I still remember when I found out about Ubuntu 100 years ago.
It's clear to me that Ubuntu is no longer in fashion. So what is popular these days? From what I heard, I think it's Fedora or Arch (such as Omarchy), but only with some slick UI stuff like Hyprland and Caelestia.
I was an Ubuntu member for years; got a certificate from
Mark Shuttleworth, a cool @ubuntu.com email and IRC cloak, contributed to Ubuntu a ton, gave public talks around Brazil in schools and events like Latinoware, ran a pretty successful blog about the distro here in Brazil, was co-leader of the LoCo team in my state. You could say I was very invested in Ubuntu.
Still, I can't recognize the distro anymore. We got ads, things being pushed down the community's throats, the insane hiring process, and so much more. I have very fond memories of my time as an Ubuntu member, and I wouldn't be where I'm today if it wasn't for what I did as a member, but I left years ago when all of this started.
Been using openSUSE ever since. I don't contribute to openSUSE as I did Ubuntu, as I don't have the time anymore, but the decisions are sound, the system works incredibly well and stable[1], and the voice of the community is heard by leadership. I'm pretty happy with the choice.
[1]: Heck, it works so well that I even run Tumbleweed, a rolling release distribution, on servers.
If it's a server: Debian Stable or Rocky Linux (choose according to taste).
If the person can put in the work and doesn't need bleeding edge software: Debian Stable.
If the person can put in the work, the machine is in a secure environment, not going to serve anything and is a desktop system: Debian Testing.
If the person can't put the work and wants something working: Fedora.
If the person wants to dive deeper: Arch, Gentoo, LFS.
Note: Debian needs some work not because it doesn't work out of the box, but it doesn't do any customization on packages. So tailoring things according to your taste takes time. Then it becomes so customized it almost reads your mind and feels like home.
I've been A/B testing the desktop side of this. If the person doesn't mind reading a wiki page every now and then and has a few hours to set up the OS on the first day, Arch (without `archinstall`) works better for "wants something working."
The reason is that, people eventually need proprietary / old / unsupported software, and AUR often has it out of the box, and when it doesn't, at least the dependencies are already there. On the other hand, beginners (even some experienced but busy guys) might agree with a problematic `apt` plan and uninstall the desktop, and it goes downhill from there (can't repair the system because they never built it in the first place, or cannot go back to the original configurations, etc). For instance this can happen because the user tried to install a `deb` package for an older release.
That being said I can't remember seeing fedora fail this way, though the user might have to manually clone / build a dozen more git repositories to install the same unsupported software. This was a deal breaker two years ago (lack of AI help), but now it's just time consuming.
I'm still on Ubuntu and I'm not sure I'm dedicated enough to bother with Debian (especially on a niche laptop, I run Debian on servers), but everything I'm seeing about the new Ubuntu releases makes me want to switch to Mint once 23 (26.04 base) comes out.
The popular OS is more likely to be either directly tested by people writing software, or already have bugs filed/fixed for edge cases because more people are using it.
- Snaps.
- Replacing something battle-tested with something written in Rust, MIT licensed, with 140 CVEs and other bugs (uutils).
- Pulling rugs and replacing debs with snapswithout telling it, because "it creates positive pressur e on the snap team and drives the quality higher".
- Staggered rollout of some updates, so update is there but you can't update because the your system didn't feel like updating yet.
- Promising to open source Snap store to allow alternative stores and forgetting what they had said.
- Bullying Debian to push their changes to Debian to offload software maintenance (they wanted to make netplan the default in Debian, for example).
... etc, etc.
Note: You can disagree with this, and we can discuss this with cool heads, if you prefer.
Nope, snap is bad, but how they modify apt to slow-rollout updates and bully Debian to offload things are equally bad. They became the Microsoft of the Linux world while trying to replace it.
They are moving with self-interest, not with a collective interest. Considering what Ubuntu means, that's bitterly ironic as well.
I never used Ubuntu outside VMs to test Ubuntu-specific stuff. I used to have a colleague who installed Ubuntu as defacto server OS, but I replaced them with Debian step by step.
I can't understand the snap hate personally. Snap packages are very easy to create and i like being able to install e.g. a language toolchain in a self contained way that doesn't depend on or pollute my system libraries. And ultimately i use a distro because i trust its maintainers, i can't bring myself to get upset about what package format they choose to use
I've settled on NixOS for things I manage - servers, VPCs, laptops/pcs. Not gonna rehash its pros/cons, but it really clicks with me. Also, very useful for project dependencies and things that doesn't need to be installed just because are used once a month.
I recently revived my old gaming PC from 2015 and I wanted to install Pop!_OS cause that was the cool new-ish one everyone's been talking about. But I straight up could not get it to install on my hardware (I think my GTX 970 is too old for official support)
I left ubuntu back during the unity desktop days. It was a great desktop for beginners, but not my cup of tea. Since then they put ads in their operating system and embraced these nonsensical snap packages, so I'll never go back to ubuntu.
Instead, I'll probably move everything over to Void next.
Im on Void Linux and using X11 too. While i do a lot of my config using an LLM these days, i do find the system simple again. No SystemD, no wayland etc (This works. great for me as im on a desktop with a AMD GPU and well supported HW. If i was on a laptop i would use Wayland probably).
I personally consider Ubuntu an irresponsible choice. They hold back security updates unless you subscribe to Ubuntu Pro with the 'esm-apps'. I'd rather use a distro that doesn't apply a ransom to security updates.
Ubuntu is surely controversial but no, security updates aren't paid. ;) Well, unless you need an LTS that cannot be updated for whatever reasons for 10 years. Or for people that need an extra FIPS approval.
I agree, since that move I've migrated everything I had running on Ubuntu to Debian, with the exception of my big blue button VPS whose installation script is really tied to it.
Someone may run into some issues upgrading their one server, and decide to power through it. Enterprises create a project plan, have meetings, get QA involved, identify risks, mitigate them, need sign off from the security team, not just on the new Ubuntu version, but they may talk themselves into re-certifying the entire bla-di-blah. For them it makes economic sense (in the short term) to just pay for the support plan that keeps them "compliant" and comfortable on the current version.
And this, among other things, is why I like the agency that small companies should be able to offer you.
Sure, but if you are such a situation, then paying for Operating System is probably cheaper than paying engineering time to fix it. Also, most stuff these days could probably be shoved into a container and thus extremely distro/version agnostic.
All applications need maintenance. Either you do it at application level to keep on top of its dependencies or you do it at OS/3rd party level. Either way, someone wants to get paid.
> Sure, but if you are such a situation, then paying for Operating System is probably cheaper than paying engineering time to fix it.
Yes, that is the entire point of what I said.
> most stuff these days could probably be shoved into a container and thus extremely distro/version agnostic
It depends on if it's an in-house app or managed and built by a 3rd party (may void contract). Also depends on the risk of life/monetary loss if something goes sideways.
sound like FUD, ubuntu don't hold back security updates for their LTS distro , move to newer LTS one if you wanna secure your system, same goes to Debian or RedHat or Windows , who wanna maintain older Debian 9 security or Windows 7 secuity update.
If you use the words like "still" and "at least", there is little enthusiasm. But that's how a long-term relationship looks like I guess.
It's clear to me that Ubuntu is no longer in fashion. So what is popular these days? From what I heard, I think it's Fedora or Arch (such as Omarchy), but only with some slick UI stuff like Hyprland and Caelestia.
Still, I can't recognize the distro anymore. We got ads, things being pushed down the community's throats, the insane hiring process, and so much more. I have very fond memories of my time as an Ubuntu member, and I wouldn't be where I'm today if it wasn't for what I did as a member, but I left years ago when all of this started.
Been using openSUSE ever since. I don't contribute to openSUSE as I did Ubuntu, as I don't have the time anymore, but the decisions are sound, the system works incredibly well and stable[1], and the voice of the community is heard by leadership. I'm pretty happy with the choice.
[1]: Heck, it works so well that I even run Tumbleweed, a rolling release distribution, on servers.
If the person can put in the work and doesn't need bleeding edge software: Debian Stable.
If the person can put in the work, the machine is in a secure environment, not going to serve anything and is a desktop system: Debian Testing.
If the person can't put the work and wants something working: Fedora.
If the person wants to dive deeper: Arch, Gentoo, LFS.
Note: Debian needs some work not because it doesn't work out of the box, but it doesn't do any customization on packages. So tailoring things according to your taste takes time. Then it becomes so customized it almost reads your mind and feels like home.
The reason is that, people eventually need proprietary / old / unsupported software, and AUR often has it out of the box, and when it doesn't, at least the dependencies are already there. On the other hand, beginners (even some experienced but busy guys) might agree with a problematic `apt` plan and uninstall the desktop, and it goes downhill from there (can't repair the system because they never built it in the first place, or cannot go back to the original configurations, etc). For instance this can happen because the user tried to install a `deb` package for an older release.
That being said I can't remember seeing fedora fail this way, though the user might have to manually clone / build a dozen more git repositories to install the same unsupported software. This was a deal breaker two years ago (lack of AI help), but now it's just time consuming.
Debatable.
... etc, etc.Note: You can disagree with this, and we can discuss this with cool heads, if you prefer.
And as a software maintainer who publish to all distributions, I wholeheartedly agree.
1. the update process is separate from the main system update -- "close this program to update, or will forceably update in X days" notifications;
2. breaking desktop file links where an update can create a duplicate file and after the old snap is removed it removes your pins to the taskbar;
3. possibly breaking other things due to the way the snap directory for the app is not stable.
They are moving with self-interest, not with a collective interest. Considering what Ubuntu means, that's bitterly ironic as well.
Shame.
- in the server
- desktop ui
- NAS
- ci
- dotfiles
- ultra compact docker image
- microvms
- development environments
- SmartTV? NixOS
- build your docs? NixOS
- wanna control a fleet? NixOS
- build ISOs?
- wanna control brew declaratively? NixOS
- secure environment? NixOS
But of course feel free to distro hop yourself.
I ended up installing Mint and it's Good Enough™
Ubuntu used to be the Debian that just worked without tweaking.
Today I find Debian to be the one which’s works without tweaking, and Ubuntu the one where one has to undo/disable lots of Ubuntuisms.
So for me: Server is Debian. Laptop is Arch.
* https://packages.ubuntu.com/stonking/coreutils
See "Ubuntu 26.10 completes transition to Rust-based coreutils" from last month:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49696697
(I'm fine with Wayland for those who want it but it still breaks things I've used)
Instead, I'll probably move everything over to Void next.
If so, why pay for that rather than upgrading? Honest question.
LTS also only covers core OS components with security updates, not the 30k+ packages available in the repo...
And this, among other things, is why I like the agency that small companies should be able to offer you.
All applications need maintenance. Either you do it at application level to keep on top of its dependencies or you do it at OS/3rd party level. Either way, someone wants to get paid.
Yes, that is the entire point of what I said.
> most stuff these days could probably be shoved into a container and thus extremely distro/version agnostic
It depends on if it's an in-house app or managed and built by a 3rd party (may void contract). Also depends on the risk of life/monetary loss if something goes sideways.
That's well spelled out here: https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle
You can also just upgrade your LTS and continue to get support for free.
Absolutely. Injecting ads into the desktop and cli, having a package manager that runs as a root service, their decades of poor upgrade testing, etc.
I have never found them to be trustworthy when other, better options exist.
Previous releases was MIR, Upstart, Snapd… This release it’s no X11 and GNU Coreutils replaced by buggy Rust rewrites.
Debian feels more like pure FOSS and in general just better. None of that icky flavour in the back of your mouth.