> There's also the fact that Ubuntu ships with the GNOME desktop environment, and really only GNOME.
This is a feature. Standardization is what makes „Works on Ubuntu“ a stable target.
I also dislike Snap and the various other Ubuntu anti-features, which is why I recommend Pop OS - at least I did when it was a light weight Ubuntu fork, it may not be anymore.
This is just a rando‘s opinion, so it may not be based on that, but my intuition from a few years ago is that Debian/Ubuntu still has a reliable lead in the availability of software packages, especially less popular ones: You’ll almost never find something that doesn’t work on Ubuntu, for other distros this happens sometimes.
Has this changed? Maybe with the widespread adoption of Flatpak this is not much of an issue for consumer apps anymore?
Both Arch and Nix solve this by making it very easy to write packages that work around the compatibility issues. When I used to use ubuntu and mint it was a lot more common to run into these types of issues.
Hasn't been my experience, running KDE Wayland on host with amdgpu. Just had to pass `--extra-flags "env GDK_BACKEND=wayland"` when exporting the app. Zero issues, far from being unusable.
In fact you can even run an entire DE from Distrobox if you wanted to, although I can imagine that being a bit awkward. But a single GUI app? Shouldn't be an issue unless you've got a tricky/niche setup.
>This is not something a company wants to deal with on every single Linux client.
A company following your recommendation would need to deal with installing and upgrading the software "on every single" Ubuntu client. I fail see how that is any easier than installing and upgrading it in an Ubuntu Distrobox on every single client running some other flavor of Linux.
How well does Fedora handle proprietary software nowadays? For example the Nvidia driver, Steam, Rider or video codecs. I negatively remember their patent paranoia regarding elliptic curve cryptography.
My favourite feature of Manjaro (and presumably Arch) is how easily I can install almost any software from a single package manager (which supports the official repos, flatpak and AUR). While on Mint I had to mess with custom package sources, or install individual vendor provided packages which lacked auto-update.
There's still a bit of manual work involved to install the codecs (and proprietary drivers if you need em), which is why I would never recommend vanilla Fedora to a newbie - but Fedora derivatives exist to address that issue.
Ultramarine[1] is one such easy-to-use derivative, and for gamers there's Nobara[2] and Bazzite[3] (an immutable distro).
i've never really understood what bazzite offers that stock fedora does not. like steam works out of the box just fine on plain ole fedora 41, and my AMD card is supported without issue. runs CP2077 flawlessly.
literally, steam out of the box is just adding rpmfusion repos, which you're probably gonna do anyway if you want stuff like vlc or other tools
It's a lot more than just Steam, it's a custom kernel, custom CPU scheduler, additional drivers for game controllers, drivers for handheld devices and a bunch of other tweaks and tools (Bazaar, Lutris, MangoHUD, ujust scripts etc). But more than all that, the biggest draw for Bazzite is that it's an immutable distro with atomic updates, so updates "just work" and it's very very hard to break the system.
And in the rare event you get a bad update, you can just boot to the previous two images right from the boot menu, no need for any commands or restores - just boot the image and keep using it without any worries. You can pin known good images too, so you know for sure you always have a working image you can boot into. And you have access to the previous 90 days of images (via Github), so you can switch to any old image (or the latest beta) for bug/regression testing, without needing to do lengthy backups and restores.
All this makes it ideal for someone who just wants their system to work without worrying about updates and stuff, getting you a console-like experience on PC.
Ubuntu has fallen out of favour with quite a lot of Linux recommender sites and reviewers and its mainly about flatpak and Gnome, but also gaming support by default. Other Linux distributions do things better now for the influx of gamers to Linux and with SteamOS being on Arch a lot of Arch deriatives are becoming increasingly popular. I don't think its Fedora picking up users, its Cachyos and Bazzite.
What are the specific issues with gaming that you're claiming Ubuntu has?
I've been using Ubuntu for a few months, and I have complaints - lots of them. But gaming isn't one. I just installed the apps I needed and they worked.
Why? With Bazzite and similar that's kind of the whole point of them existing. Just installing Steam from Flathub or the repo is not going to get the same level of integration (gaming mode, etc.). Bazzite works really well on my PC handheld and I don't think a generic distro with Steam added after the fact would be the same. Id you want a distro without Steam bundled there are lots of those.
> Why? With Bazzite and similar that's kind of the whole point of them existing. Just installing Steam from Flathub or the repo is not going to get the same level of integration
This shows a weakness than in the Linux desktop ecosystem that something has to be bundled to correctly integrate with the system.
It's no different to Chinese OEMs bundling additional stores with their phones.
It's a quid pro quo from Valve. They are investing profusely in Linux ecosystems, and the distro-devs are following that.
Meanwhile Epic Games still lacks a first-party app on linux, and users need to pass from Lutris, Heroic etc...
For brand new hardware, Fedora gets the niggle-free experience faster than Ubuntu. 5K screens are treated as two separate devices "under the hood", many Ubuntu software didnt honor the abstraction, hence the monitor layout, notifications, taskbar etc were treating each half as a full monitor.
I do appreciate what Fedora does, particularly on the subject of immutability.
OStree and Bootc are great mecanisms that are based on existing concepts (git and OCI containers). IMO that is a great step towards stability and security.
I doubt Canonical cares much about the desktop segment, at least the segment that doesn't pay. They seem to be focusing on servers. Or at least that's what it seems to me.
Recommended by João Carrasqueira, a "Lead Windows Editor" at XDA[1], who "has been covering the tech world for over 7 years, with a heavy focus on laptops and the Windows ecosystem".
Clearly an expert on Linux distros, as you can see.
A few of the recent XDA posts about Linux are shitting on game developers for not supporting anti-cheat on Linux, claiming it's a simple switch and they're bad for not doing it.
I still don't understand how people can run Debian/Ubuntu. Every single time I have tried my environment in the span of a few months turns into a wet ball of mud with various levels of breakages. It's honestly astounding how bad it is. Once in a while I install a newly released version and naively think "Surely this problem is now fixed". But no, it's terrible.
I have used in my life many different Linux distributions: Slackware, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian (professionally or privately). My private choice is the only one not driven by marketing: Debian.
You have three main Debian releases:
SID (if you need to be as close as possible to upstream versions)
Testing (the same as above but a few days after SID)
Stable (you sacrifice the latest software versions for insane stability)
Which one did you use ?
And please don't mix Debian and Ubuntu.
Canonical is commercial company driven by profit (and CEO's bonus).
Debian is driven by community and (mostly) engineers.
I used Stable and SID. The reason I mixed Debian and Ubuntu is because I perceive the root of shittiness to be apt and how it can, and often does, poison your system.
running apt install can brick your system in both large ways, it just stops booting. Or small ways, breaking existing packages or a myriad of other ways. On the one hand this is the fault of apt itself. It allows package scripts to do way too much. And on the other hand package maintainers write honestly brain damaged scripts a lot of the time.
Sounds similar to my experience with other systems (like Red Hat).
Amazing - you've just realised that IT systems don't always work.
Welcome to IT world !
"welcome to IT world" is just dismissive and needlessly aggravating. Just because systems can break doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands and accept the terrible state Debian package management is in. Debian-style package management has specific architectural issues, combined with maintainers writing poor package scripts, that make breakage seem far more common than it should be.
I asked you to be very specific. And you refused. You are criticizing "apt" for "specific architectural issues" but it is still very, very vague. Once again - be specific please. Can you? What exactly are the "specific architectural issues" ?
If you worked for a politician, you would look like hired by PR agency to throw a sh..t on someone else. I believe (and hope) you are not ?
I didn't refuse, I gave a very specific answer, namely that debians package manager can brick your system at any time because there are literally no safety mechanisms. That is the "specific architectural issues" I'm talking about. What more do you want? The code to prove it? Here it is: https://gist.github.com/rowanG077/27cd0a9417dd48593e63018783...
You are right: you didn't refuse, you are cheating (especially people who don't understand nuances)
You provided a content of a deb package that is intentionally malicious.
It is like a saying that car from specific car manufacturer is dangerous for people. When asked "why" your answer is: "Because you can suddenly turn the car and hit people waiting at a bus station".
BTW, I hope you already know that in i.e. Red Hat you don't need rpm package to brick your system. It's much, much easier.
Back in the 1990's I was fond of it for the community spirit, the attention to detail, the way things "just worked" even it had a particular take on some things. Over time it felt like it became burderned with design-by-committee decisions, maintainers leaving and abandoning packages faster than they could replace them, and just a bit too political.
I trust the German government to have more respect for privacy rights at this point.
So I use Open Suse Tumbleweed. It’s been pretty stable , although with nvidia you have to do a bit more.