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Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

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Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#21

Post by ergonaught »

> stable and supported for the next twenty years, without being ruined by corporate interests

That exists only in your imagination, so, imagine whatever you like.

Sounds like you want Debian, but you might want to explore the disgruntled CentOS forks/replacements if you want the appearance of an enterprise distribution (that's what "stable and supported for the next twenty years" means) without the pesky problem of having to be aware that there is an enterprise driving it.

May as well look at FreeBSD while you're here, though.

I switched mostly to Manjaro a long time ago and I've only had a couple of issues with it, for whatever that's worth.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#22

Post by lucideer »

I switched to Debian on servers & was impressed enough (previous experience with Ubuntu & RHEL) that I even went ahead & installed it on desktop. That was a mistake for a few reasons so I quickly switched away* on desktop but it's still my choice on servers, with a few caveats...

1. Snaps are infecting all distros, not just Ubuntu. This affects desktop more than servers, though LetsEncrypt/Certbot are major culprits on servers. I have managed to work around this on my debian servers with a combination of podman & certbot's dockerhub images but it's a sad state of affairs that such fuckery is needed.

2. Hardware support is the perennial issue on desktop & I was still getting hit by this in 2022 on Debian with AMD drivers & multi monitor/KVM support. This obviously isn't a worry on servers.

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* fwiw I switched away from Debian on desktop to Gentoo, which I used to use years ago before getting a little fed up with compile times. Have found compile times to be absolutely miniscule on modern hw compared to what I remembered, & binary ebuilds much more plentiful than in the past too. Had always found it the most sane, stable & up-to-date distro in the past, with compile times really being the only downside, so would recommend for anyone looking to try out something new. Unlike Arch, Gentoo does a lot for you: it's really just the initial install that's a pain.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#23

Post by maxk42 »

cmdlinecowboy wrote: post #8

Red Hat for enterprise use, Fedora for personal desktop use. One of the largest communities you’ll find. If you want Debian based maybe just straight Debian. The centos debacle was poorly handled but I think what red hat was /trying/ to do made sense. The community just wasn’t there to sustain it. Red Hat was paying to give away free RHEL basically lol. CentOS Stream should have just been called RHEL Stream. It’s bas…

Unfortunately Fedora has been making a lot of similar decisions to Ubuntu lately, although it's still better IMO. I'd say coming from Ubuntu, Mint is probably a lower learning curve anyway.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#24

Post by w4rh4wk5 »

You could give Linux Mint a try for desktop. With the regular edition you should get pretty much what Ubuntu offers, with fewer "anti-features".

There is also a Debian-based Linux Mint (LMDE) which might be preferred to regular Debian for desktop use.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#27

Post by hamilyon2 »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #7

After a major Ubuntu version upgrade completely broke virtualization, I switched to OpenSUSE. It has a very professional feel and YaST is a great tool for (re)configuring the system without having to look up commandline specifics for every one-off action I wanted to perform. I use Leap for my work laptop and Tumbleweed for my home PC. Both are very stable. I also use Manjaro on the side but for a rolling release it l…

OpenSUSE has it's quirks, but I have been happy user for 7 years. Tumbleweed saves me headache of upgrading every n years

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#28

Post by voakbasda »

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 implementation, but it’s been present for weeks now. It’s a sign of corporate-driven rot, and my 30 years experience in the industry tells me that this is the tip of an iceberg that could sink their Titanic. I want off the boat before it sinks.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#29

Post by Darmody »

I think Pop_OS! is also a good choice if you want it only the the desktop and not servers.

They are doing a great work with their shell on top of Gnome and their own DE is on the way. Even though they are a company, they take the community seriously.

I can't wait to have a DE with screen independent workspaces.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#30

Post by vorticalbox »

hanniabu wrote: post #9
LinuxBender wrote: post #2

If you are comfortable with Ubuntu then perhaps Debian [1], the OS that Ubuntu was forked from would feel natural? [1] - https://www.debian.org/

Wow, if there's one thing open source projects are known for, it's dated websites

> isn't broken don't fix it

Though in this case it's likely to keep it accessible to people we slow internet connections.

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