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 use it. It’s fine. Livepatch is nice, not needing to reboot to apply kernel updates can make the “boot computer, install updates, reboot computer” cycle a bit shorter. Maybe Fedora also has that? Arch and friends certainly don’t do it.
Snap is an annoying feature that mostly just makes life harder for people starting out on Ubuntu. If you’re here, chances are you can run the three or four commands to rid yourself of Snap. Snap has also gotten better in terms of performance, though the store situation still sucks.
Snap’s RAM impact is minimal. You end up with multiple versions of the same dependency in memory (wasting tens to hundreds of megabytes) but the same is true for Flatpak or Docker or AppImage. My biggest annoyance is snaps mounting on boot and taking a few seconds, but it’s really not that bad. Actually, that’s a lie, my biggest annoyance is the (ノಠ益ಠ)ノlowercase “snap” folder in my home directory ლ(ಠ益ಠლ) that you can’t remove or snap will break.
The Amazon search thing was what, ten years ago? Just click no on the “do you want to submit debug logs” prompt.
I personally use the default desktop. Gnome is fine. Some people are married to their Windows clones, for those Cinnamon or KDE is also fine.
I would indeed recommend Ubuntu stable. Being able to install the OS and not risk breaking anything for half a decade is pretty nice. Certainly beats my Arch-derivatives experience. Ubuntu and Kubuntu both come with the standard suite of tools you’d expect for those desktop environments. You can even install both (though you’ll have tons of duplicate applications if you do).
Fedora does more frequent updates, with more changes over time and more stuff possibly breaking. If you want the latest and greatest, Fedora may be better. Software is generally less supported on Fedora though. I also kind of trust IBM even less than I do Canonical to do the right thing, so there’s that.
The biggest problem with Ubuntu is that it’s popular and has been for years. A lot of old “helpful” forum topics will have you open up a terminal, paste some random commands, and break your OS next time you try to update. I’d recommend avoiding any terminal commands for as long as possible when it comes to troubleshooting. The GUI does most things pretty well these days.
No Fedora doesnt at all have livepatching. I think APT distros are great at not needing reboots, Fedora sucks. Its offline installer doesnt work well enough to excuse the reboots.
Fedora Atomic Desktops meanwhile offer awesome unbreakability. I use Kinoite daily and dont plan on switching. Even though using latest Plasma, it just doesnt break.
I would choose a different Distro though, if I didnt want rpm-ostree. Just not sure what? Kubuntu? No. Arch? Hell no. OpenSUSE Slowroll with KDE probably, yes that would be it.
Apt will install a package but if a service is in use the kernel still runs the old until you stop the services and restart. its just not apparent to the user. This is not live patching, live patching is when kernel will load a new patch and you temporarily have two states and during a momentary blip pass all control to new kernel…this is typically for mission critical server that can’t have downtime. Just running a regular update does not do this.
Source for live patching https://tuxcare.com/blog/developer-tutorial-live-patching-debian-10-linux-kernel-with-kpatch/
Interesting! But afaik apt also has mechanisms to only restart necessary services.
Not sure how to check on apt, but zypper uses ps -s arguments and shows you all the running processes/services that need a restart before the system is fully using all updates