Manjaro because it is a bait and switch trap. Seems really polished and user friendly. You will find out eventually it is a system destroying time-bomb and a poorly managed project.
Ubuntu because snaps.
The rest are all pros and cons that are different strokes for different folks.
You’re going to get a lot of comments about Ubuntu and snaps. Definitely one of the reasons I switched away from it.
For the uninitiated, as someone who’s looking to move from Windows to Linux and Ubuntu is probably my first choice, can you share what’s not to like about this?
Edit - insightful answers. Thank you
Performance and functionality.
When I click the Firefox icon, I expect Firefox to open. Like, right away.
When Ubuntu switched it to a snap, there was a noticeable load time. I’d click the icon and wait. In the background the OS was mounting a snap as a virtual volume or something, and loading the sandboxed app from that. It turned my modern computer with SSD into an old computer with a HDD. Firefox gets frequent updates, so the snap would be updated frequently, requiring a remount/reload every update.
Ubuntu tried this with many stock apps (like Calculator), but eventually rolled things back since so many people complained about the obvious performance issues.
I’m talking about literally waiting 10X the time for something to load as a snap than it did compared to a “regular” app.
The more apps you have as snaps, the more things have to be mounted/attached and slowly loaded. This also use to clutter up the output when listing mounted devices.
The Micropolis (GPL SimCity) snap loads with read-only permissions. i.e., you cannot save. There are no permission controls for write access (its snap permissions are only for audio). Basically, the snap was configured wrong and you can never save your game.
I had purged snapd from my system and added repos to get “normal” versions of software, but eventually some other package change would happen and snapd would get included with routine updates.
I understand the benefits of something like Snaps and Flatpaks - but you cannot deny that there are negatives. I thought Linux was about choice. I’ve been administering a bunch of Ubuntu systems at work for well over a decade, and I don’t like what the platform has been becoming.
Also, instead of going with an established solution (flatpak), Ubuntu decided to create a whole new problem (snap) and basically contributes to a splitting of the community. Which do you support? Which gets more developer focus to fix and improve things?
You don’t have to take my word for any of this. A quick Google search will yield many similar complaints.
Thanks for the explanation. Now I understand the dislike for snap.
Oh! I forgot another one! Updates.
You can’t really control when the updates of snaps are rolled out.
For “regular” software, I have an “apt update” type of script that I can run when I choose to update everything on my system. On some systems, I have this in a weekly crontab. On other systems, there is no scheduled run. On those systems, it’s important to keep many apps as-is - so several packages are also locked, as well (“apt-mark hold”).
With snap, you basically have no control. It updates as many times as it wants, when it wants. You can try to adjust some timers to change the window when forced updates are rolled out, but can never tell it to NOT update something. Broken package updated? Well, you can manually roll back that one. Broken update pushed again during the next forced update window? Just roll it back again! (and repeat, every day)
These are the words direct from a snap developer on why you cannot lock an app: “You need to keep your software up to date.”
Yes, I understand that, but I also know it’s really important to not update some stuff, and I know that broken snaps sometimes get pushed.
Basically, the snap developers have talked down to the users. THEY know better of what WE actually want and need, not us dumb users that actually administer things for a living.
Removed by mod
The issue is a lack of an app ecosystem with actual AAA apps.
This! I used Ubuntu Touch as my daily driver for 1 1/2 years. The OS itself was anything but perfect but the real problem was definetly the app ecosystem. WayDroid(an android “emulator”) optimization is probably the way to go for linux on mobile
Ubuntu because they put ads in the terminal
Just thinking about this pisses me off all over again.
They do? I’ve never seen any.
https://nitter.net/omgubuntu/status/1574759306544701443 https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2022/10/ubuntu-pro-terminal-ad The advertised product is literally free under certain conditions so I don’t consider this offending.
“they put ads in the terminal” isn’t really accurate.
Their “ubuntu-advantage-tools” adds information to one of their other products to the output of apt. You can easily get rid of that by uninstalling/replacing “ubuntu-advantage-tools”. It’s definitely not like they are selling ad space in your terminal to third parties.
You can’t easily uninstall the advantage tools package, they set Ubuntu-minimal meta package to depend on it
Ubuntu - It was my first distro and I loved it for many years after 6.06. However, it slowly shifted from a very community focused distro (“Linux for human beings” was the original slogan) to a very corporate distro with lots of in-house bullshit, CLAs, and partially-closed projects that seems to focus on profit and business over actual human beings. I correlate this move to around the time when it became purple rather than brown. Snap sucks, Mir sucks, Unity sucks, integrating Amazon and music store paid bullshit sucks. Just no. Move to Debian.
Manjaro - It’s Arch, but with incompetence!
Red Hat - Do you enjoy paying licensing fees for a Linux distro that very likely violates the open source licenses it uses? RHEL is for you! Just remember not to share the code! Sharing is most certainly NOT caring!
How does Manjaro add incompetence? I’ve not used either for a while, buy Manjaro never failed me, while arch did manage to make my system nuke itself a couple times just running
pacman -Syyu. Granted, this was a long time ago, but it’s the only distro to so this to me ever.
Manjaro, for its incompetence.
I don’t hate Gentoo, but will never use it. I hate compiling.
Garuda. It feels like being inside a gaming rig full of blinking RGB lights. Way over the top with the “gamer aesthetic”.
Same reason but different vibe with Kali for me. I’m sure it’s good for its intended purpose, but I get the feeling that there are many who install it in an attempt at being a kewl h4x0r. I used used Parrotsec for work for a while, and it’s a lot less flamboyant about it.
Ubuntu, because of their shenanigans with ads in the OS, forcing snap and just generally demonstrating disdain for their userbase.
Manjaro for their office suite debacle, and general instability.
RHEL for their recent attempts to subvert GPL.
Debian because packages are never, ever, ever up to date.
Gentoo because any sane person would get sick of compiling.
My Linux from Scratch install. It was built by a moron.
You can make an OS in Scratch? I didnt know that
Linux From Scratch is a series of (online) books that walk you through building up your own linux system from the ground up, from compiling the kernel to all the individual systems that turn the kernel into a functional OS.
It’s meant to be an educational tool to help people learn about what goes into making a Linux distribution and give you better knowledge of how to build software from source. Some people turn these systems into their own distributions or personal (I guess gentoo-like?) Linux installs
Arch, I want to get some work done not save 3 extra CPU cycles on boot.
I spent the last 10 mins reading all the comments and I think we managed to shit on all the distros available.
That’s the Linux community I love, good job people <3
