I have been not recommending Ubuntu to people because of obvious reasons (the Amazon search integration and snaps, mainly). The reason I am posting this is because someone I know mentioned that they are considering Ubuntu. They have a degree in cs and generally are competent with computers, but didn’t like mint when they tried it. I would like to know a few things, since I haven’t looked into Ubuntu in a while:
Has anything changed about snap? I know people didn’t like it at first, especially the proprietary server, but I don’t think they will care about that and I mainly just want to know if it will eat all their RAM or something.
Have they made any changes in their management that may make sure there won’t be another Amazon search thing?
Is it best to use the default desktop on Ubuntu? I would recommend Kubuntu to them, all else being equal, but don’t know if maybe the default one is better integrated.
Edit: The person will be 100’s of miles away so helping them with issues will be hard, and Ubuntu LTS should be stable. Plus, basically everything that “supports” linux but doesn’t really usually supports Ubuntu. I do really see where they’re coming from, but want to know if it has a major potential to backfire on them and if they might be better off with Fedora.
I just switched away from Kubuntu to Debian.
The snap thing was annoying, but not a major problem for me, except for one thing: I switched Firefox back to a debian package, following the directions online to do so, and every few months it seemed somehow I had been switched back to a snap version. I removed the snap and all of that, but every now and then I’d realize I was using Firefox in a snap. (It became obvious when I tried to unlock 1Password - the snap version relies on the plugin, but the non-snap version fires up the standalone 1Password program.)
In general, I’m not opposed to the concept of snaps, and a browser is probably something that should be in a sandbox. But, I preferred the standard Debian package installation, and somehow that kept getting overridden. And that is the kind of thing that I hate about Windows.
The install was smooth, or would have been if I hadn’t had a slightly unusual setup with my drives. It works just like Kubuntu, by switching to KDE with X11 (I had a few minor issues with Wayland), but without Canonical. I don’t need bleeding edge, I just want my system to work reliably.
My Linux background: Spent a lot of time with Slackware starting in the late 90s, both on server and desktop. Switched desktop and laptop to Kubuntu around 2010. Server got switched to Debian in 2017 or so.
THANK YOU!! I started to think I was going crazy with Firefox!! Their updates kept messing around with where the program and profiles were aligned to, the path and files sometimes the way they would be with a .deb and sometimes they were where you’d find a snap package. Also have to keep unpinning it or it would start launching new windows without current settings.
Does their dev team have both being done and they keep fucking around with which is going to be used next? I still can’t figure out what’s going on there.
You know, I assumed Canonical was pulling something, but it’s possible it was also just incompetence. I didn’t think they even distributed a .deb version of Firefox, so it definitely felt like they WANTED me to use snap Firefox…and then I’d start wondering why it was so important. What vested interest would Canonical have in me using snap Firefox? Maybe it was just honest mistakes.
Linux is about freedom to make our own choices, and whatever is happening with Canonical (malice or ineptitude) was getting away from that. Kubuntu feels like, “We’ve made this garden for you and we recommend you stay inside it.” Debian feels like, “Hey, man, you wanna go hose your system? Here’s the apt command to do that. Have a good day.” (Apparently, I measure true power as ability to screw things up.)
Slackware: “You have all of the power. Right now. And all of the responsibility.”
Honestly I am a huge fan of raw Debian it’s just that I got a new laptop and not all distros have the drivers for it. Even Ubuntu 22.x could not get the audio going but 24.04 boom it all just worked. So I’ve been debating with myself as to whether or not I should give Debian a try on it. I have a few older laptops on which I put Debian and I quite enjoy it. It’s solid and not trying to push the envelope and I’m very fond of that approach. But I’ve also spent a lot of time getting everything setup and just right. I’ve customized the ever-living shit out of the desktop and the appearance settings, widgets, app setups, a bunch of sites I nativefier-ed, and a million other things. So the prospect of redoing it all is daunting.
If a time should come when I feel it’s worth the effort I definitely would.
VLC media player also has this nonsense that their latest stuff seems to only be available as snap lately.
I just had to change a few things - KDE, dark mode, X11 when I couldn’t get screen power off to work under Wayland, and it’s basically good to go. There might be a few other things I changed, but in general out of the box was pretty close to what I wanted. It even installed the AMD driver for my graphics card.
Oh yeah and even with all the drivers working I still had problem with power management. I did read that of all the things it’s probably the most problematic in Linux to get it working properly that often it can’t. Once the system went to sleep it would not wake, had to hard-reboot. However, it’s a laptop and already uses very little so I’m not overly concerned. So my lid close action is just black screen. Actually it has some benefits in that I can close the lid and running operations will finish.
That reminds me - for my Lenovo laptop, no issues at all with suspend and resume (just like Kubuntu). But my desktop was going to sleep when I first installed Debian, and it was NOT waking up gracefully; in fact I had to reboot it each time. Since I didn’t want it to go to sleep at all, I didn’t attempt to diagnose the issue beyond turning off the suspend mode in power management.
“Who has power to destroy something, is the one who holds true control over it.” Or something, I never conquered a planet. Thank you Paul Atreides, very cool.
That is a nice way of measuring control over your own devices and systems, though.
I can’t find it at the moment, but a few weeks ago I made a comment that I didn’t really care for the paddle shifters in our car (it’s an automatic, but you can switch to “manual mode” and shift it manually), because I know it’s not going to let me do something stupid, whereas a stick shift will usually let me do stupid things that can damage the engine. That’s partially what prompted the measuring power as ability to screw things up comment. :)
From a few years ago but maybe they’re still in cahoots lol.
https://news.itsfoss.com/ubuntu-firefox-snap-default/
That sounds like it’s mostly about the default install, and I don’t have a problem with them making the default a snap - as I said, sandboxing a browser probably is a good idea from a security perspective, and most people probably aren’t going to care about snap vs. deb installs, so why not go with the safer alternative?
My issue was that it kept switching back to snaps even after I tried to go to .deb installations. It happened at least three or four times. It would be fine for several months, then something would happen during an update, and it would switch back.
I didn’t have the concerns the article mentions about it automatically updating; it would only update whenever I told software in general to update.
Yeah I don’t disagree I was just providing reference info.