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Ubuntu 21.10

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Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#81

I loved Ubuntu around 2007-2009 or so. Nowdays it feels like there are plenty of alternative distros that "just work" without so many of the idiosyncratic stuff canonical keeps dumping into what used to be "debian for the masses" > As Linux evangelist Mark Pilgrim once quipped, Ubuntu "is an ancient African word meaning 'can't install Debian'". https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/16/debian_lenny_review/

I’m a long time Ubuntu user and haven’t really shopped for other distros. Any recommendations besides Debian?

Fedora, Arch. You can basically look for any popular distro, they're all working very well if you're not entirely out of your depth wrt Linux

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#82

I loved Ubuntu around 2007-2009 or so. Nowdays it feels like there are plenty of alternative distros that "just work" without so many of the idiosyncratic stuff canonical keeps dumping into what used to be "debian for the masses" > As Linux evangelist Mark Pilgrim once quipped, Ubuntu "is an ancient African word meaning 'can't install Debian'". https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/16/debian_lenny_review/

I’m a long time Ubuntu user and haven’t really shopped for other distros. Any recommendations besides Debian?

openSuSE Leap is nice if you don't have anything against rpms. Upgrades just work and the distribution has an 18 month support window. The packages are pretty polished too. We're currently using that and Debian and also Ubuntu 18 on the developer workstations, which we'll switch to Debian 11.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#83
post #12

Over a decade of Ubuntu use, could not be happier! I remember in 2000s, I had to edit /etc/ text files to set up internet etc. Nowadays everything works out of box. All sorts of peripherals and hardware is recognized automatically. High quality free open source software is available for most stuff I need. The freedom to choose software and customize Linux, if required, is amazing! Am I missing anything ignoring close…

- About 90% of the (GUI) software ever developed? I'm happy to hear that there are quality Linux alternatives nowadays, but there's just many order of magnitudes more choice on Windows (and far less, but still more on Mac). For a lot of categories, this might change in the next decade (Electron and other cross-platform frameworks, tech like Proton) but for things like media editing or even image viewers, or until there is some tech to seamlessly emulate, this won't be a fight.

- Trivial app portability - I absolutely love the concept of portable Windows software. Have a single folder with configuration and binaries, that can run for sure anywhere (give or take a .Net/VisualC install) - and you can achieve this for 90%+ of all available apps. With a some sync tool it's simple to have the same (as in reproducible/copiable) work environment on many machines (in the context of ad-hoc gui user applications). I know this concept isn't really transferable to Linux (separated locations per app, "just build from source") and there are attempts (Snap) but due to the fractured scene and #1 it's not that practical for end-users.

- Hardware compatibility - cool that you didn't have device issues, but this could be because you just don't use non-mainstream hardware. Even when I did, a lot of special functionality was bound to (Mac/Win) drivers. Sure, not Ubuntu's fault, but still.

I think Ubuntu/Linux success stories are infinitely subjective - what you need as an end-user, how much time or patience you have, or how much you value privacy/lack of telemetry/security.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#84

I loved Ubuntu around 2007-2009 or so. Nowdays it feels like there are plenty of alternative distros that "just work" without so many of the idiosyncratic stuff canonical keeps dumping into what used to be "debian for the masses" > As Linux evangelist Mark Pilgrim once quipped, Ubuntu "is an ancient African word meaning 'can't install Debian'". https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/16/debian_lenny_review/

Debian has a strange approach to security these days. There are over 100 unpatched vurnurabilities in their version of Chromium for example: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s... Because of this, I don't see debian as an option for the Desktop anymore. I hope they still fix the server software in their repos.

Check how many vulnerable packages they have against their stable release across all packages and how long until they’re fixed. It’s an eye opener.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#86

I loved Ubuntu around 2007-2009 or so. Nowdays it feels like there are plenty of alternative distros that "just work" without so many of the idiosyncratic stuff canonical keeps dumping into what used to be "debian for the masses" > As Linux evangelist Mark Pilgrim once quipped, Ubuntu "is an ancient African word meaning 'can't install Debian'". https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/16/debian_lenny_review/

I’m a long time Ubuntu user and haven’t really shopped for other distros. Any recommendations besides Debian?

PopOS. Ubuntu with better power management and a tilling WM.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#87
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian has a strange approach to security these days. There are over 100 unpatched vurnurabilities in their version of Chromium for example: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s... Because of this, I don't see debian as an option for the Desktop anymore. I hope they still fix the server software in their repos.

Looks like all the CVEs are fixed in Debian Sid at least. Edit: Not all, apparently. The whole bottom of that Chromium CVE list is still unfixed in Bookworm/Sid.

Which makes a good case for rolling release distros. Not that Sid is released but things tend to get fixed upstream quickly and there’s less lag than both testing and stable.

The flip side is stuff breaks more regularly of course.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#88

Funny, I run Ubuntu on my laptop and tried just today to upgrade it (since I'm on 18.04 and have been for a while). But no matter how I try, `do-release-upgrade` won't do the upgrade, complaining about third party repositories (removed all of them as a result), mismatched python versions, and a load of other issues. When I fix one, another one appears. Tried for 5 hours today and eventually gave up. On the other hand…

have a backup and skip the do-release-upgrade script, edit /etc/apt/sources.list directly for newer repos, outcomment anything 3rdparty (in sources.list.d/ too) and update+upgrade+dist-upgrade your system into the future, did it this way for years.. it's almost a rolling rhino

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#89

I loved Ubuntu around 2007-2009 or so. Nowdays it feels like there are plenty of alternative distros that "just work" without so many of the idiosyncratic stuff canonical keeps dumping into what used to be "debian for the masses" > As Linux evangelist Mark Pilgrim once quipped, Ubuntu "is an ancient African word meaning 'can't install Debian'". https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/16/debian_lenny_review/

I’m a long time Ubuntu user and haven’t really shopped for other distros. Any recommendations besides Debian?

I’ve been really happy with Mint. It’s based on Ubuntu internally, but it feels light and fast.

Re: Ubuntu 21.10

#90
post #74
post #12

Over a decade of Ubuntu use, could not be happier! I remember in 2000s, I had to edit /etc/ text files to set up internet etc. Nowadays everything works out of box. All sorts of peripherals and hardware is recognized automatically. High quality free open source software is available for most stuff I need. The freedom to choose software and customize Linux, if required, is amazing! Am I missing anything ignoring close…

> Nowadays everything works out of box. Except for decent power management on laptops, and certain Bluetooth headsets.

PopOS has decent power management.
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