Have a look at FreeBSD.
The documentation and the fact userland and kernel are developed and released together changed my whole admin experience.
Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?
91–100 of 345 posts
Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?
#92I dislike Ubuntu for the same reasons and I can recommend two paths: For environments where you expect and appreciate stability- Debian. Hands down. Your initial feel is going to be like a leaner Ubuntu with a few extra steps (non free drivers or software). Very low learning curve. If you don’t mind “staying on top of your OS and packages”, then I’d recommend Arch Linux for desktop (not server). There is never “end o…
Why not server? Because of stability? I use Arch as my main server for 5 years or so and never had any issues. I just update when I think about it.
Stability is great, never had any issues either. Really it’s the frequent package updates. Instead of applying security updates as needed, you are constantly updating all packages as they are released.
Depending on what your server does, this may be less than ideal.
Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, but which release channel? And can I convert an Ubuntu into a Debian by reinstalling it while keeping my home directory?
> Ok, but which release channel? For home use, Debian testing is usually a good balance between things not breaking and things not being ancient. For servers, Debian stable is probably a better choice.
I think anyone who suggests daily driving Debian testing should also mention the fact that packages can disappear from testing for weeks/months at a time (and reappear later). It's recommended to configure `unstable` in your sources as well but set up apt pinning so that those packages are only pulled in if they're missing in testing. See: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting "Best practices for Testing users"
In practice this means adding something like this to /etc/apt/preferences (along with adding entries for `unstable` in /etc/apt/sources.list)
# use `n=` when referencing codename (i.e. buster/bullseye/...)
Package: *
Pin: release n=bookworm
Pin-Priority: 550
# use `a=` when referencing archive (i.e. stable/testing/unstable)
Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 520
Maybe I've been lucky but I've been running testing on my non-server desktops and laptops for 13 years now and have only rendered my system unbootable once (required having to boot up a live CD to reinstall an older working version of some bad libpcre update that had been rolled out).
Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I use both as needed In what case do you need to opt for a different init system than systemd? Genuinely curious, as I've been using debian with systemd for almost a decade now and haven't run into any issues regarding it.
Asking why/why not to use systemd is covering very old territory here at HN and not the point of my earlier comment - I was riffing on someone using the term ''a bit dirty'' in regards to a Linux distro.
I understand the point of your comment, and that why/why not is mostly a philosophical/political/whatever question.
But really, the “I use both as needed” is the statement which pokes my interest. When do you need something else than systemd? What is the actual work which doesn't run with that particular init system? I'm honestly unsure if you were just joking or if there's really something more to it.^^'
Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?
#95After 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
I've literally never had a positive experience doing major version upgrades in Ubuntu during ~5 years of usage. I only broke some minor things once on Tumbleweed and it was fixed via a Snapper rollback within minutes.
Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?
#96Mainstream: Fedora. It has been rock solid for me, while at the same time adopting the cutting edge of the Linux ecosystem (latest gcc, latest security stuff, etc.). Also a lot of exciting things happening, like Silverblue, CoreOS, OSTree, etc. For stuff that needs to be really stable, you can use RHEL or a derivative.
If you are willing to do something more alien: NixOS. But be aware that it can be a deep rabbit hole and time sink.
Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?
#97I live in a region with a lot of government contracting businesses, so Red Hat Enterprise Linux is something I have to maintain a working familiarity with. However, I use Debian for all of my personal projects and infrastructure. The reason? There's no for-profit corporate interest directly controlling the project. The project's organizational structure resembles a constitutional democracy: https://www.debian.org/int…
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.
Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?
#98Kubuntu.
Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?
#99Earlier 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?
What about LMDE?
Re: Ask HN: What Next After Ubuntu?
#100NixOS is by far the best choice if you want an os to learn for the next 20 years.
I love NixOS and was a nixpkgs committer. I think a lot of ideas from Nix will get adopted by the wider Linux ecosystem. But I think it is far more likely that immutable systems based on OSTree, like Silverblue and Fedora CoreOS will become the OS for the next 20 years. It is much more familiar to most people and provides many of the same benefits. Especially now OSTree is adopting Docker/OCI images as a transport [1], the line between building systems and building containers is blurring. A lot of organizations have plenty of institutional knowledge in building Docker containers and OSTree with containers makes system building pretty much the same.