No but really, I can’t think of anything I would recommend more to a linux newbie than Ubuntu, because for the most part it “just works”. But, it is still linux… so to that point I ask what is it about ubuntu that doesn’t “just work” for you? Are you running it on old or specific hardware? Does it actually work fine, but you don’t like ubuntu for other reasons? Would you consider yourself a linux newbie?
Ubuntu has LTS releases, which are the closest thing I can think to for “just working” for a long time.
Just today, I ran apt upgrade followed by an autoremove. I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t realize until afterwards that it removed GDM and the NVidia drivers along with about 80 other packages. And this isn’t the first time I’ve run an update only for it to break something vital.
I understand the frustration. I guess I’ll just say make sure if you choose a new distro, that it specifically prevents the thing you just ran into. I’m not sure you’re going to find one. I don’t know your specific case, but I wonder if you were using some built-from-source components as well as some apt packages.
Something you may want to consider which may help prevent the situation you just ran into is to use something like ansible. This lets you write a specific configuration of how you want your system to be (probably determined after some manual setup) and let ansible figure out how to get your system to that state. Ansible is recommended because it’s free and simple to use, but it’s also a RedHat product so I’m not sure how good those claims will be in the future. But the concept of configuration-as-code is a damn good one, and one that will help you from running the same setup commands if you setup a new system or bork something about your original setup.
I’m sure more passionate people can argue the finer points of apt vs yum vs pacman vs whatever. I don’t really care too much personally because when I run into that problem, I blame myself and not the OS. I’ve cut myself enough times to know that, at least.
Hard disagree, Ubuntu for me has become slow and generally in my experience has never been able to replace my windows install; when I finally did replace my windows install it was with manjaro which had a few issues (nothing to do with user friendlyness), due to my living situation I’m currently exclusively using my steamdeck with its steamos which has been fine so far, the only thing it’s missing without enabling pacman is openvpn
This is what I mean by the concept of “just works”… as I read what you wrote, I’m reading that Ubuntu just works for you, it’s just that - like any system - it got bogged down over time. If you’re saying Manjaro has a way of preventing the system from being bogged down over time that’s something else, but I’m not sure that’s what you’re saying. Manjaro is a rolling release, if I’m not mistaken. When I tried manjaro it “just worked” until I fucked up the rolling release by not updating it in a while and letting packages get so far out of date that updating it became a real pain in the ass. This isn’t a problem with ubuntu - what is a problem with ubuntu and most other distros is that you don’t get the latest packages without compiling from source, a problem that does go away with a rolling release distro, provided you stay on top of it.
What “just works” for some people doesn’t “just work” for others.
Ubuntu when I first tried it back when it was ubutntu 9.04 was amazing as it was different but it wasn’t anywhere as user friendly as manjaro or most other OSes are now. At the time it was miles ahead of the competition, but that gap has closed significantly.
But the point being is that I tried with 9.04, 12.04 and probably a couple later releases and the system never stayed functioning for long, and became slower that it seemed to be with earlier releases, whereas I found the snappiness/relative ease of installation etc with a different OS.
I think what I’m saying is: when Ubuntu was the only offering for user friendly Linux it was amazing, but now that it’s not the only flavour striving to provide that experience it feels clunky and outdated.
And I too made that mistake with manjaro at one point, borking the install by not consistently updating it.
What “just works” for some people doesn’t “just work” for others.
I wouldn’t really recommend Ubuntu because it forces something as buggy and broken as snap on to users, as in they modified apt to install the snap version of a package instead of the package version of the package.
Not to mention the fact that it tends to break things after upgrades like what one gentleman said in regards to removing the NVIDIA drivers.
Mac OSX. (Though it’s unix, not linux)
No but really, I can’t think of anything I would recommend more to a linux newbie than Ubuntu, because for the most part it “just works”. But, it is still linux… so to that point I ask what is it about ubuntu that doesn’t “just work” for you? Are you running it on old or specific hardware? Does it actually work fine, but you don’t like ubuntu for other reasons? Would you consider yourself a linux newbie?
Ubuntu has LTS releases, which are the closest thing I can think to for “just working” for a long time.
I can’t stick with Ubuntu anymore.
Just today, I ran apt upgrade followed by an autoremove. I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t realize until afterwards that it removed GDM and the NVidia drivers along with about 80 other packages. And this isn’t the first time I’ve run an update only for it to break something vital.
I understand the frustration. I guess I’ll just say make sure if you choose a new distro, that it specifically prevents the thing you just ran into. I’m not sure you’re going to find one. I don’t know your specific case, but I wonder if you were using some built-from-source components as well as some apt packages.
Something you may want to consider which may help prevent the situation you just ran into is to use something like ansible. This lets you write a specific configuration of how you want your system to be (probably determined after some manual setup) and let ansible figure out how to get your system to that state. Ansible is recommended because it’s free and simple to use, but it’s also a RedHat product so I’m not sure how good those claims will be in the future. But the concept of configuration-as-code is a damn good one, and one that will help you from running the same setup commands if you setup a new system or bork something about your original setup.
I’m sure more passionate people can argue the finer points of
aptvsyumvspacmanvs whatever. I don’t really care too much personally because when I run into that problem, I blame myself and not the OS. I’ve cut myself enough times to know that, at least.@dipshit @droans
NixOS also does this, but I am not sure how it compares to ansible as I have never used ansible.
TIL
Hard disagree, Ubuntu for me has become slow and generally in my experience has never been able to replace my windows install; when I finally did replace my windows install it was with manjaro which had a few issues (nothing to do with user friendlyness), due to my living situation I’m currently exclusively using my steamdeck with its steamos which has been fine so far, the only thing it’s missing without enabling pacman is openvpn
This is what I mean by the concept of “just works”… as I read what you wrote, I’m reading that Ubuntu just works for you, it’s just that - like any system - it got bogged down over time. If you’re saying Manjaro has a way of preventing the system from being bogged down over time that’s something else, but I’m not sure that’s what you’re saying. Manjaro is a rolling release, if I’m not mistaken. When I tried manjaro it “just worked” until I fucked up the rolling release by not updating it in a while and letting packages get so far out of date that updating it became a real pain in the ass. This isn’t a problem with ubuntu - what is a problem with ubuntu and most other distros is that you don’t get the latest packages without compiling from source, a problem that does go away with a rolling release distro, provided you stay on top of it.
What “just works” for some people doesn’t “just work” for others.
Sorry, I could’ve been clearer!
Ubuntu when I first tried it back when it was ubutntu 9.04 was amazing as it was different but it wasn’t anywhere as user friendly as manjaro or most other OSes are now. At the time it was miles ahead of the competition, but that gap has closed significantly.
But the point being is that I tried with 9.04, 12.04 and probably a couple later releases and the system never stayed functioning for long, and became slower that it seemed to be with earlier releases, whereas I found the snappiness/relative ease of installation etc with a different OS.
I think what I’m saying is: when Ubuntu was the only offering for user friendly Linux it was amazing, but now that it’s not the only flavour striving to provide that experience it feels clunky and outdated.
And I too made that mistake with manjaro at one point, borking the install by not consistently updating it.
Couldn’t have put it better myself
I wouldn’t really recommend Ubuntu because it forces something as buggy and broken as snap on to users, as in they modified apt to install the snap version of a package instead of the package version of the package.
Not to mention the fact that it tends to break things after upgrades like what one gentleman said in regards to removing the NVIDIA drivers.
What would you recommend instead?
Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, or Debian/Debian-testing.
These are the ones that have worked best for me in my experience.