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Pop _OS 22.04 LTS has landed

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Re: Pop _OS 22.04 LTS has landed

#11
post #8
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never recommend minor distros to new users (and honestly to anyone else) for the simple reason that there is no guarantee they'll stick around or are secure. Newbies need something that is guaranteed to be supported for years. For new users Ubuntu is by far the sanest distribution because it ships with codecs and drivers, is backed by a sizable company, and has by far the widest software support. Only Linux enthusi…

Fair point, from personal experience would you say people tend to stick with Linux if you recommend Ubuntu and they actually give it a good try?

yes although there's an uncanny valley. I've given a lot of older family members linux laptops and they do just fine given that they mostly browse the web. At the other end devs do fine with linux anyway. Problem is still the people in the middle. Even on the most mainstream distro there's still frustration if they work with software they can't replace and that's still often the case.

Re: Pop _OS 22.04 LTS has landed

#12
post #5

Does anyone else recommend this to people first trying out Linux? I have been mentioning this and Mint (though I use Debian PopOS! seems like the better of the two), and I'm curious which of them (or any other distro) helps convert more Windows users. I stopped recommending Ubuntu a few years ago because of snaps, they're such an Ubuntu specific thing in practice that I think it's harmful for people learning Linux.

I tried to use the release before and it was a mixed bag. While the default desktop is quite OK and everything seems to work, as you install another desktop environment like eg XFCE everything breaks. This is of course a very bad example of a Linux distro, such a thing does not happen with Ubuntu. In fact it seems to me that besides the very narrow focus on their preferred desktop they do not seem to care about all the other packages.

This again leads to the conclusion that they did not understand what a distro is about. Of course you want to support all the packages / desktops that come with a distro, not just your preferred set of packages. In fact they are actively destroying other parts of the distro with that.

Instead they should just offer a PPA repo with their modifications / addons - but much better would be if they just fed their changes to upstream instead of pretending to release a whole distro when in fact they just release some packages and maintaining the whole thing is way too much for them.

That leaves a bad taste. It is not clear why they need to release their additions and modifications in such a way, but for me as a new Linux user it was one of the most interesting revelations that I could (un-) install several desktop environments without any problems, this was a huge learning motivation.

So unfortunately this POPOS thing must be declared as a "false" attempt on how to distribute software for Linux. I still would recommend Ubuntu for newcomers, but teach them that several problems that might come up still exist - that is the price for software freedom you have to pay. Still snaps are not a real problem for many users and I understand why they exist, but personally find them horrible, too.

Re: Pop _OS 22.04 LTS has landed

#13
post #6
post #5

Does anyone else recommend this to people first trying out Linux? I have been mentioning this and Mint (though I use Debian PopOS! seems like the better of the two), and I'm curious which of them (or any other distro) helps convert more Windows users. I stopped recommending Ubuntu a few years ago because of snaps, they're such an Ubuntu specific thing in practice that I think it's harmful for people learning Linux.

I never recommend minor distros to new users (and honestly to anyone else) for the simple reason that there is no guarantee they'll stick around or are secure. Newbies need something that is guaranteed to be supported for years. For new users Ubuntu is by far the sanest distribution because it ships with codecs and drivers, is backed by a sizable company, and has by far the widest software support. Only Linux enthusi…

Pop isn't really that minor anymore, specially in Linux gaming. And its backed by an actual company.

It ships with more up to date hardware support then Ubuntu.

Re: Pop _OS 22.04 LTS has landed

#14
post #5

Does anyone else recommend this to people first trying out Linux? I have been mentioning this and Mint (though I use Debian PopOS! seems like the better of the two), and I'm curious which of them (or any other distro) helps convert more Windows users. I stopped recommending Ubuntu a few years ago because of snaps, they're such an Ubuntu specific thing in practice that I think it's harmful for people learning Linux.

I've honestly started suggesting Fedora over anything Debian/Ubuntu based. Ubuntu stability has gotten worse and worse over time, and their approach to software package management has gotten kind of crazy with Snaps.

I usually recommend Fedora for stability and up to date packages. And this is someone that has used Ubuntu since 4.04 and recently a ton of Arch/Manjaro usage. I have personally switched to Fedora with how little fiddling i need to do and how stable everything is, and things just work. If you want to go Arch, I recommend EndeavorOS for that.

I would recommend PopOS as a 2nd option after Fedora though, its the better distro of the Debian descendents.

Re: Pop _OS 22.04 LTS has landed

#17

They only thing I dislike about PopOS is that they have not gone all in on ZFS. The base Ubuntu has it. They could really move ahead of every other distro if they had ZFS native encryption by default.

This is another good example for what I described in my other comment - they only care for their very special setup but break the underlying distro in many ways.

PopOS devs take the work of Ubuntu, add their 0.1% but break a lot of things that work good in [X|K]Ubuntu - that is not helpful for the OS ecosystem. They distribute a broken distro that only works within a very narrow default configuration. Not OK.

Re: Pop _OS 22.04 LTS has landed

#18
post #9
post #5

Does anyone else recommend this to people first trying out Linux? I have been mentioning this and Mint (though I use Debian PopOS! seems like the better of the two), and I'm curious which of them (or any other distro) helps convert more Windows users. I stopped recommending Ubuntu a few years ago because of snaps, they're such an Ubuntu specific thing in practice that I think it's harmful for people learning Linux.

Whenever I try to use Mint theres always something weird that happens that won’t seamlessly install or something, most recently it was steam games not being able to start. A couple of years ago I installed Pop and the automatic tiling paired with Gnome was very offputting (I’v e gone back and forth with Pop Os because of gnome seemingly eating up memory), when, in previous installs, the tiling thing didn’t happen. Al…

TIL bout their rust based DE.

I also tried kubuntu starting out because i wanted a plasma desktop but found it a bit janky defaults wise. I settled on Manjaro KDE tho. Much nicer defaults, much more software available after checking some boxes in the software centre and choosing the nvidia drivers was relatively easy. (a neat menu to choose between the various options of open source or nvidias own stuff)

Re: Pop _OS 22.04 LTS has landed

#19
post #5

Does anyone else recommend this to people first trying out Linux? I have been mentioning this and Mint (though I use Debian PopOS! seems like the better of the two), and I'm curious which of them (or any other distro) helps convert more Windows users. I stopped recommending Ubuntu a few years ago because of snaps, they're such an Ubuntu specific thing in practice that I think it's harmful for people learning Linux.

No post body was provided.

Re: Pop _OS 22.04 LTS has landed

#20
post #5

Does anyone else recommend this to people first trying out Linux? I have been mentioning this and Mint (though I use Debian PopOS! seems like the better of the two), and I'm curious which of them (or any other distro) helps convert more Windows users. I stopped recommending Ubuntu a few years ago because of snaps, they're such an Ubuntu specific thing in practice that I think it's harmful for people learning Linux.

I've honestly started suggesting Fedora over anything Debian/Ubuntu based. Ubuntu stability has gotten worse and worse over time, and their approach to software package management has gotten kind of crazy with Snaps. I usually recommend Fedora for stability and up to date packages. And this is someone that has used Ubuntu since 4.04 and recently a ton of Arch/Manjaro usage. I have personally switched to Fedora with h…

Um... there wasn't a 4.04? The first release was Warty Warthog, 4.10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_version_history#Ubuntu_...

I find it interesting that you say that, though, if only because Warty is when I personally moved from SUSE to Ubuntu, and I've never seen any reason to switch. My occasional trials of Fedora seem to have drawn the reverse conclusion to you.

* There are no stable releases. For boxes I work on, I want something slow-changing and stable. For boxes I experiment with, I want something fairly fast-moving and agile. For me, the LTS/short-term split is perfect for that.

* Ubuntu is more pragmatic about proprietary drivers and so on. Fedora makes it a pain.

* Ubuntu's 3rd party driver support is the best in the industry, AFAICT.

So I am curious to know in what ways you find Fedora better than Ubuntu.

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