X-Post from /c/linux@programming.dev
The author raises some good questions about the licensing of the core utils. Why the MIT license? Why not stick to GNU GPL?
I have no interest in watching quarter of an hour of clickbait nonsense, what’s the tldr besides the licencing non-issue?
This is a distro that received crap because of the transition to snaps and the whole Amazon shopping lens thing. There’s pretty stiff competition for “worst release”.
The whine about removing X11 is pretty annoying. Fedora has done the same, and the impact of doing so seems to be pretty small; Xwayland provides the compatibility layer needed, and Nvidia driver issues have been pretty much eliminated.
The sudo change is a design choice and from an accessibility point of view a positive thing - people having problems with typing on a keyboard will probably welcome the change to make it visible when they properly hit a key.
But i can get behind the rest of the critique - an LTS release shouldn’t have feature incomplete and standard-ignoring core utils, and the audio dependency on snap is bordering on publicly taunting snap opponents. Also, an LTS probably shouldn’t opt for a bleeding edge kernel. And what is the reason for the (for a linux distribution) pretty high RAM requirements?
If someone asks me for an recommendation for linux newbies, i will probably go with fedora (or nobara if they game much). It’s been rock solid for me, easy to use for a newbie, and still gives you all the freedom you want if you are an advanced user.
Fedora is absolutely my favorite distro that I’ve used to date. I have it both on my desktop (mostly used for gaming) and my laptop (mostly used for web browsing or anything I might have to do while traveling) and have for many years.
I never get crashes or anything, but on both systems the mouse (USB for desktop, track pad for laptop) will occasionally just stop working. Sometimes clicks still work, sometimes not, but universally the cursor just stops moving. On my desktop I just unplug and plug back in the mouse, but on the laptop I either have to wait it out or reboot using the keyboard.
The desktop also has issues with Bluetooth. (As does the laptop, but they’re much more intermittent.) I even got an external dongle in case hardware or placement were the problem, but that changed nothing. I know both the internal and external work because, when I search, they find my TV, my HASS unit, etc.; but for the things I actually want to connect, like a keyboard or headset, it either doesn’t see them at all, or does, but they disappear when I try to connect or pair them (and don’t show during the next search unless I wait a while).
I haven’t really looked into the mouse issue, but I have reviewed various logs for Bluetooth and not yet found anything that looks relevant.
Other than those issues, I love Fedora. Other problems I’ve had in the past have resolved themselves, presumably through the efforts of the developers, so though I’ve had these issues through several releases, I’ll probably just wait them out.
I really don’t know what to do for my next desktop distro.
I don’t use my PC exclusively for gaming. So things like Bazzite or Nobara are not my jam.
Arch-based distros seem too bleeding-edge. I don’t have that much free time to troubleshoot my PC. That’s why Ubuntu was so appealing to me. It just worked! Now I feel that with the latest LTS I’m going to be trapped into Canonical’s ecosystem with Snaps or risk borking my install. I hate this idea.
I might just move to Debian Stable. I don’t mind being a big behind if it means having a rock solid system. I’m also very used to the Debian packaging system. Also there’s no company behind it that might take it in a certain direction.
Alternatively there could be OpenSUSE Tumbleweed slow roll, but apparently it doesn’t play well with NVidia graphical drivers? I’m also not used to their ecosystem at all.
Tough decisions ahead.
Try Linux Mint (or LMDE).
I started off with Nobara, then tried Linux Mint but moved to Kubuntu, I tried Ubuntu but stuck with Kubuntu, the Kubuntu fucked up and I tried Linux Mint again and havent looked back since. I really like Linux Mint and its what I recommend to anyone I try to get onto Linux. It just works
Yeah but I really like the KDE Plasma desktop.
@ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace @Goodlucksil In my experience with Arch I never really had issues unless I fucked around with stuff I shouldnt. Sometimes I wanted to just mess with stuff and see what would happen. Normal daily use, no issues though.
Nowadays I use Alpine because I don’t want SystemD, which I would not recommend because it takes some doing to make stuff work right.
If you don’t need up-to-date new releases of software, Debian is totally fine. Fedora worked okay for me too, but fuck IBM and RedHat and such.
Yeah. Going to revisit Endeavour and Cachy along with some others.
Your comment is almost exactly the text for “why you should use fedora”. Not as bleeding edge as arch, not as behind as debian. A great balance.
Yeah. Either that or OpenSUSE. But I fer OpenSUSE might not have as big a user base as Fedora or as much user documentation.
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I run Cachyos (KDE), for 9 months now. It’s Arch based. I have had only one problem that I caused myself because I didn’t read the docs well enough. Other than that I have had zero issues and it just works.
It’s the best distro I’ve used (previously ran very early Ubuntu, the SuSe for a while, then Mint).
If Bazzite appeals to you except for the gaming orientation, look into the Fedora UniversalBlue spins.
Thanks, but Bazzite doesn’t really appeal to me. Fedora does have an official KDE Plasma desktop distro now though.
bazzite is not just for gaming
it’s brilliant for everything
Ubuntu is fine. Fair warning if you do go the debian route, upgrading from one Debian stable version to the next is not as easy as an Ubuntu distro-upgrade. But OTOH the Ubuntu upgrades are probably the riskiest part of ubuntu too.
Ubuntu won’t be fine on their next LTS release. Snap is becoming even more mandatory. I don’t have anything against Snap per se, but the way they’re forcing it and tricking users when using apt is not right.
I wish there were a Linux equivalent for what the Windows world had before Windows 7 went EOL, where you could have an older, stable base OS that was mostly forward-compatible with newer software.
You can sort of achieve this with Debian Stable and Flatpak, but it’s not as seamless as the forward compatibility old versions of Windows had.
try FreeBSD, then Mint.
I normally use NixOS but recently tried out PikaOS on one of my machines and I love it. Sure it’s got a gaming focus but it’s fast. damn fast. makes my dev work a breeze. It feels like one of the most complete Linux distros I’ve ever used. takes all of 15min to install and you can be up and running with everything you need within 30min. And their Pikman package manager is one of the best I’ve ever used. has distrobox built into it so if I want to install something from Arch, or the AUR, or Fedora, or whatever I just do “pikman --aur install whatever” spins up a distrobox, automatically exports it, good to go. Also has one of the fastest startups I’ve ever experienced that it felt like I wasn’t on systemd. Like Void runit start up speed.
If there are people who want something like Bazzite or Nobara but want a lot more flexibility for packages than PikaOS is it.
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Try NixOS. If you can make it work for you then you will never go back. Learning curve is pretty steep though.
the curve for someone coming from ubuntu is pretty much a wall.
as someone who uses NixOS I wouldn’t recommend NixOS. sure it makes the hard things easy but it makes the easy things hard.
Then you potentially fall into the trap of configuration hell where you’re just constantly tinkering to get that sweet spot. I have to take vacations from NixOS otherwise I wouldn’t get any work done. Don’t get me wrong I LOVE it but it’s not for everyone.
Tinkering is just the life of a Linux user, it’s not limited to NixOS
Ubuntu releases is personal fine for new or avarage users. But standard snaps is kinda bad. Should always be optional.
