We are not the same

No love for Debian, yet again

Ubuntu is Debian
- Ummmm aktually......

Long live Proxmox.

Linux distros are just the new "101 flavors of Protestantism," complete with radical zealots who believe you will go to Hell for choosing the wrong one.

But you will go to hell though
- Going to hell is unrelated to our flavor of Linux
Obligatory Emo Phillips bit
Does that mean Windows is Catholicism?
- Perhaps. But if that's the case, then I'm pretty sure that makes Mac OS Eastern Orthodox.
  
  What oddball OS would be Ethiopian Orthodox?
- Unix.

No FLOSS loving Linux user is dead to me, not even the GNOME project team, and frankly I suspect it's noobies and non-users pushing these memes lately.

Exactly, that or trolls & saboteurs
I agree. I don't think I've ever actually received or witnessed the hate that the memes espouse as the norm in the Linux community. I've seen some "oh really, I had trouble with that so I use blank instead" or maybe even "you should try blank" (mostly when people ask though). I think most of us are too busy hating Windows to really truly hate other linux distros. We have our favorites and we will happily share that with anyone that asks, and many that don't.

I've tried to stop talking about it all the time to friends and family as I don't want to scare them off, but I am just using it everyday in front of them and showing them that I don't have infinitely more problems than they do... Hoping it just seeps in via osmosis and at some point one too many "hey, you should buy a new computer, windows 10 is going end of life soon you know" pop-ups will set off that magical chain reaction.
- When I met a close friend's husband at an event, somehow PCs and Linux came up. He asked if I'm a Linux user (which I like to think you can't immediately tell); I assume he wanted to build some nerd cred. I said "yeah, I technically have Linux with me right now". He asked what I meant, so I pulled out the Steam Deck. He was unfamiliar, so I briefly explained.
  
  When he heard it's (obviously) a commercial product, he actually pretended to faint. And then kept acting as if I had personally insulted him, not in a joking way. I had clearly failed the purity test in that moment.
  
  It was a strange experience. Not even in hackerspaces I'd ever had a conversation like that. So these people are rare but they do exist.
I'm never going to feel fully satisfied using an OS that has an official 'pro' version.
- Oh come on at some point, every software project or foundation needs to cover their expenses somehow or else they enshittify or cease to exist/get acquired by a dangerous, moneyed conglomerate. It's known as the going concern principle.
  
  Out of all of the projects that I can think of in recent memory that started as big open source useful things, only VLC Media Player managed to avoid turning into garbage, and it's because the lead developer is a saint.
  
  You can avoid Ubuntu because they have a paid plan and that's your prerogative, but imagine they got bought out by Apple or something.
- That's fair!

I'm too lazy to maintain an Arch install, so it's Mint for me. Long live Mint unironically.

I don't use Arch because I don't trust the AUR. I run ubuntu based distros on my desktop and servers for better compatibility with software and then use Fedora based software on my laptop and media center.
Mint is one of the best versions of Ubuntu you could possibly use. They give you Ubuntu without all the forced snaps and other crap.
- At that point just use Debian?
Running yay every other day is all the maintenance I do on my arch installation.
- When I tried Arch in '23, it worked well. Then I got busy and lazy and didn't use it for 2-3 months. When I came back and did yay -sYu as I had learned, dozens of KDE and core packages were throwing errors and wouldn't update. Unfortunate.
- Exactly. My wife is a teacher and she runs Arch daily, knowing only how to run yay.
- I do it whenever I feel like. Don't even feel the need to be regular.
  
  With Win10, the notifications used to increase my tension
Mint > literally all OS, Mobile or PC.
What do you mean by maintaining?
- He probably means tinkering
Arch maintenance: 0. Install it once. (The proper way)

Every 2 weeks minimum pacman -Syu

Every 3 months merge/update configs in /etc.

I don't get what is with this so hard? Yes, configs can be undecipherable but 90% time the merge involves just deleting the .pacnew versions.
- You say maintenance is 0 then list 2 things I don't have to do on Mint
  
  Remembering to bother with a CLI and configs is the hard part, on Mint I get a nice GUI with reminders that I have updates to things. You know, like it's some time past the year 2000?
- On EndavourOS here, I spent hours upon install tinkering and setting everything like I wanted and forgot most of what I did ever since.
  
  I'm so lazy I use a one word alias to update all my stuff in one go. I rarely have to bother myself reading and checking if everything's fine (I still do it from time to time just to be safe but I do it less and less because it's almost useless).. I even update a bit late sometimes and quite randomly in general.
  
  It's been almost 4 years like this now, nothing ever broke, had an issue with an Aur only once..never even had to tinker with anything.
  
  I remember having harder times with Ubuntu or Manjaro like a decade ago..even had freaking issues with Mint, it's crazy.
- Running pacman every two weeks seems like a bad idea if you have a lot of packages... The dependencies can get dicey if you have to update too many at once.
- The problem is that other 10% where I have to spend my time trawling the arch wiki to fix my OS instead of like... doing cool things on my computer. If that's what you enjoy that's great, but your hobby is not my hobby. I've used arch on several of my devices, it can be great! But there's this idea that arch is the perfect solution to pretty much everyone's desktop problems and it's crazymaking to see repeated over and over on here.
- Yeah, I started on Ubuntu, got acclimated to Linux using it, went to mint, didn't give me what I wanted and just dove into arch, been running the same install for 8 years now and honestly don't want any more from my os... I also love my steam deck.. It runs arch BTW 😉

I don't think I've seen this meme format before but it's fucking hilarious. I love that kid's stance while hitting the bowl, he's ready for action.
- how have you not seen it ? it's been around for ages !
  
  but I agree, it's freakin hilarious
….

lubuntu

*hear

hear!

As an Arch user, whatever suits you.

I installed Arch on my ThinkPad because.............................................................................................. uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh.................... I had an Arch sticker and I felt like I couldn't use it if I didn't use Arch.

Everyone has some reasons for their favorite distro.

I use Arch, and I have an OpenSUSE wallpaper.

Before this, I used Mint and had an Arch wallpaper...

I live to offend.
- Opensuse unironically has some of the best OS branding and wallpapers. I like that little chameleon.
  
  I use bazzite now but I liked all of the visuals of opensuse Kalpa better!
- im fuckin shaking rn ong

As an old crusty Slackware user and UNIX admin, IDGAF what Linux distro people use; using any of them is a step in the right direction.

Couldn't agree more! Hell, it doesn't even have to be Linux. AIX on an LPAR? Cool. Irix on an old SGI workstation? You do you, man. MacOS and you use open source tools? Get it, man! Solaris on x86? You're a sick fuck, but hey, it takes all types to make the world go round, you Larry Ellison supporting twat. Anyways, just use a unix variant, any of them.
- What? No mention of the bastard child: Microsoft Azure (Mariner) Linux? You sick MS loving mutant!

As long as it follows Unix conventions it is the correct way to computer

MacOS!
- It gets a pass

As an Arch user, both Debian and Pop_OS are better choices than Ubuntu

Don't forget Mint.
- Imo Debian with Cinnamon is better, it may require a tad bit more effort to set up but its more stable
I currently have Pop_OS on a laptop, but haven't run Ubuntu in a while. What is worse about it? So far (installed the other night) I just hate how slow the Pop Store runs. Terminal is quick and fluid, Firefox was good, Jellyfin setup all seemed to go quick. Installing the client for my VPN (PIA) went on forever and had issues so I just installed OpenVPN and set up a single Spain VPN gateway there. But for whatever reason that store just drags ass
- The Pop Shop is definitely one of the worst things about the distro, Cosmic Shop runs smooth as butter by comparison. Looking forward to the Cosmic Beta currently due in a few months

I love it. This made me laugh.

But, as this month's chair of the of the Linux User Group for Letting Everyone Know We Hate Snaps (LUG LEKWHS), I want to clarify that we don't have a problem with Ubuntu users.

It's Canonical we have a beef with.

s/HERE/HEAR/g

Meh, I mean, Arch includes non-free software as well, so as a Trisquel user, you are all dead to me.

As an AmogOS user you seem a bit sus

I'm a Windows user, that also loves Linux.

You're all going to shit on me, but you're really only shitting on yourselves.

Some day, you'll understand. Not today, but someday, you simple dumbasses.

I have to say I do like not having to worry about things like "does my OS take screenshots and send it somewhere to be used as an AI training set" and "do I have to accept the OS update they are shoving down my throat so that I basically sell my privacy for not having security problems". There is enough of that elsewhere already.
Windows shits on itself. Enjoy the septic tank; it's only going to get worse, and I wish it wouldn't
Get a load of this guy😂 We do understand that you're using a combative spyware, you braindead oaf

noobuntu vs arch-hole

As an Ubuntu user, I would never say "Long live Ubuntu".

I use Mint, by the way.

I just went full linux on my daily driver about a year ago after running a headless linux media server for a few years.

Can someone explain to me why Ubuntu is so terrible? Is it not difficult enough to use or something?

I’m going to preface this with saying whatever works for you.

It’s not really about difficulty for most people.

Canonical (the people who manage Ubuntu,) has made some unfortunate decisions.

First, and I feel this has always been true, they approach their users with the assumption that they are in fact idiots. Microsoft has the same design philosophy, and it makes things much harder than it needs to be. (Some people may be idiots, but if they want to wipe the entire drive, that’s their business, right?)

Secondly, Ubuntu tends snoop on you, and certain decisions by canonical raises alarms.

Finally, fuck snap.

Edit: if all you’ve used is Ubuntu, get yourself a moderately large usb stick and try a few others out. No need to remove Ubuntu to try a new flavor. Linux is like ice cream. Find your favorite and stab anyone who disagrees with you. I mean, Stan it. Yeah that’s it.
snaps.

oh, and that time that Canonical put Amazon telemetry in the default search application.

oh, and how they just bundle up "bleeding edge" stuff from a year ago and ship it with it's associated bugs.

It's been a few years since I tried but it just really turned me off.
- It’s been a few years
  
  I hate snaps too, but search telem was disabled 9 years ago :)
  
  That's that happened closer to Cannocial disabling search telem than today:
  
  The original theatrical release of Iron Man
  
  The release of the Apple App Store
  
  The inauguration of the LHC
  
  Bitcoin's blockchain Started
  
  Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope
I'm sure there are as many reasons as there are people who dislike Ubuntu, but here's a few:

They injected internet ads into search

To many outside of the community if they have any familiarity with Linux on a desktop, it's with Ubuntu which kinda places it in a position to newcomers as being Linux itself rather than one particular flavor

It is very opinionated about look and feel and usability: i.e. their custom launcher and Snaps

It's popular

It has a reasonably large user base so there's more opportunity for people to find things to nitpick over.

Overall it's fine. I've used Ubuntu, Mint, Puppy, DSL, Arch (btw), Fedora, and Debian. I can do pretty much anything I need to on any of them. I've got my preferences about the correct balance between useability, upgrade schedule, and customizability.
- They injected internet ads into search
  
  They did? Like filesystem search? I don't see that.
To expand on the hate of snaps:

They're a packaging solution for apps and dependencies. They're apparently quite comfortable for app developers to use too. There was a hiccup where some apps really struggled to run well as snaps, but AFAIK that was fixed.

The common issues are snapcraft being the only repository and the methods of pushing them:

Snapcraft is where the packages are stored and loaded from, and it's a closed-source repo hosted and controlled by Canonical, with no option to configure snap to use a different source. That has advantages for security, if you trust Canonical to vet and take responsibility for the packages on their system, but some people chafe at that lack of control. Compare to flatpak, where you can add arbitrary repos, so any distro vendor can have their own set of packages and versions they've vetted for stability and compatibility, but if I want a different version than my vendor maintains in their remote, I can use a different remote for certain apps instead.

The second issue is that the classical apt system, which used to install .deb packages, was utilised to install snaps instead, so you'd run apt install package and expect a .deb to be installed, but instead it just downloads a script that runs snap install package and you get a snap instead, which is particularly annoying when you previously had it as a deb and it suddenly gets replaced. The argument here is a smooth transition to the "better" system, on the premise that snaps are better and the assumption that users won't care or notice. In some cases (the hiccups mentioned earlier) that just wasn't the case and people got frustrated, but even if it worked, some people (including me) take issue with expecting a deb and getting a snap - if I want a snap, I'll use snap, and if your deb is deprecated, offer me to switch instead of silently installing the alternate source instead.
- Thank you for explaining that. I'm new to Linux and really didn't understand that snap thing I heard about
Use whatever you like.

But don't complain "Linux requires constant work" after it breaks in a couple of years, instead, be free to complain "Ubuntu requires constant work".

Also, beware that it may be spying on you.

Rocking SteamOS myself. 😜

I use both Mint and Archbang. I'm half-dead to myself.

Leftists be like

He's not wrong though. Historically left parties have been more splintered than right ones.

Long live Android!

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Arch is nice, I use it on my laptop, but desktop / daily driver is Debian.

It's so nice having a stable OS to fall back to on for those rare occasions where ~~I screw something up on my arch laptop~~ my arch laptop magically borks itself (How did that happen? Who could have done this?).

me as an arch user when I have to use ubuntu for work: arthur-fist-clench.gif

I think I have like 4 different distros near me at any given time now that I think about it. A Debian one for Minecraft and some other game servers, my windows PC, a Mac for music stuff, and my arch laptop, I guess the steam deck technically counts too. Even at work I use all three occasionally.