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What distros have you tried and thought, "Nope, this one's not for me"? (feddit.uk)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I've been using Linux Mint since forever. I've never felt a reason to change. But I'm interested in what persuaded others to move.

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[–] 81 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (27 children)

Every couple of years I think to myself "You know, I can't actually remember why I don't like Ubuntu. It must have just been some weird one-off thing that soured me on it last time. Besides, I've got N more years of Linux experience under my belt, so I know how to avoid sticky situations with apt, and they've had N more years to make their OS more user friendly! I pride myself on not holding grudges, and if this distro still gets recommended to newbies, how bad can it possibly be, especially for someone with my level of expertise?"

And then I download Ubuntu.

And then I remember.

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  • [–] 53 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    And then I remember.

    Can you share with the rest of the class?

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  • [–] 56 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    Admittedly, it's been a few years and I'm coming due, but let's see what I can remember...

    • apt will brick itself if it gets interrupted mid transaction with no clear recourse apart from a total reinstall, so try not to get greedy and Ctrl+C if it looks like dpkg is hung
    • trying to install any software that isn't already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you're quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile
    • snapcraft, need I say more? Firefox takes several minutes to start up, we don't talk about disk usage, installing a package with apt will sometimes install the snap version anyway requiring a Windows-registry-edit-esque hack to disable, and the last time I checked in, the loop devices it creates didn't even get hidden in the file manager.
    • I've also definitely encountered my fair share of bugs and broken packages which are always fun to fix
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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)
    • apt will brick itself if it gets interrupted mid transaction with no clear recourse apart from a total reinstall, so try not to get greedy and Ctrl+C if it looks like dpkg is hung

    You can dpkg -r the package you tried to install then apt won't complain about missing dependency packages for your app as it won't be marked for to be installed

    trying to install any software that isn't already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you're quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile

    There isn't a big global community repo per say like aur but anyone can host their own repos with PPAs, you just need to add them to your lists

    Most apt quirks are there with Debian too, not just an Ubuntu thing. The rest of the things you mentioned are fair.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)
    • trying to install any software that isn't already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you're quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile

    In fairness it does have the PPA system which predates the AUR and does provide a good job of providing third party amd semi-third party software.

    But you're right that Ubuntu has sold out on building snaps for software instead of ppas.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The PPAs weren't that useful. I mean they worked fine for the purpose, but if you used too many of them you'd eventually get your system into a dependency hell. That meant packages were stuck without updates and also blocking others from updating.

    The other thing was that even if you kept clear of PPAs it was anybody's guess if you could upgrade to the next release. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't and you'd have to reinstall from scratch.

    Put together it meant after a while you didn't bother upgrading period, or upgraded only major releases but by reinstalling from scratch every single time (and preserving /home). It was a chore and I resented it and kept putting it off.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    What do you recommend for ubuntu alternative? I want to leave for something else, but I also want all my programs to install and work fine. If an app supports ubuntu, would it support debian as well?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You can start by trying Linux Mint, it's based directly on Ubuntu but with most problematic bits of Ubuntu removed. Mint comes in several sub-flavors that mostly change the way your desktop looks and acts, start with the Cinnamon edition as it's the safest bet.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    That Ubuntu would install the snap version of certain apps when I installed them directly in the terminal was the main reason I left Ubuntu after a few years. So annoying!

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Ubuntu sometimes gives me Windows vibes.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Try Ubuntu Mate, it's actually ok. I'm alot not the biggest fan of snaps. I try and get .debs or apt get, where I can. App Images seem a little odd to me, but Flatpack seems alright.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Recommending ubuntu to newbies is the product of either incompetence or malice when Mint, zorin and nobara exist

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  • [+] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    Would you mind to explain why? I have yet to try it, but the concept seems nice: predisposing a set of tools useful for linux gamers/creators for those who are not technical

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  • [+] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    I've watched a few comparison videos, and the performance gains are negligible when compared to other common distros, so that's definitely not the point in installing it.

    The good part about nobara is the set of tools that come preinstalled and the wecome program which lets you update the system, the drivers and the codecs.

    Nothing you couldn't replicate in a few minutes on another distro of course

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Can you expand on that? I've never used Linux as a daily driver, interacting with Ubuntu systems via SSH.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    i don't like how Ubuntu feels (gui) so idk about cli issues

    it's not a problem with Gnome btw, it's just the colours are yuck vomit and snap 🗿

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