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Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

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Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#181

Post by zh3 »

cf100clunk wrote: post #18
discreditable wrote: post #16

Look no further than Debian. After switching from Ubuntu I started to understand why people view Ubuntu as a bit dirty.

> people view Ubuntu as a bit dirty Look even further at Devuan, made by people who conder Debian as a bit dirty. (I use both as needed, I'm just riffing on your comment)

It's still pretty easy to replace systemd in Debian with sysvinit (we do it at moderate scale). Devuan works very well though, basically there's little difference between Devuan and Debian without systemd (all the packages are identical, except where a package has decided to require systemd in which case the Devuan version will just have the dependency removed).

Long term though there's a query over support for anything other than systemd in Debian, hence the move towards Devuan.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#182

Post by bayindirh »

Debian Stable is your best bet here. It's run by community, evolves slowly and with a consensus (somewhat), and you can be involved in the process if you have the desire and patience.

I'm using it since 3.0 both on my desktop and infrastructure, and I'm pretty happy.

I once lost a Debian server in our system room. When we remembered that we have such machine, I just logged in and it installed all updates in between and was working without any problems. Just rebooted to get the new kernel, that's all.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#183

Post by philwelch »

bloopernova wrote: post #38
hanniabu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Could you be more specific? What exactly should Debian's website offer that it currently isn't?

Half a gig of Javascript and a GDPR popup.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#184

Post by criddell »

EFreethought wrote: post #112
Lucasoato wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any specific reason to choose them over Linux Mint? I'm genuinely asking, I've never tried Red Hat or Fedora.

One of OP's issues is Ubuntu forcing snaps. I think Mint disables snap by default: https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/snap.h... Another Ubuntu derivative that does not use snaps is System76's Pop!_OS

Isn’t one of the purposes of snaps to allow finer grained permissions? In non-snap systems, how do you prevent that weather app you just installed from accessing your camera and microphone?

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#185

Post by bayindirh »

bleuuuu wrote: post #121
loxias wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used exclusively Debian on all my servers and laptops for the last 20ish years. Can confirm, it will continue to keep working, however there might be some things that piss one off in a similar manner as Ubuntu's snaps. I hate systemd for example, but grudgingly accept it.

why the aversion to systemd?

In short, developers' attitude towards critics and initial design decisions.

Now it's better, not but perfect, and a lead dev working for Microsoft doesn't inspire confidence about its long term agenda.

I can post links to comments of mine if you're interested further.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#186

Post by arthurcolle »

bleuuuu wrote: post #121
loxias wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used exclusively Debian on all my servers and laptops for the last 20ish years. Can confirm, it will continue to keep working, however there might be some things that piss one off in a similar manner as Ubuntu's snaps. I hate systemd for example, but grudgingly accept it.

why the aversion to systemd?

You might find this interesting: https://nosystemd.org/

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#187

Post by gen220 »

chubot wrote: post #162
ploum wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to highlight this answer. Ubuntu is completely based upon Debian. Going back to Debian ensure familiarity with tools (like apt). Also, the longer release cycle is perfectly adapted for people using only Ubuntu LTS (which, in itself, is quite awkward as Ubuntu was created to allow short release cycle for desktop users). There’s also multiple companies offering Debian support if needed. And it can safely be assu…

Honest question: how is Debian's hardware compatibility compared to Ubuntu? My impression is that Ubuntu had people testing it on modern hardware, either on the Canonical side, or perhaps on the Dell side (even though I don't own any Dell now) About 10 years ago I installed Debian on a desktop, and I remember having graphics issues that I didn't have with Ubuntu. I guess I needed the proprietary driver that Ubuntu of…

Any solution that work with Ubuntu should theoretically work with Debian. You'll just need to cobble it together more manually, I imagine.

The good news is that Debian is a very popular distro. You'll be able to find copious amount of information online to guide you to relevant hardware support [1].

It's not at all a "it just works" situation. But if you're comfortable with getting your hands a bit dirty, and you're not using any super exotic hardware, it's not at all bad.

[1]: https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#188

Post by amluto »

loxias wrote: post #153
bleuuuu wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why the aversion to systemd?

I don't like the design at a fundamental level. It feels brittle, bloated, and not very unixy. I'd rather have my init system be a handful of microscopic executables, using text files or symlinks for configuration and text files for logging. I don't like everything depending on systemd it feels like too much complexity at the wrong part of the stack. It doesn't jive with my sense of architecture, it's not well design…

Systemd had no shortage of issues, but:

> text files or symlinks for configuration and text files for logging.

Systemd gets this right and arguably pushed the whole ecosystem in this direction. The old rc scripts could barely be considered a text file and symlink configuration system — they were a pile of text files containing a miserable combination of code and configuration mixed together, along with a very simple configuration (this service is enabled in these runlevels, more or less) that got translated, hopefully correctly, into symlinks. Of course, nothing really kept the symlink farm consistent with itself or anything else except a pile of additional scripts associated with packages that tried and usually succeeded.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#189

Post by tejtm »

kleiba wrote: post #79
Lucasoato wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any specific reason to choose them over Linux Mint? I'm genuinely asking, I've never tried Red Hat or Fedora.

OP wants to get away from Ubuntu, but Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu. Maybe that would be reason for OP to disprefer Mint?

Mint so far has avoided forcing snaps, I will jump ship too if they do.

Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?

#190

Post by eVeechu7 »

criddell wrote: post #184
EFreethought wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of OP's issues is Ubuntu forcing snaps. I think Mint disables snap by default: https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/snap.h... Another Ubuntu derivative that does not use snaps is System76's Pop!_OS

Isn’t one of the purposes of snaps to allow finer grained permissions? In non-snap systems, how do you prevent that weather app you just installed from accessing your camera and microphone?

It runs as a user without the necessary permissions to access those devices?
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