Hey guys! I’m getting into the open source world and for years, i am finally hoing to try Linux! However, i see a lot of complains about Ubuntu and i just dont know why. What are you guys complains about Ubuntu? My next PC will come with Ubuntu. Do you guys think i should use Mint instead? Need help.
Just a heads up, Mint is an Ubuntu system with their customization.
I like the Cinnamon edition, personally. I have a laptop running it, and it’s been a very smooth experience.
My complaint is that Ubuntu is flirting with becoming proprietary software. Don’t get me wrong they’re nowhere near closed source or such but still.
That and they have some mechanics that feel counter intuitive to me. (But that’s personal taste)
I’d choose mint then. Just because it has a more “traditional windows” (don’t think about 11, don’t think about 11,…vom) styled flow to it.
Happy cake day!
Thx! ～(つˆ0ˆ)つ｡☆
My problem with Ubuntu is the way snaps are so closely tied to the distro. If they were optional, I would have just stuck with it. But I also like Mint anyway. It’s just good.
Ubuntu is fine, especially for a new user it’s usually widely supported and has the most resources available.
I can’t stand Gnome, though. I’d very much recommend going with Kubuntu.
Yes Ubuntu is a solid distro, except if you are a hater. Gnome is not suitable for me as a mouse user. Keyboard users like it though. So I use Kubuntu, as it has the Plasma desktop. Which works really well.
Ubuntu has ads in the OS, mint dosnt.
Installed mint on my parents laptops so they didn’t become e-waste when Win11 came out. They have no issues.
Being new(ish) to Linux since that time and I found that the main distortion are better than their sub “flavours”. For me anyway. I didn’t like Mint LMDE or Kubuntu etc.
I tend to agree that the main distribution is better than it’s “sub-flavours”, but by that logic you should be using Debian, not mint/ubuntu
Yeah. I knew somone would say that. I feel Mint is its own thing though and main stream enough. I meant more the distros that have a webite, and then other flavours or spins on that distro.
I do want to try Debian at some stage but it just feels about old out of the box.
No shade on mint. It is a great distro. It’s my recommendation for people switching from windows
I prefer Mint over Ubuntu because of the default desktop environment. Also, in Mint you can unintall apps directly from menu with right-click-uninstall.
Linux Mint Debian Edition
Debian with cinnamon.
Between those two, I would go with regular Debian, or Mint LMDE if it has to be one of the two.
Debian is much better about providing a reasonably updated desktop experience these days.
As for Ubuntu… Their engineering is bad, and they’re shady. They push their solutions over standard stuff, and their solutions are conveniently setup to allow them to close source the code if anything ever reaches wide adoption or are proprietary from the beginning.
The only real issue with Ubuntu is it uses Snap app store instead of Flathub app store.
Flathub has more apps, is faster, and has some minor security improvements. Linux Mint uses Flathub.
HOWEVER, you can add Flathub as additional source in Ubuntu app store app, and use Flathub exclusively.
In that case, no real difference between Ubuntu and Linux Mint other than UI.
Also Snap backend is a proprietary crap, unlike flatpak.
Another problem though is the best Flatpak store Bazaar’s Flatpak version is broken due to Ubuntu apparmor. There are workarounds but they don’t really seem to be doing much about it. There’s a deb version in the repos but it is currently very out of date as its a newer app with fairly active development
What are the minor security improvements?
Flathub sandboxes applications to prevent them from infecting the system if app gets hacked, and lets you control permissions for each app, like microphone, camera etc.
But they are still work in progress and easily circumvented, thus I called them only minor improvements.
Snap is arguably the better sandbox. The bigger issue with Snap is that only Canonical (the company that owns Ubuntu) has the code for the Snap store, so it’s a closed ecosystem and there are no alternative stores, so the minute they enshittify it’s garbage. Flathub is the most popular flatpak repo but the code for a flatpak repo is open source, there are alternative options and will be in the future.
Snap has a better sandbox, but only if you have an AppArmor distro. If your distro of choice uses SELinux or something else, then you’re out of luck.
Actually, just having AppArmor enabled isn’t enough. Snap’s strict confinement depends on specific out-of-tree AppArmor kernel patches that Canonical bakes into Ubuntu.
If your distro uses the stock Linux kernel, even with AppArmor active (like Debian, Arch, or openSUSE) snapd lacks the necessary kernel-level hooks and drops down to partial confinement. Because of this fallback, non-Ubuntu AppArmor distros don’t actually get the full Snap sandbox, they get a degraded version of it.
Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS (long-term support) releases, unless you go with LMDE which is based on Debian. There is not a major technical difference but there are political differences between the projects.
The main reason to go with Mint instead of Ubuntu is if you prefer Cinnamon over GNOME as I do, and want a distribution built around the Cinnamon desktop environment.
Fedora 😀 But seriously… Just install one and if you don’t like it, install the other, it’s free, it’s easy and you will never go back 😊
Fucking love Fedora, it’s my main squeeze.
But I have noticed something. If someone says “I love gnome” then they get the (playful) shit talkers, but if you say “I love Fedora” people are like “ah, an intellectual” haha
Really? I find that Fedora is so popular nowadays that most of the reactions are similar to your first sentence. 😀
I disagree, semi. I started with mint but wanted to try fedora recently. With windows i had stuff set up that i needed minimal configurations on os switches, and that data splitting helped a bit when switching to linux.
But to switch from one distro to another needs prep work if you want to keep data and configs with minimal set ups.
So far ive been refactoring my mint slow but steady to have my home and /opt on partitions and i might need to do more since there is stuff in /var i might need too.I meant that if a week passes and he doesn’t like it it’s easy to switch. Otherwise it’s always somewhat harder to switch once you are nicely settled. I always keep a step by step what I do after fresh install and I try to keep as many (important) files on my nas as possible. I never liked the shenanigans of keeping my home. First, it means you keep a lots of garbage and I kinda like starting fresh. Second, it’s way too much work. I usually just copy full home to external drive, reinstall and copy stuff back when I need it. This way I really keep from home only what I really need and the rest is ovewritten before next reinstall. That said, I have actually settled on Fedora like 4 years ago and since then reinstalled only once (again Fedora, I just wanted clean start).
Ye my biggest concern is keys, sdk configs, sdk programs, scripts, environment variables, vscodium configs, … I always take weeks to set all that shit up the way i like it haha.
But ye, im still checking out what i can drop and what i cant. Or maybe create scripts to config something to the way i like it ( like git )Yeah, had the same, but nowadays I have local dedicated VMs for each development project, to mitigate stuff like supply chain attack. The side effect is that it’s easier to just copy the VM to the new system. I am thinking though on creating ansible scripts for each use case to be able to “reset” the vm’s once in a while.
Use whatever feels comfortable. Both are fine. People are complaining about micro annoyances that should not really affect you at first.
When you get comfortable with Linux, you’ll also get to pick sides in micro battles like KDE vs Gnome, vi vs emacs, systemd vs sysv, flatpak vs snap and all the other wonderful my-side-is-better-than-yours fights.
micro battles like KDE vs Gnome
I don’t think that’s a small thing for someone new to Linux.
I prefer Xfce over MATE, KDE, and Cinnamon because I use old computers. I wouldn’t recommend modern GNOME.
flatpaks are objectively better though.
This is an objectively false statement. There are at least one scenario I can think of where Snap is better than flatpak.
You can’t run your own snap repo. That goes against the entire point of openness.
If taking minutes to launch one application is a plus?
systemd vs sysv
Most of systemd-less distros use openrc, dinit or runit, sysv is mostly dead nowadays. Some distros still utilize it tho.
systemd vs sysv
There is no systemd vs sysv war. It is systemd suck or systemd fine.
Indeed. It seems that everyone dislikes sysv, but a small group can’t decide on what the better option is.
Start by trying the desktops (mainly KDE, Cinnamon, gnome…), which are very different, and see which one you prefer. You can try them online.
https://distrosea.com/select/ubuntu/
https://distrosea.com/select/linuxmint/
https://distrosea.com/select/kubuntu/
If you click for cinamon go mint. If you click for KDE go Debian KDE or kubuntu If you click for gnome go Ubuntu.
The rest will become clear later on.
ubuntu makes controversial choices. Mint is explicitly user friendly, and its debian edition is like a bike with training wheels, getting you debian with extra “niceties”.
LMDE (Linux mint debian edition) is, from my POV, the gold standard for noob distros. Ubuntu is explicitly like a tricycle but LMDE is like a bike with training wheels. You can eventually take them off for debian next time you change OS with less problems, if you want. I going from LMDE + Cinnamon to Debian + KDE shouldn’t be an issue.
