When it comes to Linux distros, one person's molehill is another's mountain
(2023/05/03)
- Reference: 1683102733
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/05/03/linux_distro_hopping/
- Source link:
Comment There are lots of distros out there. Some people hop from one to another, some stay on the same one for decades. What constitutes a good enough reason?
For as long as there have been Linux distributions, there has been Linux distro advocacy – which in FOSS circles tends to mean people shouting at each other that they're [1]wrong . Computer advocacy goes way back before Linux, though; flame wars over [2]which editor is best have a long and ignoble history. [3]Maybe it's Vi , [4]maybe it's Emacs .
Recently, a consistent theme, including in comments here on The Reg , is that Canonical has somehow gone astray with Ubuntu, and Snap is horribly broken, but people are seldom willing to give detailed specifics of what is broken and how. So when this vulture came across a detailed blog post, [5]"Switching to Fedora from Ubuntu" , which itself links to a [6]"giant list of bugs" in Snap, he was instantly hooked. (The post, incidentally, has provoked lively [7]discussions in several techie [8]forums already, which seem roughly equally split between strong agreement and fervent denial. Which is exactly how it should be, of course.)
[9]
The post (and many of the comments) struck your correspondent as, well, a little odd. The list of issues with Snap, well, isn't : it's really a list of problems with the Snap-packaged version of Firefox. Your correspondent still likes the old Unity desktop, as regular readers [10]will have gathered by now , and Firefox no longer supports Unity's global menu bar. (Indeed, by default, it doesn't have a menu bar at all any more.) So I routinely install [11]a fork of Firefox called Waterfox , which works perfectly with the Unity menu bar. If you use neither GNOME nor Firefox, then you surf on, blessedly free of issues with either of them. Even so, these are all known, documented issues, and that means they're all pretty easy to fix. If you want a natively packaged Firefox, I've [12]described how to get one . In any event, the sandboxing problem was [13]fixed last year.
[14]
[15]
Isn't it easier to just install a different browser package than change to a different distro? If someone really dislikes Snap that much, why not just remove it: dozens of sites will tell you [16]how .
Lest this comment is misinterpreted: we are absolutely not saying that the Ubuntu refugee did anything wrong. He seems happy with his switch, and that's what's most important. He noted a daunting list of problems with Fedora: drivers, codecs, and third-party application compatibility issues. It struck this veteran Linux (ab)user as considerably worse than his comparable list for Ubuntu, which to us sound like niggles, all with well-documented fixes that could be found with a few seconds of Googling.
[17]
Some of the comments also seem, well, strange. Some people recommend Pop!_OS as an alternative. We [18]had some problems with Pop!_OS 21.10 , but [19]found 22.04 to be a much better experience . Pop!_OS is still Ubuntu and GNOME. Yes, Flatpak replaces Snap, it has some pleasing GNOME extensions, a different installer and the latest Nvidia drivers, but it's a big step nearer upstream than Debian, say.
[20]Sick of GNOME, Snap and Flatpak? You might like Linux Lite, but beware rough edges
[21]The return of the classic Flying Toasters screensaver
[22]Double BSD birthday bash beckons – or triple, if you count MidnightBSD 3.0
[23]Fancy trying the granddaddy of Windows NT for free? Now's your chance
We don't really see the point in reinstalling, when you could just remove and blacklist snapd , install flatpak and, as we [24]mentioned when looking at Fedora 38 , install a couple of extensions, such as [25]Forge and [26]Dash-to-Dock .
One person's molehill is another person's mountain… but that's why Linux distributions exist at all. Your correspondent tried Ubuntu 4.10, the first ever release, in 2004, found it leaner, cleaner, and faster than the SUSE Linux he was using so switched. (As far as I can recall, I went from Lasermoon Linux/FT to Red Hat Linux, then to Caldera OpenLinux, then Corel LinuxOS and subsequently Xandros, to SUSE, to Ubuntu… having tried and discarded Slackware and Debian as too hard back then.)
GNOME makes such sweeping changes to the desktop that, to me, all GNOME distros are more alike than they are different. Switching to a whole different distro family, uncovering multiple problems and having to find new fixes for them, all to end up with the same apps and the same desktop, seems to me like running a marathon to get to the next room.
Personally, I don't like GNOME much. I find KDE too fiddly, LXDE and LXQt too limiting, MATE can't handle vertical taskbars well, so on distros where Unity isn't an option, I run Xfce. It works really well, it's small and simple and fast, and it's considerably easier to customise than GNOME. Better still, any customizations generally survive version upgrades perfectly fine, which is more than GNOME extensions do.
[27]
Sound good? Try Xubuntu – but if you don't care for Snap, you'll still have to find and install an alternative Firefox. If you prefer Flatpak, the Mint Xfce edition is right there. If you don't like either of these cross-platform formats, [28]Zinc is worth a look . It doesn't have either, and provides arguably better replacements, but it's still Ubuntu underneath, with all that implies about compatibility.
Alongside Zinc, there are other unofficial Xfce-based Ubuntu remixes out there, all with their own tweaks and refinements: [29]the Lite edition of Zorin OS is one, and [30]Linux Lite is another . They are all duplicating a lot of each others' work, and we feel that they would all be better off if they put their heads together and worked out some common core that they could all build upon.
I know people in the industry who maintain their own personal Ansible playbook to install and set up the apps they prefer in the configuration they like. They install a standard distro, then install Ansible, then deploy the playbook on top to configure a single machine. If you know what you want in such detail, [31]it's probably worth checking out NixOS , where all that would require a single file. ®
Get our [32]Tech Resources
[1] https://xkcd.com/386/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2013/03/11/verity_stob_text_editor/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2003/09/11/bill_joys_greatest_gift/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2013/11/22/richard_stallman_decides_emacs_should_go_wysiwyg/
[5] https://evertpot.com/switching-to-fedora/
[6] https://evertpot.com/firefox-ubuntu-snap/
[7] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35377584
[8] https://lobste.rs/s/wbcgdt/switching_fedora_from_ubuntu
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZFIwwsz3ew@UCuildxv2nAAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/01/ubuntu_unity_desktop_updated_after/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/04/waterfox_firefox_fork/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/10/debian_firefox_issues/
[13] https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/call-for-testing-native-messaging-support-in-the-firefox-snap/29759/105
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZFIwwsz3ew@UCuildxv2nAAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZFIwwsz3ew@UCuildxv2nAAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2022/04/remove-snap-block-ubuntu-2204/
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZFIwwsz3ew@UCuildxv2nAAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/16/pop_os_2110_new_system76/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/28/pop_os_2204_is_here/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/linux_lite_64/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/14/return_flying_toasters/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/13/freebsd_132_openbsd_73/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/13/openvms_921_x86_hobby/
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/17/first_beta_of_fedora_38/
[25] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/
[26] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/307/dash-to-dock/
[27] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZFIwwsz3ew@UCuildxv2nAAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[28] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/13/zinc_ubuntu_remix/
[29] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/02/zorin_os_162/
[30] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/linux_lite_64/
[31] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/13/nixos_2211_raccoon/
[32] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
For as long as there have been Linux distributions, there has been Linux distro advocacy – which in FOSS circles tends to mean people shouting at each other that they're [1]wrong . Computer advocacy goes way back before Linux, though; flame wars over [2]which editor is best have a long and ignoble history. [3]Maybe it's Vi , [4]maybe it's Emacs .
Recently, a consistent theme, including in comments here on The Reg , is that Canonical has somehow gone astray with Ubuntu, and Snap is horribly broken, but people are seldom willing to give detailed specifics of what is broken and how. So when this vulture came across a detailed blog post, [5]"Switching to Fedora from Ubuntu" , which itself links to a [6]"giant list of bugs" in Snap, he was instantly hooked. (The post, incidentally, has provoked lively [7]discussions in several techie [8]forums already, which seem roughly equally split between strong agreement and fervent denial. Which is exactly how it should be, of course.)
[9]
The post (and many of the comments) struck your correspondent as, well, a little odd. The list of issues with Snap, well, isn't : it's really a list of problems with the Snap-packaged version of Firefox. Your correspondent still likes the old Unity desktop, as regular readers [10]will have gathered by now , and Firefox no longer supports Unity's global menu bar. (Indeed, by default, it doesn't have a menu bar at all any more.) So I routinely install [11]a fork of Firefox called Waterfox , which works perfectly with the Unity menu bar. If you use neither GNOME nor Firefox, then you surf on, blessedly free of issues with either of them. Even so, these are all known, documented issues, and that means they're all pretty easy to fix. If you want a natively packaged Firefox, I've [12]described how to get one . In any event, the sandboxing problem was [13]fixed last year.
[14]
[15]
Isn't it easier to just install a different browser package than change to a different distro? If someone really dislikes Snap that much, why not just remove it: dozens of sites will tell you [16]how .
Lest this comment is misinterpreted: we are absolutely not saying that the Ubuntu refugee did anything wrong. He seems happy with his switch, and that's what's most important. He noted a daunting list of problems with Fedora: drivers, codecs, and third-party application compatibility issues. It struck this veteran Linux (ab)user as considerably worse than his comparable list for Ubuntu, which to us sound like niggles, all with well-documented fixes that could be found with a few seconds of Googling.
[17]
Some of the comments also seem, well, strange. Some people recommend Pop!_OS as an alternative. We [18]had some problems with Pop!_OS 21.10 , but [19]found 22.04 to be a much better experience . Pop!_OS is still Ubuntu and GNOME. Yes, Flatpak replaces Snap, it has some pleasing GNOME extensions, a different installer and the latest Nvidia drivers, but it's a big step nearer upstream than Debian, say.
[20]Sick of GNOME, Snap and Flatpak? You might like Linux Lite, but beware rough edges
[21]The return of the classic Flying Toasters screensaver
[22]Double BSD birthday bash beckons – or triple, if you count MidnightBSD 3.0
[23]Fancy trying the granddaddy of Windows NT for free? Now's your chance
We don't really see the point in reinstalling, when you could just remove and blacklist snapd , install flatpak and, as we [24]mentioned when looking at Fedora 38 , install a couple of extensions, such as [25]Forge and [26]Dash-to-Dock .
One person's molehill is another person's mountain… but that's why Linux distributions exist at all. Your correspondent tried Ubuntu 4.10, the first ever release, in 2004, found it leaner, cleaner, and faster than the SUSE Linux he was using so switched. (As far as I can recall, I went from Lasermoon Linux/FT to Red Hat Linux, then to Caldera OpenLinux, then Corel LinuxOS and subsequently Xandros, to SUSE, to Ubuntu… having tried and discarded Slackware and Debian as too hard back then.)
GNOME makes such sweeping changes to the desktop that, to me, all GNOME distros are more alike than they are different. Switching to a whole different distro family, uncovering multiple problems and having to find new fixes for them, all to end up with the same apps and the same desktop, seems to me like running a marathon to get to the next room.
Personally, I don't like GNOME much. I find KDE too fiddly, LXDE and LXQt too limiting, MATE can't handle vertical taskbars well, so on distros where Unity isn't an option, I run Xfce. It works really well, it's small and simple and fast, and it's considerably easier to customise than GNOME. Better still, any customizations generally survive version upgrades perfectly fine, which is more than GNOME extensions do.
[27]
Sound good? Try Xubuntu – but if you don't care for Snap, you'll still have to find and install an alternative Firefox. If you prefer Flatpak, the Mint Xfce edition is right there. If you don't like either of these cross-platform formats, [28]Zinc is worth a look . It doesn't have either, and provides arguably better replacements, but it's still Ubuntu underneath, with all that implies about compatibility.
Alongside Zinc, there are other unofficial Xfce-based Ubuntu remixes out there, all with their own tweaks and refinements: [29]the Lite edition of Zorin OS is one, and [30]Linux Lite is another . They are all duplicating a lot of each others' work, and we feel that they would all be better off if they put their heads together and worked out some common core that they could all build upon.
I know people in the industry who maintain their own personal Ansible playbook to install and set up the apps they prefer in the configuration they like. They install a standard distro, then install Ansible, then deploy the playbook on top to configure a single machine. If you know what you want in such detail, [31]it's probably worth checking out NixOS , where all that would require a single file. ®
Get our [32]Tech Resources
[1] https://xkcd.com/386/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2013/03/11/verity_stob_text_editor/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2003/09/11/bill_joys_greatest_gift/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2013/11/22/richard_stallman_decides_emacs_should_go_wysiwyg/
[5] https://evertpot.com/switching-to-fedora/
[6] https://evertpot.com/firefox-ubuntu-snap/
[7] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35377584
[8] https://lobste.rs/s/wbcgdt/switching_fedora_from_ubuntu
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZFIwwsz3ew@UCuildxv2nAAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/01/ubuntu_unity_desktop_updated_after/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/04/waterfox_firefox_fork/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/10/debian_firefox_issues/
[13] https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/call-for-testing-native-messaging-support-in-the-firefox-snap/29759/105
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZFIwwsz3ew@UCuildxv2nAAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZFIwwsz3ew@UCuildxv2nAAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2022/04/remove-snap-block-ubuntu-2204/
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZFIwwsz3ew@UCuildxv2nAAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/16/pop_os_2110_new_system76/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/28/pop_os_2204_is_here/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/linux_lite_64/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/14/return_flying_toasters/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/13/freebsd_132_openbsd_73/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/13/openvms_921_x86_hobby/
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/17/first_beta_of_fedora_38/
[25] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/
[26] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/307/dash-to-dock/
[27] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZFIwwsz3ew@UCuildxv2nAAAAAg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[28] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/13/zinc_ubuntu_remix/
[29] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/02/zorin_os_162/
[30] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/linux_lite_64/
[31] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/13/nixos_2211_raccoon/
[32] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Other Choices
Anonymous Coward
There are other desktops not mentioned that are worth a look, and you don't have to stick with the big names. Saying that, personally, I like Enlightenment, but you can get a pretty good lightweight desktop by configuring fluxbox or one of the other *box window managers and adding in only the apps you want and none of the cruft. (Made my first generation eee PC quite zippy that way, with only a 4GB SSD.)
Another Ubuntu —> Fedora switcher
McBread
I too have recently done the Ubunto-Fedora shuffle. I've long used Centos (now Rocky/Alma) for VMs doing server things and finally decided to give Fedora a go on the desktop. There's definitely ways which Ubuntu retains the upper hand (sheer amount of software packaged or documented for it, pragmatism over codecs, propriety drivers, etc), but so far it's working for me.
The fact Canonical recently had to implement a 'no flatpaks by default' rule on the affiliated distros (sorry, 'flavours' does suggest snaps aren't gaining the traction they'd like.
Year of the Linux Desktop
Andrew Barr
And this is all the same reason why the year of the Linux desktop has never really happened, too much choice!
Steve Graham
My own quirk is that I dislike bloat. I've used Debian, and then Devuan for about 20 years, and I constantly strip out stuff that isn't necessary. Things like Avahi, which is installed by default, and appears to be a piece of software that runs constantly, waiting for me to buy a new printer. Consolekit claims to "keep track of seats". I have one seat. And so on.
Recently, I installed Devuan from scratch on an old laptop from the official ISO, and then spent about 2 days removing packages.
This led me to my current little project, which is to create a bootable image which has busybox, dpkg and apt-get, so that I can install a system by adding, rather than subtracting, packages.
Two sided
The "distro-wars" (*) are both a blessing and a serious problem.
It is a blessing because new things are tried and developed. It promotes progressive and experimental designs and infrastructures. New ideas are adopted more easily. It is a serious problem because of the verbal "wars" and the real problem of streamlining for a broader audience. Problems can also include featurism and stability problems.
The truth is somewhere in between. Yes, we need streamlining. Yes, we need communication. No, we do not need one-fits-all distros. Diversity is a strength when we allow ourselves to listen to other parties and take the best of all worlds to improve. And also, users help users. That is always a good thing.
(*) Yes, yes, they are not wars. Just "strong minded people" defending their opinion...