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Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

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Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#241

Post by donmcronald »

voakbasda wrote: post #28
pestatije wrote: post #4

> breaking apt upgrades on 20.04 LTS Could you be more specific? I upgraded from 20.04 to 22.04 without any issues.

Attempts to apt upgrade on my 20.04 workstation is met with a notice that certain security updates require a Pro subscription with “esm-apps” enabled. My desktop has been nagging me with notifications — daily — that 20.04 will no longer be supported this year. This despite 20.04 being an LTS release that should provide security updates for another couple of years. Sure, this might be a simple bug in their apt impleme…

It's really hard to find a clear answer of what's going on too. After looking at their website [1] and a forum thread [2] it makes me think they're going to hold updates that would have gone into 'universe' hostage until you sign up for Ubuntu Pro.

The thing I really don't get is that I always assumed 'universe' was mainly driven by 3rd parties. Who's writing the security patches? I can't imagine Ubuntu is capable of doing that for +23k apps, so I'm guessing the maximum they're doing is packaging and the minimum is simply giving us a new repository name that's paid instead of free.

Plus, how does "best effort" work for LTS updates if the finished patch/update is already sitting in the ESM repo? There's not really any extra effort required to push those into another repository, so I think the support for 'universe' will become arbitrary.

My hunch is that 'universe' updates are going to cease to exist in Ubuntu if you're not paying for Ubuntu Pro. I have no definitive proof of that, but it's not clear what they're trying to do and I tend to assume the worst in those situations.

That forum thread feels like they're being intentionally vague about what they're trying to do which I don't like.

Can anyone here explain what's actually going on with updates in Ubuntu now?

1. https://ubuntu.com/security/esm

2. https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/why-is-extended-security-main...

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#242

Post by msm_ »

super256 wrote: post #94
cf100clunk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking why/why not to use systemd is covering very old territory here at HN and not the point of my earlier comment - I was riffing on someone using the term ''a bit dirty'' in regards to a Linux distro.

I understand the point of your comment, and that why/why not is mostly a philosophical/political/whatever question. But really, the “I use both as needed” is the statement which pokes my interest. When do you need something else than systemd? What is the actual work which doesn't run with that particular init system? I'm honestly unsure if you were just joking or if there's really something more to it.^^'

Another reading of that comment would be that they use Debian (with Systemd) when needed, and personally prefer Devuan for philosophical/personal reasons.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#244

Post by jan6 »

it's a very subjective question, depending on stuff like how much you care to update the system, but I'd say:

you might like https://mxlinux.org/ which has seen growing popularity, it's based on debian stable, but with more up to date software, and ability to use newer kernels in case you need better hardware support for very new hardware

you might also just run normal debian, if you don't care for latest versions of everything... Debian is what Ubuntu is based on, and Ubuntu is very close copy of Debian, except Debian's release cycles are very long, so you'll be running on old software all the time, if you choose debian's stable branch...Ubuntu picks packages from debian's Testing branch, verifies it's good enough, and pushes them to ubuntu users, while debian stable is trying to be "super ultra mega stable", so it takes a loong time until everything's sufficiently tested...but using debian's testing branch is pretty fine (unstable is often fine, but might break sometimes)

and another contender: I feel like OpenSUSE is criminally underrated... as they get their money from the enterprise side of things (paid support for linux servers, etc, much like red hat and others), they don't have any reason to mess with what works, and they've been around for like, over a decade also, I forget how long, but a looong time... it would be a bit different, though, using RPMs instead of DEBs, and such, but one very useful feature is, they have builtin YaST control panel which allows you to, either GUI or TUI interface, do a lot of common tasks, without having...

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#245

Post by riku_iki »

nickjj wrote: post #202
404mm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do for kernel updates?

I auto-updated everything regularly except for kernel updates. I replied to another comment that has more details.

what is justification to update everything except kernel besides impressive uptime?

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#246

Post by riku_iki »

lucideer wrote: post #134
timbit42 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend you look at Linux Mint as a desktop replacement for Ubuntu.

Have used mint on the desktop in the past. I'm Irish so I took interest fairly early on due to its provenance. It's cool if you like it's default DE setup, but I don't see any real advantage over Debian, & unless you're using LMDE, it's gonna suffer from all the disadvantages of modern Ubuntu. It's been hit just as hard by snaps - Debian is being hit too but not as hard as Mint or Ubuntu.

mint has debian based distro without any ubuntu dependencies.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#247

Post by karmakaze »

protoman3000 wrote: post #54

It’s unclear to me what’s exactly wrong with Ubuntu. Can you please give some more explanations on what you mean with “ruined by corporate interests” or “snap”? Why do people say it’s not pure? How does it affect me? So far everything seems nicely enough documented and works mostly conveniently out of the box.

That's easy to find "What's wrong with Ubuntu|Canonical?"

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#248

Post by riku_iki »

hanniabu wrote: post #167
pessimizer wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian's website isn't dated, it's constantly updated and a wonderful, comprehensive resource. Unless you're bikeshedding about rounded corners or something.

You can have a constantly updated grate resource that's still dated. Dated is in reference to the UI.

its old school, not dated.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#249

Post by fragmede »

nine_k wrote: post #143
fragmede wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comes full circle as Ubuntu is derived from Debian

As somebody said, "Ubuntu is Debian-based the same way milk is grass-based".

What a smarmy thing for that somebody to have said! They use the same package manager and many of the Ubuntu devs were originally Debian devs.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#250

Post by rgoulter »

8jy89hui wrote: post #166
gaganyaan wrote: post #137

I'm liking NixOS thus far. I've got it installed on my personal laptop. It's got some rough edges, but the benefits for me outweigh the downsides. I really like affordances like "nix-shell -p foo" to just run a shell with the "foo" command in it for one-off usages, instead of slowly accumulating installed apt packages that I forgot why I installed them. Similarly, having any custom configuration inside of "configurat…

> It's got some rough edges I've recently been looking really hard at NixOS as a possible next-step. (I use Manjaro and am particularly interested in ways to keep my Laptop and Desktop in sync) I've heard that the documentation can be pretty lackluster at times. Are there any other rough edges I should know about?

> Are there any other rough edges I should know about?

I think the easiest to encounter is that programs downloaded from the internet might not 'just work' for various reasons. (e.g. because they're linked against libraries in more typical locations, or because the code hardcodes paths like /bin/bash or /bin/rm which NixOS doesn't provide by default).

So, when programs like minikube like to provide a nice UX by downloading helper executables, it won't 'just work'.

Solutions vary from "someone already packaged this, it's not a problem" to requiring deep understanding of what you're trying to do.

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