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Loucypher @lemmy.ml

Is Ubuntu deserving the hate?

Long story short, I have a desktop with Fedora, lovely, fast, sleek and surprisingly reliable for a near rolling distro (it failed me only once back around Fedora 34 or something where it nuked Grub). Tried to install on a 2012 i7 MacBook Air… what a slog!!!!! Surprisingly Ubuntu runs very smooth on it. I have been bothering all my friends for years about moving to Fedora (back then it was because I hated Unity) but now… I mean, I know that we are suppose to hate it for Snaps and what not but… Christ, it does run well! In fairness all my VMs are running DietPi (a slimmed version of Ubuntu) and coming back to the APT world feels like coming back home.

On the other end forcing myself to be on Fedora allows me to stay on the DNF world that is compatible with Amazon Linux etc (which I use for work), it has updated packages, it is nice and clean…. Argh, don’t know how to decide!

Thoughts?

I am not in the mood for Debian. I like the Mint approach but I am not a fan of slow rolling releases and also would like to keep myself as close as upstream as possible, the Debian version is the only one that seems reliable enough but, again, it is Debian, the packages are “old”. Pop Os and similar are two hops away from upstream and so I’d rather not.

Is Snap really that bad?

Edit: thank you all for sharing your experience !

129 comments

  • I avoid Ubuntu because Canonical has a history of going their own way alone rather than collaborating on universal standards. For instance, when the X devs decided the successor to X11 needed to be a complete redesign from scratch companies like RedHat, Collabora, Intel, Google, Samsung, and more collaborated to build Wayland. However, Canonical announced Mir, and they went their own way alone.

    When Gnome3 came out it was very controversial and this spawned alternatives such as Cinnamin, MATE, and Ubuntu's Unity desktop. Unity was the only Linux desktop, before or since, to include sponsored bloatware apps installed by default, and it also sold user search history to advertisers.

    Then, there's snap. While Flatpak matured and becoame the defacto standard distro-agnostic package system, Canonical once again went their own way alone by creating snap.

    I'm not an expert on Ubuntu or the Linux community, I've just been around long enough to see Canonical stir up controversy over and over by going left when everyone else goes right, failing after a few years, and wasting thousands of worker hours in the process.

    • You're not wrong, but there's also value in exploring different ways to do similar things. That's what's great about Linux.

      Some of Canonical's efforts may lead to failure, but that doesn't mean they are a waste.

    • Pretty much this, they don't deserve hate but i won't recommend them either

    • To give credit where it's due: Mir was pretty neat, actually. It had features that modern Wayland still lacks or has only recently gained. Ubuntu got an X replacement up and running in record time, but the rest of the ecosystem stuck with Wayland, so they cancelled their solution.

      And you know what? Snap does solve some issues in interesting ways that Flatpak doesn't. Unfortunately, the experience using Snap is rather inferior (and that goddamn lowercase snap folder in my home directory isn't helping), but on a technical level I'm inclined to give this one to Snap.

      Developing and maintaining Ubuntu costs money and unlike Red Hat, Canonical isn't selling many support contracts. Their stupid Amazon scope and the focus on Snap are part of that, they just want to give businesses a reason to pay Canonical.

      They're trying very hard, but it just doesn't seem to take off. Their latest move, pushing Ubuntu Pro to everyone, seems like a rather desperate move. I think Ubuntu is collapsing and I think Canonical doesn't know how to stop it. I don't know about you, but I've never paid for an Ubuntu license and I don't know anyone who does, either.

  • They've embraced Wayland, pipewire, gnome and what not, but snap is really questionable, particularly in the Linux ecosystem.

    I gather it can be somewhat annoying to contend with (I.e. some apps on Ubuntu may only be available as snaps?)

    • Snap is a steaming pile of excrement. So much of the crap on the Snap Store is obsolete and out of date. Anyone and their monkey can post a snap on snapcraft, and.. they do. Canonical is just as bad. They took it upon themselves to package up a lot of commercial-level open-source software 3 or 4 years ago... and then have done fuck all with it ever since. Zero updates to the original snaps they put there in the initial population of the Snap store (yes they do maintain a select few things, but only a small percentage of the flood of obsolete software in the Snap store). The result is people looking to install apps who poke the Snap store, go "oh hey, the application I want is there", install it, and then get all pissy with the vendor... who looks about in surprise wondering how a potential customer managed to find such an old version (happened with at least 2 of my employers, and I've come across many more). Go search Reddit (or Google) for obsolete snap discussions. There's no shortage people pointing at the same issue.

      • I wasn't aware of this situation, that's really good to know.

        I'm not keen on the snaps being centralised behind a proprietary server. I don't really get why anyone would put up with that in light of Flatpak.

      • This doesn't seem to be a problem with snap. Canonical probably tried to show vendors a way how to distribute software commercially. But vendors are on the level of cavemen and don't know shit about Linux even after serving a solution. Or they simply don't care about building up a market opportunity.

        I don't want to defend Ubuntu. I don't like Ubuntu especially, but it might be a simple explanation.

  • I mean, I know that we are suppose to hate it for Snaps and what not but…

    There is no "supposed to" when it comes to distro preferences. Use whatever you like, other people's opinions do not dictate your behavior. If Ubuntu works for you, use that. If anything, that's the freedom of FOSS. You can take other people's views in to account when choosing a distro, but in the end it is your decision. I dislike Ubuntu for a few reasons, but I don't get to dictate to anyone else what they use and why.

    If you like rolling release, you could try Debian sid/unstable. I hear it's quite stable and reliable and, of course, isn't Ubuntu.

  • Ubuntu attacted a lot of control freaks because Shuttleworth was originally splashing some money when it started and a bunch of nerds saw dollar signs. As a result they have a culture of "not invented here" syndrome where someone just has to reinvent the wheel in only the way they see it and they don't work well with others or accept their input because they want all the credit.

    Personally, I got sick of it having been pretty involved early on in the project. It's easier and saner to just use a distro based on what everyone else is doing.

  • In a nutshell, Ubluntu is trying to take user control off its users. And the users are mad because of it.

    And yes, I'm talking about snap.

  • I'm pretty happy using Ubuntu. Its got a decent UI and works well enough with little fuss. As much as I enjoy tinkering, I use my Ubuntu machines for work and I really only need something simple that works out of the box.

  • For anything lower-spec (like, 4Gb of RAM), Ubuntu absolutely CHUGS because of Snaps. Flatpak has no such issue.

    Ironically, Lubuntu (a lightweight Ubuntu fork) worked the best for me while I was using it. No slowness, but I installed pretty much everything using Apt (didn't know about Flatpak back then).

    I ended up having it lock up and freeze on the sign-in page though, so I moved on to the slightly heavier Linux Mint.

  • You don't have to use Snap (except for LXC, I think?). It's not enabled by default, but you can enable Flatpak and everything will work fine. Flatpak has Firefox and Chrome and all the other applications thst Canonical foolishly moved from their apt repos to their Snap repos.

    There are some frustrating things about Snaps (loading all of them at boot time rather than at runtime, for quicker app start but slower boot, for example, and that stupid snap folder that can't be moved) but honestly I don't really see what the fuss is about as an end user. Nobody sets up a purely Snap based system anyway.

    The problem with Snap is an ideological one. If you don't care who runs your software store and if you don't care about having the ability to add more software stores then the default, you'll be fine with Snap. If you're ideologically driven towards Linux, you'll probably dislike the way Snap is set up.

    Like it or not, Ubuntu is still one of the best supported distros out there. If you want drivers from any manufacturer, you get to pick between drivers tested for Ubuntu or Fedora. Every other distro repackages those drivers using their own scripts and compatibility layers because nobody over at Intel is going to spend company time specifically getting Garuda to work when its customers don't sell hardware with it preinstalled.

    Software like Discord and VS Code having the ".deb, maybe .rpm, or you figure it out yourself" approach of official distribution is pretty standard, I'd say, for better or for worse. It also helps that a lot of entry level Linux questions and answers online are about Ubuntu. Askubuntu may not be as vast and up to date as the Arch wiki, but at least the askubuntu people aren't going to tell you off for not knowing advanced Linux stuff.

    There are upsides and downsides to any Linux distro. You're not "supposed" to think anything, try it out, keep an open mind, and pick what works for you.

  • If it works for you then use it, however if you want the latest packages you'll have to NOT use the LTS releases in which case be prepared to do a FULL REINSTALL every time a new version comes out.

    Or use the LTS but use Snaps for those applications that you want to have the latest versions of. Snaps are getting better and I think eventually you won't notice the difference between them and native apps, except for the space they just up. But that goes for Flatpak too.

    Personally I use Linux Mint Debian Edition because I'm not happy with the way Canonical is going. In most cases the "old" apps are fine for me, but if I felt need the newest version I'll use a Flatpak.

    Another rolling option is OpenSuse Tumbleweed however, being a Mac which uses proprietary WiFi drivers, your WiFi will break with kernel updates, which can be irritating, unless you have ethernet.

  • There is some stuff that I hate, but I tend to come back to it for my home server just because of livepatch, which is nice to minimize the amount of reboots necessary and having a patched kernel for all my LXCs makes then also automatically protected.

  • I used to use Ubuntu before unity and switched to Debian 👑 in 2012. I still have to use Ubuntu for work and I just get on with it. It could be worse.... I could have to use windows.

    Anyway my main gripes with Ubuntu are snaps and how they keep swapping packages in apt to be installed as snaps .

    I dont hate it, its a tool and in most cases I can use it and there is no problem if not there are other options.

129 comments