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5 Years of Pop _OS

blog.system76.com

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Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#81

Post by diffeomorphism »

tehbeard wrote: post #77
nu11ptr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Does it matter? People that care know and people that don't know don't need to care.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#82

Post by amir734jj »

I love Pop OS and have been using it for the past 4 years now. But I am not a fan of the System76 laptop build quality. The shipping was fast, the OS and hardware haven't had any problems and the packaging is awesome. But the build quality comparing to my 2015 mac book pro is lacking. But I will probably buy system 76 again because I am so used to linux.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#83

Post by EFreethought »

thisiswrongggg wrote: post #80
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.

My info might be out of date, but I think for a long time Debian was not including some audio codecs like MP3 because there are some patents around it. I think there are some proprietary drivers like NVidia that are also excluded.

I think the Debian distro has always targeted/attracted free software purists.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#84

Post by pjmlp »

RealStickman_ wrote: post #78
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.

You are missing the picture that they provide full development experience stack for desktop development, similar to Framework/Kits/Components on major mainstream desktop and mobile OSes.

Like always many of these experiences fail short by focusing on Look and leaving out the other 90% of the development experience.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#85

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

colordrops wrote: post #36
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…

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.

Try a buggy kernel and breaking your network in one `nixos-rebuild switch`, garbage-collecting older working generations and trying to fix your config back into working state. Great fun.

Other than that, NixOS is a godsend.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#86

Post by tlamponi »

thisiswrongggg wrote: post #80
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.

I don't think there's a single answer to that, but I got a few points that may be the more prominent ones, in no particular order:

a) Their (now changing) stance against unfree firmware files. This made the default adverdised installer fail most laptop installations due to the WIFI firmware not being available, so no internet to pull down the required packages to make it work. There were unofficial ISOs, but they were hard to find and so a frustrating experience if you didn't know about it. Same, but not as worse with other unfree stuff, like NVidia drivers, you are required to enable the non-free repos, which makes totally sense if you check it out more closely but still a bump in the road for users new(er) to Linux or only used Debian derivatives that often have a stance that is (relatively) less freedom oriented. As hinted, the firmware situation recently changed and will get better with the next major release next year.

b) It's more universal and flexible to go in various direction, so it comes with a less opinionated out-of-the-box experience, for the better or worse (depending on your preferences). For example, Ubuntu provides a Server and a Desktop edition, and then all the semi-official Desktop spins for KDE, XFCE, ..., but Debian doesn't you can get it to move in either direction quite easily once you grasp its basics, but that naturally still is an overhead compared to just pulling a preconfigured "ready to fly" version ISO.

c) It is definitively is sturdier, but due to their policies guaranteeing that it's also less bleeding edge, well at least if you use the stable release. You can run the Debian Sid version (unstable), but the project doesn't want to promote that to inexperienced users. FWIW, I run that on my laptops since years and got an excellent experience. It's a rolling edge version of Debian, fresh as Arch, but I just align a bit better with Debian (plus develop on it at work).

There are surely some more, but those where the biggest three popping into my head.

The great thing about Debian, they got quite a healthy relationship to most of their derivatives. Which could IMO only happen due to not being run by a major company or the like, but 100% community based. While that sometimes makes for slow turning mills, but still (or maybe exactly because of that) an excellent and safe foundation for their users, be it direct ones or indirect through derivatives.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#87

Post by brnt »

jwrallie wrote: post #45

Pop OS is great, specially their system76-power package, which allows my Nvidia Optimus based laptop to run just fine. I prefer running KDE Plasma, so I'm using Kubuntu these days, I would love to see a Plasma spin-off of Pop, but I won't blame them if they prefer to stick to Gnome only and focus on consistency.

I also element their lack of KDE option, but as I understand it, they're moving away from Gnome too, to their own DE.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#88

Post by mikae1 »

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…

> 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.

I've been very happy with Manjaro KDE Plasma which I installed maybe two years ago. It's been my main OS since then and I've never had a single problem.

When I installed it on my somewhat unpopular laptop it was the only distro that "just worked". I tried Pop!_OS, Fedora, KDE Neon, EndeavourOS and Kubuntu and some other ones without luck. Pop!_OS didn't even boot.

On Manjaro everything (except for Nvidia graphics) just worked. From thunderbolt to sleep and display switching. The Nvidia setup could've be smoother (needed a slew of terminal commands), but once set up it works. Actually it was my dad that recommended Manjaro as he had exactly the same experience with his laptop.

Debian based distros has given me headaches every time I try to dist-upgrade (following every recommended step). It's still a mystery how that process can be so unreliable considering Debian has been around for ~30 years. It was not long ago that I broke Raspberry Pi OS at dist-upgrade. Luckily, Manjaro KDE Plasma is available for the Pi as well.

Manjaro gives me rolling releases and stability. openSUSE Tumbleweed looks kind of interesting, but Manjaro is working and and at this time in life I've got better things to do than to distro hop.

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#89

Post by prox »

colordrops wrote: post #36
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…

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.

Noob here. Why is Linux breakage even a thing? Is it complete rewrites, new drivers, a design decision?

Re: 5 Years of Pop _OS

#90

Post by tlamponi »

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.

I, and most people I worked with, couldn't care less if the border/title bar looks slightly odd, the same happens on Windows a lot.

The issue ain't different WMs or toolkits, but a lock-in effort from Microsoft with HW and SW vendors, they still had to create WSL to actually improve their dev experience though, could not manage that without.

Most people ain't technical experienced or interested in IT and just don't care enough to actively switch their OS, so they use what's shipped with it, if it was a Linux Distro they would just use that.

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