It's worth mentioning that people using Ubuntu LTS on their servers can get Ubuntu Pro for free for personal use. That'll give you 5 more years of security patches and live kernel security...
It's worth mentioning that people using Ubuntu LTS on their servers can get Ubuntu Pro for free for personal use. That'll give you 5 more years of security patches and live kernel security upgrades to take the time pressure off.
Do people here still use Ubuntu? I seem to see people talk about Fedora, Arch, Debian more often. On the other hand maybe Ubuntu is too widely used and therefore boring to mention?
Do people here still use Ubuntu? I seem to see people talk about Fedora, Arch, Debian more often. On the other hand maybe Ubuntu is too widely used and therefore boring to mention?
Switched from Ubuntu Budgie to Fedora and it's a breath of fresh air. But I recognize this as being just one of those "distro circlejerk" comments so. Whatever floats your boat. I had some issues...
Switched from Ubuntu Budgie to Fedora and it's a breath of fresh air. But I recognize this as being just one of those "distro circlejerk" comments so. Whatever floats your boat. I had some issues with Ubuntu's kernel not supporting the latest AMD chipsets and Fedora did! So my games instantly ran a lot better.
I have Ubuntu on my server right now. Given that every time I have done a distro update it has broken multiple things - most critically the bootloader - it’s only a matter of time until it gets...
I have Ubuntu on my server right now. Given that every time I have done a distro update it has broken multiple things - most critically the bootloader - it’s only a matter of time until it gets replaced. It’s a real pain to have to plug in a monitor and keyboard to have to fix it every time.
My workplace used to use Ubuntu before I joined and apparently they switched to Fedora precisely because of stuff breaking after updates. The bootloader getting borked is pretty extreme though, lol
My workplace used to use Ubuntu before I joined and apparently they switched to Fedora precisely because of stuff breaking after updates. The bootloader getting borked is pretty extreme though, lol
Seconding this. Both Debian and Ubuntu upgrades are impossible in practice. Fedora just works, save for occasional orphaned dependency one must remove before upgrade manually and rpmconf -a...
Seconding this.
Both Debian and Ubuntu upgrades are impossible in practice. Fedora just works, save for occasional orphaned dependency one must remove before upgrade manually and rpmconf -a afterwards to check the handful of merged configuration files.
And since upgrades happen every year or so (not everyone installs them every 1/2 year), the changes are gradual. Way easier to deal with.
And you can't "fall out of upgrade window, having to reinstall". You just roll forward in 2 release increments to catch up.
…What? This conflicts almost categorically with my experience and the general zeitgeist. Unless your system configuration is seriously weird, Debian version upgrades Just Work™. The biggest issues...
Debian… upgrades are impossible in practice
…What? This conflicts almost categorically with my experience and the general zeitgeist. Unless your system configuration is seriously weird, Debian version upgrades Just Work™. The biggest issues generally have to do with backwards-incompatible changes in packaged software (which Fedora is obviously not going to be immune to). There are occasional reports from people who have been steadily upgrading the same install along for decades. (I'm particularly fond of this story, though it's obviously an outlier along a number of axes.)
OK, taking note to not to be as bold in my statements next time. Nevertheless, in my experience it never was easy and the fast pace of development of the individual projects compared to the...
OK, taking note to not to be as bold in my statements next time. Nevertheless, in my experience it never was easy and the fast pace of development of the individual projects compared to the glacial pace of Debian was a major source of issues.
I also remember having to literally patch preinst/prerm scripts to resolve various kinds of breakages back in the day, because the way Debian chooses to package the software is somewhat brittle. Especially in it being much less opinionated about the "correct" ways of doing things. But again, maybe it's less of an issue nowadays.
Last time I was in charge of infrastructure running on Debian, our resident sysadmin also tended to avoid upgrades and always prepared for multiple contingencies similar to what you've shared.
Does that work? I have found a Fedora 36 workstation that needs upgrading. I was thinking of flattening it and moving to Endeavour OS, when I looked at how much work and risk there was in...
And you can't "fall out of upgrade window, having to reinstall". You just roll forward in 2 release increments to catch up.
Does that work? I have found a Fedora 36 workstation that needs upgrading. I was thinking of flattening it and moving to Endeavour OS, when I looked at how much work and risk there was in upgrading fedora (and, I don't really much care for Fedora anyway, but the user of the computer is familiar with it -- but that's likely Gnome familiarity, rather than Fedora specifically)
It works. Just upgrade to 38, 40, 41. It's going to take a while, but it should work. Basically (for the first step): dnf update dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=38 dnf system-upgrade...
It works. Just upgrade to 38, 40, 41. It's going to take a while, but it should work.
After every upgrade step to remove stragglers from previous releases.
I did this for 3 workstations running Fedora 34 just a couple weeks ago and it went just fine. Running mix of GNOME and specific KDE productivity apps. The worst issue was that Thunderbird moved message colored labels menu elsewhere so I had to teach the users to use 1-5 keyboard keys to label messages instead.
Also, if they happen to be dependent on vertical workspaces like me and many others, there is V-Shell.
Thanks! Tildes users are a many varied multi faceted wonderful bunch. Edit: I don't really want to drag anyone in to tech support,but as I feared, it did not go well, the system-upgrade failed...
Thanks! Tildes users are a many varied multi faceted wonderful bunch.
Edit:
I don't really want to drag anyone in to tech support,but as I feared, it did not go well, the system-upgrade failed from 36 to 38
Error:
Problem: package rpmfusion-nonfree-release-36-1.noarch requires system-release(36), but none of the providers can be installed
fedora-release-workstation-36-21.noarch does not belong to a distupgrade repository
problem with installed package rpmfusion-nonfree-release-36-1.noarch
At the end and a whole pile of not upgradable packages.
I think it might be an nvidia driver issue, pretty sure there's some kind of nvidia card in this machine. GT 1030 apparently
Edit: disabled (removed) rpmfusion-nonfree, and currently doing the first hop. No idea how this is going to turn out!
I don't mind being tech support. It depends, but normally you would remove all packages from that repository first. Or you could first run this as root:...
I don't mind being tech support.
It depends, but normally you would remove all packages from that repository first. Or you could first run this as root:
It will point those rpmfusion repositories towards archive mirrors, which should allow you to proceed normally.
I did not realize rpmfusion has different policy and is so eager to shelve obsolete releases so quickly. Not ideal in my opinion. Still, gives you 5 releases or 2.5y to catch up.
In any case, 38 is still not supported there, so probably do that after you finish this step (regardless of whether GUI would come up) and dnf update to get those drivers.
Success! Eventually got up to 41. On the neuvoae driver for the card now, looks like the machine survived. Every stage required eviscerating several incompatible packages, hopefully the user won't...
Success! Eventually got up to 41. On the neuvoae driver for the card now, looks like the machine survived. Every stage required eviscerating several incompatible packages, hopefully the user won't miss various bits of python2 and other cruft. Thanks for your help. It probably ended up being easier than wiping and reinstalling.
I dread Ubuntu version upgrades at work. We've managed to switch most of our clients to Debian now, upgrades of which are far less likely to bork the whole system, even if each one is a much more...
I dread Ubuntu version upgrades at work. We've managed to switch most of our clients to Debian now, upgrades of which are far less likely to bork the whole system, even if each one is a much more hands on affair!
We use them in the sense that upstream/public container images use them. Most of our base images are built on Noble now. We could spend the manpower and time rolling our own base images, shave...
We use them in the sense that upstream/public container images use them. Most of our base images are built on Noble now.
We could spend the manpower and time rolling our own base images, shave every MB off with a switch to Alpine and hit some musl weirdness, or we can just pull the public Debian/Ubuntu images, slap dumb-init on them and call it a day.
I think people who use Ubuntu talk about it less than the "I use Arch btw" crowd 😜 More seriously, Ubuntu was the Linux distro I got from my work when I requested a Linux laptop, and I don't think...
I think people who use Ubuntu talk about it less than the "I use Arch btw" crowd 😜
More seriously, Ubuntu was the Linux distro I got from my work when I requested a Linux laptop, and I don't think I was allowed to install a new OS lol. Ubuntu derivatives are also super popular in the enthusiast crowd -- I use Pop!OS on my PC at home and any discussion of recommended distros has a bajillion people recommending Mint.
I have Ubuntu on a few servers. Two in the cloud and one here at home. I also have a laptop with Ubuntu on it. I'm not much of a Linux guy -- though I'm trying more these days to be one -- so...
I have Ubuntu on a few servers. Two in the cloud and one here at home. I also have a laptop with Ubuntu on it. I'm not much of a Linux guy -- though I'm trying more these days to be one -- so Ubuntu is usually my default go-to if I need/want a Linux distro.
I've thought about looking at others like Pop_OS though. At least for that laptop.
I use it for a few headless servers. Upgraded through multiple major versions, no issues. I used to be worried about it breaking things but it was super smooth. No plans to switch away from it.
I use it for a few headless servers. Upgraded through multiple major versions, no issues. I used to be worried about it breaking things but it was super smooth. No plans to switch away from it.
This is more common than a lot of people think. I only ever saw Ubuntu on people's work devices when I was an OEM field tech, with maybe one or two exceptions. One of the OEMs I did work for was...
This is more common than a lot of people think. I only ever saw Ubuntu on people's work devices when I was an OEM field tech, with maybe one or two exceptions. One of the OEMs I did work for was Lenovo, and the only Linux distro they offered was Ubuntu, so that might be why.
I use Gentoo, but I have two machines in family that runs Ubuntu. One is kinda office workflow (some Libreoffice, photos, internet browsing) and the other one is gaming (Anno 1800, Kingdom Come:...
I use Gentoo, but I have two machines in family that runs Ubuntu. One is kinda office workflow (some Libreoffice, photos, internet browsing) and the other one is gaming (Anno 1800, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and a few older games). I installed Ubuntu on both and I also manage them both. I picked Ubuntu as it hasmany resources to tun to if something is wrong and also because it rarely failed updates in the past.
If it was my machine, I would use Gentoo or maybe even Arch. I like being on the rolling distro and kinda on the edge. But having no everyday control over those two I like to rely on Ubuntu staying solid and doing uodates without problems once I come in and run them (once in a month or so).
This is good on having different distros - you can pick one that suits you the best.
I always use Ubuntu when I'm spinning up a VPS because I'm bad at Linux and there are so so so so many more tutorials for Ubuntu than for anything else
I always use Ubuntu when I'm spinning up a VPS because I'm bad at Linux and there are so so so so many more tutorials for Ubuntu than for anything else
I have an ancient thinkpad that I put Linux on after uni because I barely need it and it wasn't keeping up with the constant Windows patches. At least for me, Ubuntu (or any non-rolling release...
I have an ancient thinkpad that I put Linux on after uni because I barely need it and it wasn't keeping up with the constant Windows patches.
At least for me, Ubuntu (or any non-rolling release distro) is a no-go because I just don't need my laptop that often. It can go half a year without being turned on. It has already happened once to me that I wanted to upgrade, but fell outside the upgrade window and as such would have had to reflash the complete system.
Now I use endavourOS and tadaa, easy stuff. Suddenly keeping up to date is easy even if I haven't opened the laptop for a year.
Ubuntu on my server mostly, there are a lot of resources available and it is the distro I am most familiar with. I could switch to a different distro, but for server usage I feel like it doesn't...
Ubuntu on my server mostly, there are a lot of resources available and it is the distro I am most familiar with. I could switch to a different distro, but for server usage I feel like it doesn't really matter all that much for my use.
My work used CentOS on servers and Ubuntu on laptops until CentOS 7, now it is mostly Ubuntu with a few Debian for specific use-cases and Proxmox on bare-metal. I see lots of people talking about...
My work used CentOS on servers and Ubuntu on laptops until CentOS 7, now it is mostly Ubuntu with a few Debian for specific use-cases and Proxmox on bare-metal.
I see lots of people talking about upgrades, generally we would replace a VM with a new version installed on a newer release rather than upgrade. Most of our VMs are either running a single appliance or a dockerised (or kubernetes) workload and are based on a common template, so usually not too heavy a task.
More stuff is snap only now and some apt upgrades require a premium subscription. Ubuntu is becoming enterprise ready. It still works out of the box and has lots of tutorials and guides and is the...
More stuff is snap only now and some apt upgrades require a premium subscription. Ubuntu is becoming enterprise ready.
It still works out of the box and has lots of tutorials and guides and is the first linux target of most install instructions, but the old bad is still bad and I will not use it for any personal stuff if I can help it.
Yeah, Snaps are a real annoyance for me. I kept trying to tell myself it didn’t really matter, but as more things became snap packages I started to realize that it had a performance penalty that...
Yeah, Snaps are a real annoyance for me. I kept trying to tell myself it didn’t really matter, but as more things became snap packages I started to realize that it had a performance penalty that was noticeable.
If only it was a performance issue. Because snaps needs all files to be in $HOME, snaps like docker, that have some functionality that needs to modify system stuff, does not fully work. Also It...
If only it was a performance issue. Because snaps needs all files to be in $HOME, snaps like docker, that have some functionality that needs to modify system stuff, does not fully work. Also It looks to me that most publishers are not creating snaps and things like microsoft stuff are signed by random people... so it is safer to go to the official websites and curl | bash their install scripts.
It is lazy and very unprofessional for a distro that wants me to buy ubuntu premium to upgrade fish or htop.
Did not know that, thanks. Still, (last time I checked) the snap version of docker cannot bind mount things outside of $HOME, and some option that reads the host /etc/shadow to change ownership of...
Did not know that, thanks.
Still, (last time I checked) the snap version of docker cannot bind mount things outside of $HOME, and some option that reads the host /etc/shadow to change ownership of files and the like fail silently. IIRC the snap-docker team blamed the permission system of snap but I can't find the issue. I'm still sour about it.
I'm not surprised that something like docker has some issues when run as a snap, given the containerized nature of snaps and how much docker does. I just ran snap info docker and it looks like...
I'm not surprised that something like docker has some issues when run as a snap, given the containerized nature of snaps and how much docker does.
I just ran snap info docker and it looks like Canonical maintains the docker snap, and furthermore that the snapped docker does have the restriction of only allowing dockerfiles and other files used by docker commands to be in $HOME. So you were partly right.
If they built the docker snap with classic confinement it could access files anywhere, not sure exactly why they chose strict confinement for this one.
Snaps and flatpaks still seem to have interoperability issues as well, with snaps unable to talk to apps installed via the native package manager and vice-versa. I understand the problems all this...
Snaps and flatpaks still seem to have interoperability issues as well, with snaps unable to talk to apps installed via the native package manager and vice-versa.
I understand the problems all this app containerization is meant to solve, but ultimately it is a problem set that is very low priority for your typical Linux user. They are more of an annoyance than anything.
Personally speaking, I find "beans included" packages to be an ideological problem in and of themselves. It's great if you have an odd distro that doesn't include it in their package manager or if...
Personally speaking, I find "beans included" packages to be an ideological problem in and of themselves. It's great if you have an odd distro that doesn't include it in their package manager or if it's an odd bit that nobody is likely to have an up-to-date version you desperately need, but they take away from the magic of package managers - being able to simply say "I want this program" and it will automagically install it and anything it requires for you, and puts it in your program launchers. And while I suppose integrated systems like what Ubuntu does with snap apt repositories solves that problem to an extent, it seems that those kinds of packages are always subpar in one way or another - weather it's slow performance, or lack of integration details that a system package might include, or any number of odd bugs or packaging constraint.
That's good to know. As W10 ends support, I convinced my wife to switch to Linux, but hadn't settled on a distro yet. She's never been on non-Windows, and my Linux knowledge has atrophied a lot. I...
That's good to know. As W10 ends support, I convinced my wife to switch to Linux, but hadn't settled on a distro yet. She's never been on non-Windows, and my Linux knowledge has atrophied a lot. I was thinking of going back to Ubuntu, but I might try Mint instead, since it tries to replicate the Windows environment.
I see Linux Mint as "Ubuntu but without Canonical's bad decisions". It's definitely an excellent candidate for a beginner friendly "just works" distro, and Cinnamon being superficially similar to...
I see Linux Mint as "Ubuntu but without Canonical's bad decisions". It's definitely an excellent candidate for a beginner friendly "just works" distro, and Cinnamon being superficially similar to Windows' UI also helps.
That's exactly what I was using as my first distro xx years ago + I've installed it on parents device, since 8 years they use Mint, since 4 years Mint Debian (LMDE). My impression is that's the...
That's exactly what I was using as my first distro xx years ago + I've installed it on parents device, since 8 years they use Mint, since 4 years Mint Debian (LMDE). My impression is that's the easiest and most comfortable for newbies distro of many that I've used, including Ubuntu (yeah, sadly last 5 years only Ubuntu at work).
Last year, I got to work computer with Ubuntu installed running Gnome desktop, and I was able to customize the menus and key bindings to mostly match windows. I don't really think Windows is...
Last year, I got to work computer with Ubuntu installed running Gnome desktop, and I was able to customize the menus and key bindings to mostly match windows. I don't really think Windows is better, but for me it's just about matching my muscle memory so that things like win-shift-s do screen capture. It was definitely usable. The biggest limitation I find is lack of support for Word and Excel. I think you can probably get around this with wine or the newer stuff but it was a work laptop so it wasn't my responsibility to solve that problem, and their solution was to give me another laptop.
Debian with KDE works as a drop in replacement. I've done this on a few people's older devices with zero complaints. For my Dad, who is 74 and not overly savvy, I used Manjaro, added AUR then...
Debian with KDE works as a drop in replacement. I've done this on a few people's older devices with zero complaints.
For my Dad, who is 74 and not overly savvy, I used Manjaro, added AUR then pulled in Evolution for email, MS Edge for browsing and enabled HPlip for his Printer support. It took about an hour, including pulling his PC apart to replace his failing HDD with a SSD. During install, Manjaro asks you for some basic things like "Which office suite do you want installed?" and "Auto login without password?"
He's using it absolutely fine as it's mostly emails and browsing, with a fair bit of Google Earth exploring.
This is a bug complaining about it https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/2047778 . If you look at the screenshots attached there are some example pro upgrades. I cannot...
This is a bug complaining about it https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/2047778 . If you look at the screenshots attached there are some example pro upgrades. I cannot find a list of what is blocked by ubuntu pro, but from memory its random packages like shells or apps.
This appear every time you update via the "upgrades available" notification.
Edit.: Just to clarify, you can still install these apps, you are just not allowed to upgrade up to certain versions unless you subscribe to ubuntu pro.
It has also been noted elsewhere in this topic that Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to 5 devices with registration. My understanding is that these are additional security patches for...
It has also been noted elsewhere in this topic that Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to 5 devices with registration. My understanding is that these are additional security patches for select packages from Canonical rather than Canonical withholding updates, without Pro you'll just get the same packages other distros would get.
Generally solid, on server level I just remove snap support totally and problem solved. On desktop I've only got one or two apps running in snaps, they mostly just work. If they ever start to...
Generally solid, on server level I just remove snap support totally and problem solved.
On desktop I've only got one or two apps running in snaps, they mostly just work. If they ever start to cause me significant problems I'll probably remove snap support on desktop also and either switch to flatpaks or find a repo for a .deb edition.
For the most part Ubuntu "just works" out of the box on most PC hardware, which is generally what I want out of an OS.
I run Ubuntu 20.04 in WSL and it's been okay -- I don't see much difference in the distros from the commandline. I primarily run dev environments in Docker containers anyway, and there I usually...
I run Ubuntu 20.04 in WSL and it's been okay -- I don't see much difference in the distros from the commandline. I primarily run dev environments in Docker containers anyway, and there I usually use Debian images for dev containers and the slimmest thing I can for prod.
It's probably easiest to switch to Ubuntu 24.04, but I'm open to change. Anyone have any votes for a lean WSL distro?
I'm seeing a lot of people mention Fedora. I think when I looked into it, there was some weirdness between redhat and fedora that made it hard to use fedora? I'm fuzzy on the details, it was years ago. Is that not a thing anymore (if it ever was). I guess the same thing is now possible with Canonical and Ubuntu.
Redhat made some decisions around the licensing of centos, which is the upstream to fedora (or the other way around, can't remember): https://hackaday.com/2023/06/23/et-tu-red-hat/ If you're...
I am on Kubuntu and I've modified the OS so much (installed Cinnamon instead of KDE, tons of customizations, etc) that I feel like if I attempt an upgrade, I'm going to render the entire thing...
I am on Kubuntu and I've modified the OS so much (installed Cinnamon instead of KDE, tons of customizations, etc) that I feel like if I attempt an upgrade, I'm going to render the entire thing either unbootable or a bootable wild mess that will be hard to untangle.
Not sure what I'm going to do. I've been long planning a transition to Linux Mint, but the transition has felt so overwhelming that I haven't started yet. What I have done at this point is I have an external SSD that I am planning to use as a temporary "dual boot" system that I put Linux Mint on, copy home folder, install all the programs I have on my Kubuntu install, and try to mimic my existing setup as close as possible, without touching the original, internal nvme Kubuntu install, that way I can do it in parallel over a period of time, instead of jumping from one OS to the other and scrambling to remember how to set everything up the way I want it
EDIT: Welp, I am on 22.04 not 20.04, so I get updates until April 2027. Woops. At least there's no rush to switch at this point
I use ubuntu on my server and laptop. Mostly because all the tutorials target ubuntu, it usually works, and the things that don't work perfectly haven't been bad enough to overcome the inertia...
I use ubuntu on my server and laptop. Mostly because all the tutorials target ubuntu, it usually works, and the things that don't work perfectly haven't been bad enough to overcome the inertia against change (I’m lazy).
It's worth mentioning that people using Ubuntu LTS on their servers can get Ubuntu Pro for free for personal use. That'll give you 5 more years of security patches and live kernel security upgrades to take the time pressure off.
Do people here still use Ubuntu? I seem to see people talk about Fedora, Arch, Debian more often. On the other hand maybe Ubuntu is too widely used and therefore boring to mention?
Switched from Ubuntu Budgie to Fedora and it's a breath of fresh air. But I recognize this as being just one of those "distro circlejerk" comments so. Whatever floats your boat. I had some issues with Ubuntu's kernel not supporting the latest AMD chipsets and Fedora did! So my games instantly ran a lot better.
I have Ubuntu on my server right now. Given that every time I have done a distro update it has broken multiple things - most critically the bootloader - it’s only a matter of time until it gets replaced. It’s a real pain to have to plug in a monitor and keyboard to have to fix it every time.
My workplace used to use Ubuntu before I joined and apparently they switched to Fedora precisely because of stuff breaking after updates. The bootloader getting borked is pretty extreme though, lol
Seconding this.
Both Debian and Ubuntu upgrades are impossible in practice. Fedora just works, save for occasional orphaned dependency one must remove before upgrade manually and
rpmconf -aafterwards to check the handful of merged configuration files.And since upgrades happen every year or so (not everyone installs them every 1/2 year), the changes are gradual. Way easier to deal with.
And you can't "fall out of upgrade window, having to reinstall". You just roll forward in 2 release increments to catch up.
…What? This conflicts almost categorically with my experience and the general zeitgeist. Unless your system configuration is seriously weird, Debian version upgrades Just Work™. The biggest issues generally have to do with backwards-incompatible changes in packaged software (which Fedora is obviously not going to be immune to). There are occasional reports from people who have been steadily upgrading the same install along for decades. (I'm particularly fond of this story, though it's obviously an outlier along a number of axes.)
OK, taking note to not to be as bold in my statements next time. Nevertheless, in my experience it never was easy and the fast pace of development of the individual projects compared to the glacial pace of Debian was a major source of issues.
I also remember having to literally patch preinst/prerm scripts to resolve various kinds of breakages back in the day, because the way Debian chooses to package the software is somewhat brittle. Especially in it being much less opinionated about the "correct" ways of doing things. But again, maybe it's less of an issue nowadays.
Last time I was in charge of infrastructure running on Debian, our resident sysadmin also tended to avoid upgrades and always prepared for multiple contingencies similar to what you've shared.
Does that work? I have found a Fedora 36 workstation that needs upgrading. I was thinking of flattening it and moving to Endeavour OS, when I looked at how much work and risk there was in upgrading fedora (and, I don't really much care for Fedora anyway, but the user of the computer is familiar with it -- but that's likely Gnome familiarity, rather than Fedora specifically)
It works. Just upgrade to 38, 40, 41. It's going to take a while, but it should work.
Basically (for the first step):
To take care of orphans, do e.g.:
After every upgrade step to remove stragglers from previous releases.
I did this for 3 workstations running Fedora 34 just a couple weeks ago and it went just fine. Running mix of GNOME and specific KDE productivity apps. The worst issue was that Thunderbird moved message colored labels menu elsewhere so I had to teach the users to use 1-5 keyboard keys to label messages instead.
Also, if they happen to be dependent on vertical workspaces like me and many others, there is V-Shell.
Thanks! Tildes users are a many varied multi faceted wonderful bunch.
Edit:
I don't really want to drag anyone in to tech support,but as I feared, it did not go well, the system-upgrade failed from 36 to 38
Error:
Problem: package rpmfusion-nonfree-release-36-1.noarch requires system-release(36), but none of the providers can be installed
At the end and a whole pile of not upgradable packages.
I think it might be an nvidia driver issue, pretty sure there's some kind of nvidia card in this machine. GT 1030 apparently
Edit: disabled (removed) rpmfusion-nonfree, and currently doing the first hop. No idea how this is going to turn out!
I don't mind being tech support.
It depends, but normally you would remove all packages from that repository first. Or you could first run this as root:
https://anilinux.org/~mordae/patch-rpmfusion-repos.bash
It will point those rpmfusion repositories towards archive mirrors, which should allow you to proceed normally.
I did not realize rpmfusion has different policy and is so eager to shelve obsolete releases so quickly. Not ideal in my opinion. Still, gives you 5 releases or 2.5y to catch up.
In any case, 38 is still not supported there, so probably do that after you finish this step (regardless of whether GUI would come up) and dnf update to get those drivers.
Success! Eventually got up to 41. On the neuvoae driver for the card now, looks like the machine survived. Every stage required eviscerating several incompatible packages, hopefully the user won't miss various bits of python2 and other cruft. Thanks for your help. It probably ended up being easier than wiping and reinstalling.
You should then probably add rpmfusion for version 38 first, then upgrade, then remoce the old one.
I dread Ubuntu version upgrades at work. We've managed to switch most of our clients to Debian now, upgrades of which are far less likely to bork the whole system, even if each one is a much more hands on affair!
I'd hardly call myself a power user and I've got a Linux desktop on Ubuntu and a laptop on Pop_OS.
We use them in the sense that upstream/public container images use them. Most of our base images are built on Noble now.
We could spend the manpower and time rolling our own base images, shave every MB off with a switch to Alpine and hit some
muslweirdness, or we can just pull the public Debian/Ubuntu images, slapdumb-initon them and call it a day.I think people who use Ubuntu talk about it less than the "I use Arch btw" crowd 😜
More seriously, Ubuntu was the Linux distro I got from my work when I requested a Linux laptop, and I don't think I was allowed to install a new OS lol. Ubuntu derivatives are also super popular in the enthusiast crowd -- I use Pop!OS on my PC at home and any discussion of recommended distros has a bajillion people recommending Mint.
I have Ubuntu on a few servers. Two in the cloud and one here at home. I also have a laptop with Ubuntu on it. I'm not much of a Linux guy -- though I'm trying more these days to be one -- so Ubuntu is usually my default go-to if I need/want a Linux distro.
I've thought about looking at others like Pop_OS though. At least for that laptop.
I use it for a few headless servers. Upgraded through multiple major versions, no issues. I used to be worried about it breaking things but it was super smooth. No plans to switch away from it.
Ubuntu is the only distro my job supports for work devices.
This is more common than a lot of people think. I only ever saw Ubuntu on people's work devices when I was an OEM field tech, with maybe one or two exceptions. One of the OEMs I did work for was Lenovo, and the only Linux distro they offered was Ubuntu, so that might be why.
For the desktop? I feel that that is indeed the case. For the server, Ubuntu is still the largest by far, followed by maybe Debian or Alpine.
I use Gentoo, but I have two machines in family that runs Ubuntu. One is kinda office workflow (some Libreoffice, photos, internet browsing) and the other one is gaming (Anno 1800, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and a few older games). I installed Ubuntu on both and I also manage them both. I picked Ubuntu as it hasmany resources to tun to if something is wrong and also because it rarely failed updates in the past.
If it was my machine, I would use Gentoo or maybe even Arch. I like being on the rolling distro and kinda on the edge. But having no everyday control over those two I like to rely on Ubuntu staying solid and doing uodates without problems once I come in and run them (once in a month or so).
This is good on having different distros - you can pick one that suits you the best.
I always use Ubuntu when I'm spinning up a VPS because I'm bad at Linux and there are so so so so many more tutorials for Ubuntu than for anything else
I've been using Pop!OS for the last few years, though I still use Ubuntu thru WSL when I have to.
I have an ancient thinkpad that I put Linux on after uni because I barely need it and it wasn't keeping up with the constant Windows patches.
At least for me, Ubuntu (or any non-rolling release distro) is a no-go because I just don't need my laptop that often. It can go half a year without being turned on. It has already happened once to me that I wanted to upgrade, but fell outside the upgrade window and as such would have had to reflash the complete system.
Now I use endavourOS and tadaa, easy stuff. Suddenly keeping up to date is easy even if I haven't opened the laptop for a year.
Ubuntu on my server mostly, there are a lot of resources available and it is the distro I am most familiar with. I could switch to a different distro, but for server usage I feel like it doesn't really matter all that much for my use.
My work used CentOS on servers and Ubuntu on laptops until CentOS 7, now it is mostly Ubuntu with a few Debian for specific use-cases and Proxmox on bare-metal.
I see lots of people talking about upgrades, generally we would replace a VM with a new version installed on a newer release rather than upgrade. Most of our VMs are either running a single appliance or a dockerised (or kubernetes) workload and are based on a common template, so usually not too heavy a task.
How's Ubuntu these days? I left around the whole snap vs deb vs flatpak controversy days. Have things changed a lot?
More stuff is snap only now and some apt upgrades require a premium subscription. Ubuntu is becoming enterprise ready.
It still works out of the box and has lots of tutorials and guides and is the first linux target of most install instructions, but the old bad is still bad and I will not use it for any personal stuff if I can help it.
Yeah, Snaps are a real annoyance for me. I kept trying to tell myself it didn’t really matter, but as more things became snap packages I started to realize that it had a performance penalty that was noticeable.
If only it was a performance issue. Because snaps needs all files to be in $HOME, snaps like docker, that have some functionality that needs to modify system stuff, does not fully work. Also It looks to me that most publishers are not creating snaps and things like microsoft stuff are signed by random people... so it is safer to go to the official websites and curl | bash their install scripts.
It is lazy and very unprofessional for a distro that wants me to buy ubuntu premium to upgrade fish or htop.
Nitpick: snaps can access files anywhere on the system, not just in $HOME.
https://snapcraft.io/docs/system-files-interface
Did not know that, thanks.
Still, (last time I checked) the snap version of docker cannot bind mount things outside of $HOME, and some option that reads the host /etc/shadow to change ownership of files and the like fail silently. IIRC the snap-docker team blamed the permission system of snap but I can't find the issue. I'm still sour about it.
I'm not surprised that something like docker has some issues when run as a snap, given the containerized nature of snaps and how much docker does.
I just ran
snap info dockerand it looks like Canonical maintains the docker snap, and furthermore that the snapped docker does have the restriction of only allowing dockerfiles and other files used by docker commands to be in $HOME. So you were partly right.If they built the docker snap with classic confinement it could access files anywhere, not sure exactly why they chose strict confinement for this one.
Snaps and flatpaks still seem to have interoperability issues as well, with snaps unable to talk to apps installed via the native package manager and vice-versa.
I understand the problems all this app containerization is meant to solve, but ultimately it is a problem set that is very low priority for your typical Linux user. They are more of an annoyance than anything.
Personally speaking, I find "beans included" packages to be an ideological problem in and of themselves. It's great if you have an odd distro that doesn't include it in their package manager or if it's an odd bit that nobody is likely to have an up-to-date version you desperately need, but they take away from the magic of package managers - being able to simply say "I want this program" and it will automagically install it and anything it requires for you, and puts it in your program launchers. And while I suppose integrated systems like what Ubuntu does with snap apt repositories solves that problem to an extent, it seems that those kinds of packages are always subpar in one way or another - weather it's slow performance, or lack of integration details that a system package might include, or any number of odd bugs or packaging constraint.
That's good to know. As W10 ends support, I convinced my wife to switch to Linux, but hadn't settled on a distro yet. She's never been on non-Windows, and my Linux knowledge has atrophied a lot. I was thinking of going back to Ubuntu, but I might try Mint instead, since it tries to replicate the Windows environment.
I see Linux Mint as "Ubuntu but without Canonical's bad decisions". It's definitely an excellent candidate for a beginner friendly "just works" distro, and Cinnamon being superficially similar to Windows' UI also helps.
That's exactly what I was using as my first distro xx years ago + I've installed it on parents device, since 8 years they use Mint, since 4 years Mint Debian (LMDE). My impression is that's the easiest and most comfortable for newbies distro of many that I've used, including Ubuntu (yeah, sadly last 5 years only Ubuntu at work).
Well put, I always recommend Linux Mint to beginners for that reason, even though I use Fedora myself.
Last year, I got to work computer with Ubuntu installed running Gnome desktop, and I was able to customize the menus and key bindings to mostly match windows. I don't really think Windows is better, but for me it's just about matching my muscle memory so that things like win-shift-s do screen capture. It was definitely usable. The biggest limitation I find is lack of support for Word and Excel. I think you can probably get around this with wine or the newer stuff but it was a work laptop so it wasn't my responsibility to solve that problem, and their solution was to give me another laptop.
Debian with KDE works as a drop in replacement. I've done this on a few people's older devices with zero complaints.
For my Dad, who is 74 and not overly savvy, I used Manjaro, added AUR then pulled in Evolution for email, MS Edge for browsing and enabled HPlip for his Printer support. It took about an hour, including pulling his PC apart to replace his failing HDD with a SSD. During install, Manjaro asks you for some basic things like "Which office suite do you want installed?" and "Auto login without password?"
He's using it absolutely fine as it's mostly emails and browsing, with a fair bit of Google Earth exploring.
Uh what? Can I know about this more? Quick search doesn't reveal anything relate
This is a bug complaining about it https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/2047778 . If you look at the screenshots attached there are some example pro upgrades. I cannot find a list of what is blocked by ubuntu pro, but from memory its random packages like shells or apps.
This appear every time you update via the "upgrades available" notification.
Edit.: Just to clarify, you can still install these apps, you are just not allowed to upgrade up to certain versions unless you subscribe to ubuntu pro.
Ah, that make more sense. Thanks for the additional context
It has also been noted elsewhere in this topic that Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use on up to 5 devices with registration. My understanding is that these are additional security patches for select packages from Canonical rather than Canonical withholding updates, without Pro you'll just get the same packages other distros would get.
https://ubuntu.com/pro/dashboard
Thank you for the context. Seem like it isn't as bad as I thought
Generally solid, on server level I just remove snap support totally and problem solved.
On desktop I've only got one or two apps running in snaps, they mostly just work. If they ever start to cause me significant problems I'll probably remove snap support on desktop also and either switch to flatpaks or find a repo for a .deb edition.
For the most part Ubuntu "just works" out of the box on most PC hardware, which is generally what I want out of an OS.
I run Ubuntu 20.04 in WSL and it's been okay -- I don't see much difference in the distros from the commandline. I primarily run dev environments in Docker containers anyway, and there I usually use Debian images for dev containers and the slimmest thing I can for prod.
It's probably easiest to switch to Ubuntu 24.04, but I'm open to change. Anyone have any votes for a lean WSL distro?
I'm seeing a lot of people mention Fedora. I think when I looked into it, there was some weirdness between redhat and fedora that made it hard to use fedora? I'm fuzzy on the details, it was years ago. Is that not a thing anymore (if it ever was). I guess the same thing is now possible with Canonical and Ubuntu.
Redhat made some decisions around the licensing of centos, which is the upstream to fedora (or the other way around, can't remember): https://hackaday.com/2023/06/23/et-tu-red-hat/
If you're looking to "just use it", then I don't think it'll matter too much.
I am on Kubuntu and I've modified the OS so much (installed Cinnamon instead of KDE, tons of customizations, etc) that I feel like if I attempt an upgrade, I'm going to render the entire thing either unbootable or a bootable wild mess that will be hard to untangle.
Not sure what I'm going to do. I've been long planning a transition to Linux Mint, but the transition has felt so overwhelming that I haven't started yet. What I have done at this point is I have an external SSD that I am planning to use as a temporary "dual boot" system that I put Linux Mint on, copy home folder, install all the programs I have on my Kubuntu install, and try to mimic my existing setup as close as possible, without touching the original, internal nvme Kubuntu install, that way I can do it in parallel over a period of time, instead of jumping from one OS to the other and scrambling to remember how to set everything up the way I want it
EDIT: Welp, I am on 22.04 not 20.04, so I get updates until April 2027. Woops. At least there's no rush to switch at this point
I use ubuntu on my server and laptop. Mostly because all the tutorials target ubuntu, it usually works, and the things that don't work perfectly haven't been bad enough to overcome the inertia against change (I’m lazy).