wayland) + (non-System76 hardware) + (laptop with nVidia dGPU + external monitor).
So with different hardware, and/or some more time to mature, this Pop release will probably be a very solid choice.
Because of business needs, if you're stuck with using Ubuntu (at least in some situations), an `apt(-get) purge snapd` helps. It's in all of our auto/post-install stuff.
The other things mentioned in that Wikipedia page are not open source.
(as far as I can tell)
A packaging system should not break the basic abstractions of an OS.
"Don't use Snap", you say? I'll do you one better! Skip Ubuntu. 'Just' use anything else more suitable. Debian is an excellent replacement being upstream, but I hold no illusions over undeclared requirements.
With 24.04 at least, doing an 'apt purge snapd' seems to be quite useful. Is that not sufficient?
For servers, this may not be a problem for us. Currently on 24.04, so will have to see how things are ≥25.10.
* https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=frr
in addition to a Snap:
* https://snapcraft.io/install/frr/ubuntu
Doing a quick test on 24.04: on a system without snapd installed, `apt install frr` installs packages and not any Snap stuff. Will have to see about 26.04 when I get a moment.
How about the inverse, purging? At one point, removing Snap would lose BGP announcements [through the loss of the 'frr' software/service it was managing].
Anyway, I'm willing to believe most of my install/dependency-resolution pain was inspired by [and limited to] 18.04 or whatever was immediately after. We had a fleet of systems inadvertently moved to Snap, only learned through a loss of announcements on removal.
edit: Tested on a 24.04 box I had laying around; removing Snap does indeed still rip out things one might want:
$ sudo apt purge snapd
[...]
Stopping snap.frr.ripngd.service
Stopping unit snap.frr.ripngd.service
[...]
Stopping snap.frr.zebra.service
For the moment, later pulling a package that is redirected would undo that effort. As the peer points out, too, that would likely rip out stuff you're using without having already configured preference.
One could maintain a boundless list of configs pinning repository preferences... or they could use a distribution that doesn't have a predisposition towards Snap.
It is an urban myth
At one time Ubuntu as the easiest distro to get certain hardware running with because of the inclusion of proprietary drivers & codecs (unlike its Debian parent, amongst others, at least at the time) and making them easy, near-automatic, to configure compared to others that did include them. The distinction is long gone, and Ubuntu is simply one of several (many) good ones in that regard, but the perception that others have not long since caught up persists.
Snap is preinstalled on all official Ubuntu graphical editions.
However, Xubuntu's _Minimal_ install does not include any snap packages at all, not even a browser. This means it's trivial to remove snapd:
sudo apt purge snapd
Then you can install the `extrepo` command, and use it to install Firefox ESR direct from Mozilla's repos, or Chrome from Google's repos.
Once it's online you can copy and paste a couple of commands to "pin" snapd and prevent it from being reinstalled. Then you can switch to current Firefox or anything else without snapd sneaking back in.
Xubuntu Minimal is also available as a separate ISO file, which is not true of any of the other flavours.
Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Linux Lite, Pop OS, and several less famous distros are all based on Ubuntu. New versions of all of them will follow this new LTS release in time.
Mint forked GNOME 3 to make something more Windows-like.
Zorin customised upstream GNOME with a lot of extensions.
Pop removed it and replaced it with their own homegrown desktop, written in Rust. It's actually pretty good and works well.