I still remember when I found out about Ubuntu 100 years ago.

It's clear to me that Ubuntu is no longer in fashion. So what is popular these days? From what I heard, I think it's Fedora or Arch (such as Omarchy), but only with some slick UI stuff like Hyprland and Caelestia.

▲ bayindirh an hour ago | parent | next [-]

If it's a server: Debian Stable or Rocky Linux (choose according to taste).

If the person can put in the work and doesn't need bleeding edge software: Debian Stable.

If the person can put in the work, the machine is in a secure environment, not going to serve anything and is a desktop system: Debian Testing.

If the person can't put the work and wants something working: Fedora.

If the person wants to dive deeper: Arch, Gentoo, LFS.

Note: Debian needs some work not because it doesn't work out of the box, but it doesn't do any customization on packages. So tailoring things according to your taste takes time. Then it becomes so customized it almost reads your mind and feels like home.

▲

preponderant-pa 25 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I've been A/B testing the desktop side of this. If the person doesn't mind reading a wiki page every now and then and has a few hours to set up the OS on the first day, Arch (without `archinstall`) works better for "wants something working."

The reason is that, people eventually need proprietary / old / unsupported software, and AUR often has it out of the box, and when it doesn't, at least the dependencies are already there. On the other hand, beginners (even some experienced but busy guys) might agree with a problematic `apt` plan and uninstall the desktop, and it goes downhill from there (can't repair the system because they never built it in the first place, or cannot go back to the original configurations, etc). For instance this can happen because the user tried to install a `deb` package for an older release.

That being said I can't remember seeing fedora fail this way, though the user might have to manually clone / build a dozen more git repositories to install the same unsupported software. This was a deal breaker two years ago (lack of AI help), but now it's just time consuming.

▲

jorvi 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Debian had some nasty bugs in Rust packages because they do modify them.

	▲	bayindirh 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Care enough to file bug reports? I don’t write rust, otherwise I’d gladly help you with the filing, but I can guide, if you want.

▲ c7b 8 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

CachyOS is probably the new hip one (Arch-based). The new "I use x, btw" would be nixOS. Arguably, the distro matters a lot less if you use containers or flatpaks for most things (which I'd recommend). So there's nothing standing against using just boring Debian stable these days, or Fedora if you want to be more up to date. If you like fancy UI, check out the COSMIC desktop environment, should work on all mentioned.

▲ jamesponddotco 18 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I was an Ubuntu member for years; got a certificate from Mark Shuttleworth, a cool @ubuntu.com email and IRC cloak, contributed to Ubuntu a ton, gave public talks around Brazil in schools and events like Latinoware, ran a pretty successful blog about the distro here in Brazil, was co-leader of the LoCo team in my state. You could say I was very invested in Ubuntu.

Still, I can't recognize the distro anymore. We got ads, things being pushed down the community's throats, the insane hiring process, and so much more. I have very fond memories of my time as an Ubuntu member, and I wouldn't be where I'm today if it wasn't for what I did as a member, but I left years ago when all of this started.

Been using openSUSE ever since. I don't contribute to openSUSE as I did Ubuntu, as I don't have the time anymore, but the decisions are sound, the system works incredibly well and stable[1], and the voice of the community is heard by leadership. I'm pretty happy with the choice.

[1]: Heck, it works so well that I even run Tumbleweed, a rolling release distribution, on servers.

▲ jckahn an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why does fashionibility matter? It's an OS, it just needs to work well. Ubuntu still does that.

▲ hbn an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The popular OS is more likely to be either directly tested by people writing software, or already have bugs filed/fixed for edge cases because more people are using it.

▲

queenkjuul 29 minutes ago | parent [-]

Ubuntu may not be fashionable but it's still very widely deployed

▲

hbn 16 minutes ago | parent [-]

I said popular. Fashionable is just one type of popular.

	▲	queenkjuul 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		And Ubuntu is still extremely popular so I'm not sure what your point was then

▲ bayindirh an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> Ubuntu still does that.

Debatable.

    - Snaps.
    - Replacing something battle-tested with something written in Rust, MIT licensed, with 140 CVEs and other bugs (uutils).
    - Pulling rugs and replacing debs with snapswithout telling it, because "it creates positive pressur e on the snap team and drives the quality higher".
    - Staggered rollout of some updates, so update is there but you can't update because the your system didn't feel like updating yet.
    - Promising to open source Snap store to allow alternative stores and forgetting what they had said.
    - Bullying Debian to push their changes to Debian to offload software maintenance (they wanted to make netplan the default in Debian, for example).

... etc, etc.

Note: You can disagree with this, and we can discuss this with cool heads, if you prefer.

▲

Aperocky an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I see your point is basically snap bad.

And as a software maintainer who publish to all distributions, I wholeheartedly agree.

	▲	bayindirh an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Nope, snap is bad, but how they modify apt to slow-rollout updates and bully Debian to offload things are equally bad. They became the Microsoft of the Linux world while trying to replace it. They are moving with self-interest, not with a collective interest. Considering what Ubuntu means, that's bitterly ironic as well. Shame.
	▲	rhdunn 19 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Some of the things that annoy me re: snaps are: 1. the update process is separate from the main system update -- "close this program to update, or will forceably update in X days" notifications; 2. breaking desktop file links where an update can create a duplicate file and after the old snap is removed it removes your pins to the taskbar; 3. possibly breaking other things due to the way the snap directory for the app is not stable.

▲

_joel an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Snaps did it for me, that's when I moved away to plain Debian.

	▲	bayindirh an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I never used Ubuntu outside VMs to test Ubuntu-specific stuff. I used to have a colleague who installed Ubuntu as defacto server OS, but I replaced them with Debian step by step.

▲

queenkjuul 24 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I can't understand the snap hate personally. Snap packages are very easy to create and i like being able to install e.g. a language toolchain in a self contained way that doesn't depend on or pollute my system libraries. And ultimately i use a distro because i trust its maintainers, i can't bring myself to get upset about what package format they choose to use

▲ Synaesthesia 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I still like Ubuntu for a few reasons. The design. Dock on the side. The fact that it's really popular and well supported.

But of course feel free to distro hop yourself.

▲ Anonyneko 28 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm still on Ubuntu and I'm not sure I'm dedicated enough to bother with Debian (especially on a niche laptop, I run Debian on servers), but everything I'm seeing about the new Ubuntu releases makes me want to switch to Mint once 23 (26.04 base) comes out.

▲ Ingon 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've settled on NixOS for things I manage - servers, VPCs, laptops/pcs. Not gonna rehash its pros/cons, but it really clicks with me. Also, very useful for project dependencies and things that doesn't need to be installed just because are used once a month.

▲ hbn an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I recently revived my old gaming PC from 2015 and I wanted to install Pop!_OS cause that was the cool new-ish one everyone's been talking about. But I straight up could not get it to install on my hardware (I think my GTX 970 is too old for official support)

I ended up installing Mint and it's Good Enough™

▲ woile 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

for every use case, you can use NixOS haha

- in the server

- desktop ui

- NAS

- ci

- dotfiles

- ultra compact docker image

- microvms

- development environments

- SmartTV? NixOS

- build your docs? NixOS

- wanna control a fleet? NixOS

- build ISOs?

- wanna control brew declaratively? NixOS

- secure environment? NixOS

▲ josteink an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Whatever just works.

Ubuntu used to be the Debian that just worked without tweaking.

Today I find Debian to be the one which’s works without tweaking, and Ubuntu the one where one has to undo/disable lots of Ubuntuisms.

So for me: Server is Debian. Laptop is Arch.

▲ queenkjuul 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I just keep using Ubuntu anyway. Servers, raspis, WSL, laptops, it's nice to just have the same system everywhere

▲ Matl 8 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Arch is great, but stick with stock or go for CachyOS, which prioritizes modern compiler optimizations and speed. Omarchy is DHH's vibecoded slop and I'd stay all clear of it.

▲ slickytail an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]