Installs Ubuntu.
It is Ubuntu.
Gets angry.Gort is not angry. Gort is calm.
Next time, Gort will install Debian and save himself the trouble
The current most popular distribution is MX Linux (based on Debian Stable), which I use. You certainly don’t have to, but I would say least start with a distro that respects you and adheres to FOSS standards…
Edit: context
How many time does Canonical have to do sketchy shit before people catch on? Seriously.
Honestly, instead of trying to remove Snap from Ubuntu, I’d just install another distro (PopOS for example is mostly like Ubuntu but with Flatpak instead of Snap)
Oh, is there a point using PopOS even if I replace the WM?
Pop is great, even without the wm. The app store is top notch, if you’re into that sort of thing. Basically it’s Ubuntu minus snaps, so slightly more modern Debian, with good flatpak integration making up for all apt’s drawbacks. Perfect for the computer you want to be able to use without dealing with out of date packages or rolling release tinkering.
Even so, the wm is worth taking the time to get familiar with, because it’s intuitive enough for a non power user, and you’re not going to approach its efficiency in terms of workflow unless you can consistently use several dozen keyboard shortcuts on a more bare bones tiling wm. Anyway, that’s my opinion, having used a wide variety of window managers since the 90s.
Been using pop for months now. The one thing I have a complaint about my part has to do with Steam. I was drawn to Pop because it had good Nvidia support out the box. Steam flatpak is fine but it can’t do some things that the normal deb version can, such as accessing other drives you may have steam games installed on, or that you want to install them on. You have to make some sacrifices with your library setup and your freedom with it when using flatpak.
It took me a while.to figure this out. I like to share it when I can. The deb version of steam is much nicer to use.
Yea, I see. I use xmonad tailored to my needs tho, so that is why I want to use mu owb WM.
You’re absolutely not the target audience for the wm. But… you still might want to be familiar with it, because it could totally be your foot in the door to set someone down that path. The cost of adopting pop’s workflow is substantially smaller than creating your own from scratch, but it’s intuitive enough to get someone to at least understand why it might evolve to something like your setup.
These days I just don’t have enough time, and i’ve seen enough trends come and go that i’m happy with most of the pop defaults, and it’s mostly just dressing for terminal windows anyway. There are totally better options out there, I just don’t have the time to invest in one.
And anyway, most Debian and Ubuntu documentation is spot on for pop, which is a big advantage for anyone who is familiar with them or doesn’t have the time or desire to solve their own problems.
Yeah! Has good power management utilities and bonus features. but personally I’d stick to GNOME/Cosmic if you had Pop installed. You miss out on that integration otherwise.
Just use Linux mint
that only works until you need Lua 5.4 which has conflicting dependencies aaand now im on NixOS
Couldn’t you just install it in a container? Distrobox makes it easy to get something like Fedora which has newer packages.
if i wanted containerized environments, i would pick alpine, but it all makes most trivial things so much more complicated — i just want global install dang nabbit, just keep all your sandboxing on process level controlled by the kernel, give me my userspace freedom
To each there own I guess.
Could someone ELI5 whats wrong with snaps? I see hate for them all over the place but as an end user with little technical knowledge of linux packaging they seem fine? I can install them and use them, they don’t appear to have any anti-FOSS gotchas, so whats the big deal?
I think it’s another fine example of Canonical pushing its own products rather than supporting and enhancing existing standards (flatpak and appimage), which people are getting tired of. Also, as I understand it, the snap store itself is proprietary and is therefore controlled by Canonical.
The server isn’t open source, so Canonical has the sole ability to control snap distribution. It’s also yet another example of Canonical’s “Not Invented Here” syndrome, where they constantly reinvent things so they can control it instead of working with the rest of the open source community. They also trick you into using snaps; for example if you explicitly tell it to use apt to install Firefox, it’ll install it as a snap anyways.
Historically they performed really poorly as well, but my understanding is that they’ve largely fixed that issue.
there was a time when they were slow, but that’s mostly been resolved.
but it’s really just a cult thing now. people hate snaps because they think they’re supposed to hate snaps.
I hate snaps mainly because the server is proprietary. Everything else wrong is negotiable or solvanle, but that’s a nonstarter.
If Canonical gives up on snaps, do we call the current Ubuntu time period “the Blip”?
Too late, I’m on Manjaro for the TV computer now. Super annoying when all I use it for is a browser for Jellyfin when the update popup shows up all the time and doesn’t even update when you follow its instructions.
I know and did the workaround a couple times, but updates through apt is one of the major strengths of Linux for me. Or pacman now, whatever Manjaro has.
I mean a TV console just screams LTS Debian to me. Just the most solid of solid distributions
I should give it a shot. I went with the best sounding option when googling for distros that handle scaling the best. That way I can keep resolution high for movies, but have text at 200% without certain system menus being tiny the way they were on Ubuntu with Gnome.
“Ah, come on man, Gort?”
“Come along, Gort.”
“Are you talking to me?”
“No, my capybara’s name is also Gort.”
Klaatu Barada N… Necktie… Nectar… Nickel… Noodle…
It’s definitely an N word!
Just use Debian or Linux Mint Debian Edition and call it a day.
Snaps aren’t bad, Canonical might be but then why use Ubuntu?
I just started tinkering with Ubuntu a week ago. What’s wrong with snap?
It’s a bad, slow and inefficient solution for a problem that is already solved. And because nobody would use their proprietary shit over flatpack, they force the users to use it. Even for things that exist natively in the repositories and would need neither snap nor flatpack.
Best explanation of snaps and their problems i’ve ever read.
It’s slow, forced by Canonical, and starts a pointless format war with Flatpack.
I still don’t even know what problem snap and flatpak were intended to solve. Just apt or dnf installing from the command line, or even using the distro provided store app, has always been sufficient for me.
Flatpack isn’t without its own quirks and flaws. There is no One True Way. Being open-source, there shouldn’t be one.
It is definitely slow though, mostly on first run.
Being open-source
Yeah, that. That’s exactly the problem. To quote @Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever above, who put it much better than I could:
. . . the main issues boil down to concerns over some parts of the Snap ecosystem being closed source, Canonical’s ongoing efforts to try to get some of the Red Hat “premium linux” money, and arguments that other solutions (e.g. flatpaks and appimages) are “just as good, if not better”. And it doesn’t help that Canonical/Ubuntu is increasingly pushing snap as “the only solution” for some applications.
When you speak of no single One True Way and things being completely open source, Canonical/Ubuntu have already left the chat.
This computer idiot would also like to know why snap bad.
The main reason is that it is completely controlled by Canonical, with no way to add alternative repos.
It’s worth noting you can bypass the repo, and install snaps that you downloaded from some other source - see https://askubuntu.com/questions/1266894/how-can-i-install-a-snap-package-from-a-local-file.
That doesn’t give you a separate “repo,” but it does allow you to install snaps from anywhere.
You can, but that completely negates the reasons why you’d want to have a repo system in the first place. You gotta do the legwork to get updates, for example.
This isn’t necessarily true - a developer choosing to not include their app in a repo can always opt for a self-updating mechanism.
Don’t get me wrong - repos and tooling to manage all of your apps at once are preferred. But if a developer or user wants to avoid the Canonical controlled repo, I’m just pointing out there are technically ways to do that.
If you’d question why someone would use snap at all at that point… that would be a good question. The point is just that they can, if they want to.
For computer idiots it’s not bad at all. It mostly just works if you don’t mess with it and Canonical relies on it to ship software for Ubuntu. It’s one of those you should know what you’re doing situations if you’re using standard Ubuntu and messing with it. If you remove it, you will have to figure out what’s shipped via snap and how to supplant it if you want it working, among other potential headaches.
No, it does not just work. It removes the option to install updates manually through GUI. If Firefox was running, the only GUI solution is to close it and wait 6 hours or whatever.
My wife was perfectly fine installing updates from the tray with Synaptic. The PC is always connected to the TV with Jellyfin left open in Firefox where she was watching.
So I switched to Manjaro to have a pretty OS that isn’t getting rid of their package manager controlling the most used program.
Ever since the fix for the “Pending update” notification, updating Firefox has been as complicated as closing it and reopening it when you see the notification. The pending update is installed immediately after closing it. It just works for my wife. ☺️
Also I wouldn’t leave her dead without automatic updates.
I’m glad yours enjoying Manjaro. 👌
I didn’t know they fixed it now, good to know.
Yup. Actually I should have said implemented instead of fixed. The implementation was sizeable. I saw some of the PRs. From a user point of view it was a defect fix but in reality it was a non-trivial implementation. I guess that’s why it wasn’t there from the get go.
Those are all valid points, but there’s one more. As a person who is just coming back to Linux after 25-30 years and relearning it all from scratch, I just don’t want the hassle.
Sure, there’s overlap between distros, Linux is Linux, and any knowledge I might glean from Ubuntu would also largely apply to any other distro – but why should I bother with investing time into a product that is already heading toward future politics and regressive policies when I can just install [NotUbuntu] and swerve the entire mess?
There are hundreds of distros from which to choose these days, literally. Why start with one that’s already obviously moving toward the dark side? For all that I could just stay on Windows. I’m trying to get away from triple-E and paywalls and gatekeeping, not just find different ones.
Right now I’m testing out over a dozen distros on an old laptop in my spare time, and I think the only Ubuntu related one in my list is Pop!_OS, and it’s there only because Pop!_OS doesn’t rely on snap.
It’s one of those you should know what you’re doing situations
And I absolutely DO NOT, so that’s that, lol. These days every brain cell counts, so damned if I’ll waste any time wading into that mess.
I hate it for the refresh nag messages alone.
The default Firefox in Ubuntu is a snap and I only knew that because due to nagging and having to restart constantly while I was using it and had to learn about snaps and how to install Firefox without them on Ubuntu.
If snap had another store, eg Fdroid to play store, all would be fine. So that’s that!
cuz flatpak better
oh, snap!
Or just use one of the many Ubuntu derivatives that don’t force Snap?
sudo rm /bin/bash && reboot
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