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5 Years of Pop _OS

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Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#71

Post by sgtnoodle »

darthrupert wrote: post #69
colordrops wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at my comment history, you'll see I'm a bit of a broken record, but my records don't break anymore after switching to NixOS. It was precisely the breakage after every upgrade that got me to try it. With declarative config-based reproduceable deployment that can be rolled-back, the broken OS doesn't need to be a thing anymore.

I got there by just using Arch Linux. Funnily enough, when I tried NixOS, I managed to brick my system by running a system-wide upgrade and rebooting.

I use Arch Linux and really appreciate it for the documentation and the rolling release. I wouldn't say it's intuitive for a Linux beginner, though. Expected features don't exist until you go out of your way to install and configure them. Updates often require some finesse at the command line.

Ubuntu works well as long as you install an LTS release and then only upgrade to the next LTS at the end of the support window for the previous release.

Tangentially, I'm getting bored of my desktop environment, and wouldn't mind mixing things up. I've been using cinnamon. I am hesitant to try KDE because of all the GUI dependencies it would presumably install.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#72

Post by colordrops »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #71
darthrupert wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got there by just using Arch Linux. Funnily enough, when I tried NixOS, I managed to brick my system by running a system-wide upgrade and rebooting.

I use Arch Linux and really appreciate it for the documentation and the rolling release. I wouldn't say it's intuitive for a Linux beginner, though. Expected features don't exist until you go out of your way to install and configure them. Updates often require some finesse at the command line. Ubuntu works well as long as you install an LTS release and then only upgrade to the next LTS at the end of the support windo…

That's the lovely thing about Nix. One line change, and poof, kde is gone from your system.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#73

Post by kovac »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #43
myself248 wrote: post #27

I'm a Linux idiot, just got sick of Windows, and took the plunge in 2016. (After some ill-fated tinkering in 1996 with Slackware, but we don't speak of that.) I started with Ubuntu and had a pretty good time for a year or two, until a dist-upgrade broke everything. Luckily /home/ was easy to restore from backup. So I was fine for another two years on Ubuntu until another dist-upgrade broke everything again. Sensing a…

> but I think that's for people with bigger screens so I turned it off so my alt-tab reflexes work again. I actually use tiling the most in my small screens.... because I effectively have 1 or two windows full screen or split. It's the hotkeys that make it really slick

Same here. Since I started using tiling window managers I stopped using external monitors. This is one place Linux helped me cut expenses...

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#74

Post by pxc »

anon291 wrote: post #56
colordrops wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at my comment history, you'll see I'm a bit of a broken record, but my records don't break anymore after switching to NixOS. It was precisely the breakage after every upgrade that got me to try it. With declarative config-based reproduceable deployment that can be rolled-back, the broken OS doesn't need to be a thing anymore.

Yup. NixOS was the first OS I used where upgrades weren't a big deal. No time waiting for upgrades. No time worrying about them. No time not upgrading due to concerns about downtime. Systems do not break in weird ways, ever. Nix works exactly as advertised. The store is sacrosanct and nothing ever breaks. Lovely experience. Been running for almost five years now on the same setup. Run my mail servers on it too. No do…

> Yup. NixOS was the first OS I used where upgrades weren't a big deal. No time waiting for upgrades. No time worrying about them.

One of my favorite lesser benefits of using NixOS is that running a big system upgrade doesn't even stop you from installing software while it's running. Realize you need a new program while your system upgrade is running? No problem! Add it to your NixOS configuration for posterity if you like, then run it in a Nix shell or install it to your user profile. No need to interrupt the upgrade or wait until it's over.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#75

Post by kovac »

ugh123 wrote: post #63
myself248 wrote: post #27

I'm a Linux idiot, just got sick of Windows, and took the plunge in 2016. (After some ill-fated tinkering in 1996 with Slackware, but we don't speak of that.) I started with Ubuntu and had a pretty good time for a year or two, until a dist-upgrade broke everything. Luckily /home/ was easy to restore from backup. So I was fine for another two years on Ubuntu until another dist-upgrade broke everything again. Sensing a…

Hah, I ran into that same upgrade breakage a few weeks ago too! I'm still cleaning up some of the mess but was mostly back within half a day.

What kind of break is this? Is it like you can't even boot into the tty, can't get from tty to graphical environment or just your user applications stopped working?

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#76

Post by agravier »

robotburrito wrote: post #57

I liked pop_os for a while, but sadly gnome just freezes randomly on me now. I have seen it's an issue that many others have. Hopefully it's just my hardware or something and not indicative of a larger problem with the distro. When it is not crashing it's quite nice!

I get that on Ubuntu after a few days of uptime.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#77

Post by tehbeard »

nu11ptr wrote: post #35
ekianjo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they include flatpaks together with normal packages is confusing though. They appear just the same in the pop_OS store and there are many duplicates because of that. Very inconsistent behavior for installation: flatpaks require no specific rights but normal packages require sudo password. Not a good UX in that regard.

While I would prefer more debs personally, the flatpaks are clearly marked as such in the store

The confusion is there's no info on what's different between them presented to the user.

I know vaguely that flatpak is "like docker" in terms of wrapping dependencies.

I have no clue how that translates to missing features of compatibility issues with other apps.

Even knowing which is more up to date isn't shown. Or why i should pick one over the other.

The multiple packaging types confounded my efforts to debug an issue I had with VLC, as i initially thought it was a flatpak permissions problem.. No evidence, just hearsay by what i'd seen of flatpak in general online.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#78

Post by RealStickman_ »

pjmlp wrote: post #67

And this is why the Linux desktop is domed to be a VM inside other OSes, or filled with Electron apps. Gtk, Qt, XFCE, GNOME and KDE applications will look out of place in the new desktop, and most likely they will never create a Rust based set of frameworks that can match the above ones on features, development tooling, and extensibility points for desktop developers.

XFCE and Gnome are GTK, while KDE is QT.

As long as they provide matching themes for QT and GTK it should be fine.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#79

Post by faldore »

I have used Pop_os for the last year; it has enough bugs and wasted enough of my time that I finally switched to Windows just to see if I can put up with it; I'll probably revert to Ubuntu in a few months. WSL2 makes windows more livable but it's still janky.

I'm a nerd but that doesn't mean I have time to mess with bugs.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#80

Post by thisiswrongggg »

nu11ptr wrote: post #6

I really like Pop Os. I've always liked Debian descended distros, and prior to this I was using Ubuntu. While I like it, I always found a lot of rough edges esp. when it came to proprietary drivers, etc. where things didn't always work without some tweaking. Pop Os on the other hand seems to "just work" - it is like a polished version of Ubuntu with a nice selection of apps in the Pop Shop. Theme is pretty nice as we…

I'm curious. With all these debian-based distros, why people don't just use debian? I mean it has to be sturdier than the downstream distros.
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