How bad is Ubuntu?

GolfNovemberUniform , 1 month ago

Has anything changed about snap?

It became less slow and I think they considered implementing human verification for new packages but idk if they did.

Have they made any changes in their management that may make sure there won’t be another Amazon search thing?

Even if management changes are done, it’s as easy to revert them. This one is purely a matter of trust.

Is it best to use the default desktop on Ubuntu? I would recommend Kubuntu to them, all else being equal, but don’t know if maybe the default one is better integrated.

I think the default Ubuntu has the best integration in terms of theming and stuff but not having it is absolutely not a problem. I don’t remember the flavours being less user friendly or anything.

Navigator , 1 month ago

Default is garbage for me interface wise (weird app menu/panel made for touchpad not desktop), so I prefer Lubuntu or Xubuntu.

Kubuntu is… Well it’s KDE.

BaalInvoker , 1 month ago

Ubuntu is even more aggressive with snaps. However it’s a ok package manager, I would not be very annoyed by it if I have to use

I mainly just want to know if it will eat all their RAM or something

Kinda the same as Flatpaks… Actually it’s not a big issue, once spare ram is money thrown away…

GolfNovemberUniform , 1 month ago

Ubuntu is even more aggressive with snaps.

I forgot to mention that in my comment. Thanks for pointing it out.

trollercoaster , 1 month ago

I am in the same boat as you. I am still running Ubuntu (with snap removed, so I can’t comment on its current performance overhead) on a few of my machines because I couldn’t be bothered to do a reinstall with something less insane, but I’m not recommending Ubuntu to anyone anymore over the same concerns as you have.

If you want to recommend a system that runs decently out of the box and runs a lot of software, recommend Mint instead. Ubuntu used to be Debian with sane default settings that would run out of the box, nowadays Mint is Ubuntu with sane default settings that will run out of the box. Mint also doesn’t subscribe to this snap madness and is continuing to maintain a few packages Ubuntu has migrated to snap as .deb package (for instance Firefox and Chromium).

fratermus , 1 month ago

nowadays Mint is Ubuntu with sane default settings that will run out of the box

There’s also an official version of Mint based on Debian (LMDE)

trollercoaster , 1 month ago

I know, but I don’t have any half way recent experience with it, so I don’t know whether I can recommend it. When I last checked it out some years ago, it still lacked functionality regular Ubuntu based Mint had.

lord_ryvan , 1 month ago

If you want to recommend a system that runs decently out of the box and runs a lot of software, recommend Mint

OP already stated they tried and disliked Mint.

Quill7513 , 1 month ago

I think the bottom line is if they didn’t like Mint they’re not gonna like Ubuntu. Any criticism I can level at mint I can level even harder at Ubuntu. Before anyone can say anything for sure though it’d be important to know what they didn’t like about Mint and what it is that’s drawing them to Ubuntu.

As far as would I recommend Ubuntu? Honestly, no. I don’t recommend it to anyone. Its not easier to use than Mint if you want an easy to use Linux distro. Its basically no better than Windows if you’re issue with Windows was philosophical. From a technical standpoint I find it to be about the worst distro there is.

The list of distros I find myself recommending to people is as follows:

• Mint (for noobs)
• MX (for experienced users who don’t wanna Futz with stuff)
• Antix (for constrained systems)
• Arch (for experienced users who do wanna Futz with stuff)
• Debian (for people who are on a futzing with stuff spectrum between MX and Arch, regardless of experience level)
• Artix (for sickos who love the Futz, live for the futz, and found Arch to not be futzy enough)

CsXGF8uzUAOh6fqV , 1 month ago

As a “sicko” (lol) I must say I don’t really futz around much if at all anymore. There are some differences but all in all I don’t think the Artix experience is much different from the regular Arch one.

Quill7513 , 1 month ago

Oh absolutely. I loved Artix when I was working with it. Helped me fall in love with doas and OpenRC. But also if you’ve got a computer you wanna get working, it gives you WAY too many choices to make. Its mainly for if you’re using something and you just have a frustrating from some tool or another because Artix seriously let’s you customize aspects of the OS that no other sane distro gives you access to. This has some consequences:

1. Until you have a working system its very futzy
2. Once you have a working system all other systems feel… Wrong. They didn’t make the right decisions. You know this because you dove deep into every conceivable make able decision and if they didn’t choose what you chose, then you already know it won’t be quite right for you.

Basically… If you have to ask if Artix is right for you, that means it isn’t. I kinda only recommend Artix to people who have already customized the shit out of Arch or Debian and still have complaints. Its by far my favorite distro, and it simply isn’t one I’m running right now because Antix is fine enough for my needs and I don’t want to be without a laptop for an entire weekend while I get every single thing lines up.

Again. This sounds like I hate Artix. I don’t. I fucking love it. Everyone who loves Linux should give it a try some time just to see how esoteric and weird a distro can get when they want to. It’s truly beautiful and pure.

limelight79 , 1 month ago

I just switched away from Kubuntu to Debian.

The snap thing was annoying, but not a major problem for me, except for one thing: I switched Firefox back to a debian package, following the directions online to do so, and every few months it seemed somehow I had been switched back to a snap version. I removed the snap and all of that, but every now and then I’d realize I was using Firefox in a snap. (It became obvious when I tried to unlock 1Password - the snap version relies on the plugin, but the non-snap version fires up the standalone 1Password program.)

In general, I’m not opposed to the concept of snaps, and a browser is probably something that should be in a sandbox. But, I preferred the standard Debian package installation, and somehow that kept getting overridden. And that is the kind of thing that I hate about Windows.

The install was smooth, or would have been if I hadn’t had a slightly unusual setup with my drives. It works just like Kubuntu, by switching to KDE with X11 (I had a few minor issues with Wayland), but without Canonical. I don’t need bleeding edge, I just want my system to work reliably.

My Linux background: Spent a lot of time with Slackware starting in the late 90s, both on server and desktop. Switched desktop and laptop to Kubuntu around 2010. Server got switched to Debian in 2017 or so.

AndrewZabar , 1 month ago

THANK YOU!! I started to think I was going crazy with Firefox!! Their updates kept messing around with where the program and profiles were aligned to, the path and files sometimes the way they would be with a .deb and sometimes they were where you’d find a snap package. Also have to keep unpinning it or it would start launching new windows without current settings.

Does their dev team have both being done and they keep fucking around with which is going to be used next? I still can’t figure out what’s going on there.

limelight79 , 1 month ago

You know, I assumed Canonical was pulling something, but it’s possible it was also just incompetence. I didn’t think they even distributed a .deb version of Firefox, so it definitely felt like they WANTED me to use snap Firefox…and then I’d start wondering why it was so important. What vested interest would Canonical have in me using snap Firefox? Maybe it was just honest mistakes.

Linux is about freedom to make our own choices, and whatever is happening with Canonical (malice or ineptitude) was getting away from that. Kubuntu feels like, “We’ve made this garden for you and we recommend you stay inside it.” Debian feels like, “Hey, man, you wanna go hose your system? Here’s the apt command to do that. Have a good day.” (Apparently, I measure true power as ability to screw things up.)

Slackware: “You have all of the power. Right now. And all of the responsibility.”

AndrewZabar , 1 month ago

Honestly I am a huge fan of raw Debian it’s just that I got a new laptop and not all distros have the drivers for it. Even Ubuntu 22.x could not get the audio going but 24.04 boom it all just worked. So I’ve been debating with myself as to whether or not I should give Debian a try on it. I have a few older laptops on which I put Debian and I quite enjoy it. It’s solid and not trying to push the envelope and I’m very fond of that approach. But I’ve also spent a lot of time getting everything setup and just right. I’ve customized the ever-living shit out of the desktop and the appearance settings, widgets, app setups, a bunch of sites I nativefier-ed, and a million other things. So the prospect of redoing it all is daunting.

If a time should come when I feel it’s worth the effort I definitely would.

VLC media player also has this nonsense that their latest stuff seems to only be available as snap lately.

limelight79 , 1 month ago

I just had to change a few things - KDE, dark mode, X11 when I couldn’t get screen power off to work under Wayland, and it’s basically good to go. There might be a few other things I changed, but in general out of the box was pretty close to what I wanted. It even installed the AMD driver for my graphics card.

AndrewZabar , 1 month ago

Oh yeah and even with all the drivers working I still had problem with power management. I did read that of all the things it’s probably the most problematic in Linux to get it working properly that often it can’t. Once the system went to sleep it would not wake, had to hard-reboot. However, it’s a laptop and already uses very little so I’m not overly concerned. So my lid close action is just black screen. Actually it has some benefits in that I can close the lid and running operations will finish.

limelight79 , 1 month ago

That reminds me - for my Lenovo laptop, no issues at all with suspend and resume (just like Kubuntu). But my desktop was going to sleep when I first installed Debian, and it was NOT waking up gracefully; in fact I had to reboot it each time. Since I didn’t want it to go to sleep at all, I didn’t attempt to diagnose the issue beyond turning off the suspend mode in power management.

AndrewZabar , 1 month ago

From a few years ago but maybe they’re still in cahoots lol.

news.itsfoss.com/ubuntu-firefox-snap-default/

limelight79 , 1 month ago

That sounds like it’s mostly about the default install, and I don’t have a problem with them making the default a snap - as I said, sandboxing a browser probably is a good idea from a security perspective, and most people probably aren’t going to care about snap vs. deb installs, so why not go with the safer alternative?

My issue was that it kept switching back to snaps even after I tried to go to .deb installations. It happened at least three or four times. It would be fine for several months, then something would happen during an update, and it would switch back.

I didn’t have the concerns the article mentions about it automatically updating; it would only update whenever I told software in general to update.

AndrewZabar , 1 month ago

Yeah I don’t disagree I was just providing reference info.

Varyag , 1 month ago

“Who has power to destroy something, is the one who holds true control over it.” Or something, I never conquered a planet. Thank you Paul Atreides, very cool.

That is a nice way of measuring control over your own devices and systems, though.

limelight79 , 1 month ago

I can’t find it at the moment, but a few weeks ago I made a comment that I didn’t really care for the paddle shifters in our car (it’s an automatic, but you can switch to “manual mode” and shift it manually), because I know it’s not going to let me do something stupid, whereas a stick shift will usually let me do stupid things that can damage the engine. That’s partially what prompted the measuring power as ability to screw things up comment. :)

smeg , 1 month ago

Do you know what they didn’t like about Mint? If it’s just the DE (which I imagine covers most of the look and feel for a beginner) then there are three different defaults to try.

skullgiver , 1 month ago

I use it. It’s fine. Livepatch is nice, not needing to reboot to apply kernel updates can make the “boot computer, install updates, reboot computer” cycle a bit shorter. Maybe Fedora also has that? Arch and friends certainly don’t do it.

Snap is an annoying feature that mostly just makes life harder for people starting out on Ubuntu. If you’re here, chances are you can run the three or four commands to rid yourself of Snap. Snap has also gotten better in terms of performance, though the store situation still sucks.

Snap’s RAM impact is minimal. You end up with multiple versions of the same dependency in memory (wasting tens to hundreds of megabytes) but the same is true for Flatpak or Docker or AppImage. My biggest annoyance is snaps mounting on boot and taking a few seconds, but it’s really not that bad. Actually, that’s a lie, my biggest annoyance is the (ノಠ益ಠ)ノlowercase “snap” folder in my home directory ლ(ಠ益ಠლ) that you can’t remove or snap will break.

The Amazon search thing was what, ten years ago? Just click no on the “do you want to submit debug logs” prompt.

I personally use the default desktop. Gnome is fine. Some people are married to their Windows clones, for those Cinnamon or KDE is also fine.

I would indeed recommend Ubuntu stable. Being able to install the OS and not risk breaking anything for half a decade is pretty nice. Certainly beats my Arch-derivatives experience. Ubuntu and Kubuntu both come with the standard suite of tools you’d expect for those desktop environments. You can even install both (though you’ll have tons of duplicate applications if you do).

Fedora does more frequent updates, with more changes over time and more stuff possibly breaking. If you want the latest and greatest, Fedora may be better. Software is generally less supported on Fedora though. I also kind of trust IBM even less than I do Canonical to do the right thing, so there’s that.

The biggest problem with Ubuntu is that it’s popular and has been for years. A lot of old “helpful” forum topics will have you open up a terminal, paste some random commands, and break your OS next time you try to update. I’d recommend avoiding any terminal commands for as long as possible when it comes to troubleshooting. The GUI does most things pretty well these days.

boredsquirrel , 1 month ago

No Fedora doesnt at all have livepatching. I think APT distros are great at not needing reboots, Fedora sucks. Its offline installer doesnt work well enough to excuse the reboots.

Fedora Atomic Desktops meanwhile offer awesome unbreakability. I use Kinoite daily and dont plan on switching. Even though using latest Plasma, it just doesnt break.

I would choose a different Distro though, if I didnt want rpm-ostree. Just not sure what? Kubuntu? No. Arch? Hell no. OpenSUSE Slowroll with KDE probably, yes that would be it.

BCsven , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Apt will install a package but if a service is in use the kernel still runs the old until you stop the services and restart. its just not apparent to the user. This is not live patching, live patching is when kernel will load a new patch and you temporarily have two states and during a momentary blip pass all control to new kernel…this is typically for mission critical server that can’t have downtime. Just running a regular update does not do this.

Source for live patching tuxcare.com/…/developer-tutorial-live-patching-de…

boredsquirrel , 1 month ago

Interesting! But afaik apt also has mechanisms to only restart necessary services.

BCsven , 1 month ago

Not sure how to check on apt, but zypper uses ps -s arguments and shows you all the running processes/services that need a restart before the system is fully using all updates

boredsquirrel , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Kubuntu chose to not ship Plasma 6 because it didnt match their release point. While in general a good decision, stable releases are the flaw really.

So a semi-rolling Kubuntu yes, but LTS Kubuntu before Plasma 6? Wouldnt recommend.

Ubuntu is also still full in on Snaps. Flatpak comes from a PPA I think. Their store is snaps-first.

While this is not a bad concept, Flatpaks are better for many reasons. They also may be worse for some others, mainly because Snaps just use Apparmor for sandboxing, like the rest of the system, so you can make easy exceptions.

astro_ray , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

They ship flatpak with their own repo for 5+ years.

The apparmour thing can get pretty annoying if an app you like breaks because of it.

tenelsobahor , 1 month ago

Biggest problem for me was, due to optimization issues ans since I used it on an old computer with hdd, how slow it was.

exanime , 1 month ago

Not recommending Ubuntu because of those 2 things, both of which can be turned off easily, seems a bit extreme. Like not recommending a Toyota because some of the inside trim attrack dust

As an intro into Linux, I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone even if I myself moved on from it

Ephera , 1 month ago

Personal main-complaint about Snaps is that they ship Firefox by default with it and some things in it are just broken:

• “Save Image As…” in the right-click menu would just fail to open the file dialog and therefore do nothing.
• It doesn’t use ~/Downloads/ for downloads, but rather some complex folder underneath ~/snap/. You can get to that folder from Firefox’s download list, I believe, but navigating there via file manager is tricky.

Thankfully, Mozilla now offers a DEB repo: support.mozilla.org/…/install-firefox-linux#w_ins…

As for Kubuntu, it’s far from the greatest showing of KDE. They frequently have oddball KDE versions, e.g. not quite shipping the KDE LTS version in Ubuntu LTS, because releases didn’t line up, but also just in general weird instabilities and crashes which don’t happen on my openSUSE laptop (my workplace issues Ubuntu laptops).

Having said that, we gave some of our Linux newbie colleagues GNOME and they always seem to struggle more with it than the colleagues with KDE, because usability in GNOME is just whack.
Things like not being able to type a file path into the file manager (unless you know the magic shortcut Ctrl+L), or the file-open dialog highlighting the name field, but when you type into it, it starts searching files instead.
But also just the whole thing not behaving like Windows. I’ll be the last to praise Windows’ usability, but it is what many people know.

Montagge , 1 month ago

my snap Firefox can save images as and downloads to ~/Downloads

Ephera , 1 month ago

Hmm, alright. It is still on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, so maybe some fixes to the runtime allow that on newer Ubuntu versions.

ture , 1 month ago

Even back then Save As… was working for me and I never bothered replacing the Firefox snap with the .deb version. Probably some weird configuration on your machine, since I set up quite a bunch of machines with plain Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and never got complaints about this.

Fizz , 1 month ago

Ubuntu is a great distro. It’s performant, ,its stable, its well configured it looks nice out of the box. For seasoned Linux users they can be more picky with which their distro but as an intro to Linux I always recommend mint and Ubuntu.

SeikoAlpinist , 1 month ago

If they are competent with computers, they can probably figure out Ubuntu and maintain it theirself.

I left Ubuntu for systems I manage because I’m not smart enough or willing to invest time learning snaps, and snaps kept breaking Firefox updates and generally made Firefox unusable. Since I’ve been around a while, I found it was just easier to migrate my fleet to Debian and set it to look like Ubuntu with the dock on the left. This has been fine since 2022.

If it’s something you would be partially managing, and they didn’t like Mint, have them try Pop!_OS.

If it’s a super simple, low maintenance desktop, just go Fedora Silverblue and it will stay solid and up to date until the hardware dies.

cevn , 1 month ago

I used Ubuntu for 10 ish years before moving to Fedora. I switched because the Kde packages were seemingly years out of date with no idea of when the new versions would hit the Apt repos.

Seems like a lot of Ubuntu packages are old compared to Fedora since I’ve experienced way fewer bugs now adays.

Snaps were bad but I never was forced to use them, had it purged and disabled the whole time.

F04118F , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Completely off topic, but: I’ve been trying Fedora (KDE spin) for a few months now, and I’m flabbergasted at how unusable the distro version (not the Flatpak) of Firefox is. I think it’s a codec issue as I’ve checked Firefox is running in wayland mode, but:

• video calls (Zoom, Slack) don’t work.
• despite installing every codec I could find through Fedy, a package manager for non-free Fedora repos.

Meanwhile, the Microsoft Edge flatpak works flawlessly.

Are you using a flatpak browser too? If not, how did you get your browser to work?

I really like Fedora otherwise: up-to-date kernel and modern (very efficiently stored) packages, but properly tested with major releases, btrfs and systemd by default and commonality with RHEL is useful at work.

But these codec issues are pushing me back to Arch…

cevn , 1 month ago

I remember some video sites not loading and having to load a non free codec. Other than that I am using librewolf which works but havent tried teams calls and such.

ganymede , 1 month ago

yet to use any OS where the default firefox install was good for too much, other than using it to install a clean firefox directly from mozilla

F04118F , 1 month ago

Distro version of Firefox worked wonderfully for me on EndeavourOS (Arch repo / Wayland / Sway) and Pop!_OS 22.04 (Ubuntu base / X11 / GNOME)

rotopenguin , 1 month ago

Ubuntu has its ups and downs when you’re actually living with it, but they have a fantastic installer experience. I have had my fair share of bizarre dead ends with other distro installers, like Bazzite telling me “you need -860GB more space”. Ubuntu puts you in a solid live-iso OS where the installer is just an app that you can drag to one side and run other tools before continuing. It tends to do sensible things if I go off the beaten path with a more advanced install.

Nowadays, I am happy with debootstrapping or btrfs send’ing an existing Debian install to set up a new system for myself. I still think that Ubuntu is reasonably likely to be a good experience for a newcomer.