Does anyone else recommend this to people first trying out Linux? I have been mentioning this and Mint (though I use Debian PopOS! seems like the better of the two), and I'm curious which of them (or any other distro) helps convert more Windows users. I stopped recommending Ubuntu a few years ago because of snaps, they're such an Ubuntu specific thing in practice that I think it's harmful for people learning Linux.
I never recommend minor distros to new users (and honestly to anyone else) for the simple reason that there is no guarantee they'll stick around or are secure. Newbies need something that is guaranteed to be supported for years.
For new users Ubuntu is by far the sanest distribution because it ships with codecs and drivers, is backed by a sizable company, and has by far the widest software support. Only Linux enthusiasts are obsessed with snaps.
yes although there's an uncanny valley. I've given a lot of older family members linux laptops and they do just fine given that they mostly browse the web. At the other end devs do fine with linux anyway. Problem is still the people in the middle. Even on the most mainstream distro there's still frustration if they work with software they can't replace and that's still often the case.
I've honestly started suggesting Fedora over anything Debian/Ubuntu based. Ubuntu stability has gotten worse and worse over time, and their approach to software package management has gotten kind of crazy with Snaps.
I usually recommend Fedora for stability and up to date packages. And this is someone that has used Ubuntu since 4.04 and recently a ton of Arch/Manjaro usage. I have personally switched to Fedora with how little fiddling i need to do and how stable everything is, and things just work. If you want to go Arch, I recommend EndeavorOS for that.
I would recommend PopOS as a 2nd option after Fedora though, its the better distro of the Debian descendents.
I find it interesting that you say that, though, if only because Warty is when I personally moved from SUSE to Ubuntu, and I've never seen any reason to switch. My occasional trials of Fedora seem to have drawn the reverse conclusion to you.
* There are no stable releases. For boxes I work on, I want something slow-changing and stable. For boxes I experiment with, I want something fairly fast-moving and agile. For me, the LTS/short-term split is perfect for that.
* Ubuntu is more pragmatic about proprietary drivers and so on. Fedora makes it a pain.
* Ubuntu's 3rd party driver support is the best in the industry, AFAICT.
So I am curious to know in what ways you find Fedora better than Ubuntu.
You are correct, 4.10. it's been a while and I forget which month Warty was.
For me, Ubuntu has too many old packages, so it's too unchanging. The 6 month span is plenty for stability for me.
To me stability revolves around stuff breaking between updates, or installing packages causing incompatibilities that eventually degrade the system. I had a lot of that with Manjaro.
While Ubuntu has little of that, it's also too safe, too behind. There were so many times I needed a slightly newer version than what Ubuntu offered, so I would need to hunt for PPAs, manually maintain Deb files, or find other means of keeping stuff up to date. My sources.list.d would be littered with extra repos.
Fedora is a lot more up to date, their repositories are a lot more filled out. I found stuff in the repos that is not in the Ubuntu repos. They are usually fairly up to date, or at most x.x.1 behind kind of thing.
* 2 years is too old. Might be stable but outdated.
* I have had no problems with proprietary drivers. Most of my machines are amd GPUs, but I have a Nvidia 2070 laptop that works fine. Just installed from dnf and it works.
* I haven't hit any 3rd party driver needs. Printers, PC components, accessories. They all work fine without third party drivers. But it could also be because Fedora has a more up to date kernel.
Anyways, I value a balance of up to date software, stability, and just getting out of the way. Which Fedora, especially Fedora 36 that I'm using, does better than Ubuntu and it's derivatives do.
I will say, I just recently switched to Fedora after last trying it many years ago and hating it. I had a bit of hate for the RPM world since old Red Hat Linux days before I made the jump to Ubuntu. So it might be a honeymoom phase, but I'm so much happier with Fedora than the Debian based ecosystem.
I write about this stuff for a living these days, so I am trying to widen the range of distros that I try, that I use, and to learn more about why people choose particular ones.
Totally fair, and I appreciate you asking with an open mind. I have nothing strong against Ubuntu or any debian/ubuntu derivatives. Its still a good distro to recommend.
Also Fedora relies a lot on Flatpaks for most desktop software, so the repos only come into play for command-line tools or something more system related or if you want a native copy of something. Like Discord, Slack, Element, etc are all flatpaks on my install.
Then tools like exa, ripgrep, and so on come from Fedora repos or `asdf` if not in the repos or if i temporarily need a fix in a latest version that is a bit behind in Fedora.
For everyday users, the difference isnt huge if they want to word process, browse the web, play some games, print stuff, get some photos off a camera, etc.
I think in the end I just wanted something between Ubuntu and a rollign release system like Arch or even Suse Tumbleweed.
I tried to use the release before and it was a mixed bag. While the default desktop is quite OK and everything seems to work, as you install another desktop environment like eg XFCE everything breaks. This is of course a very bad example of a Linux distro, such a thing does not happen with Ubuntu. In fact it seems to me that besides the very narrow focus on their preferred desktop they do not seem to care about all the other packages.
This again leads to the conclusion that they did not understand what a distro is about. Of course you want to support all the packages / desktops that come with a distro, not just your preferred set of packages. In fact they are actively destroying other parts of the distro with that.
Instead they should just offer a PPA repo with their modifications / addons - but much better would be if they just fed their changes to upstream instead of pretending to release a whole distro when in fact they just release some packages and maintaining the whole thing is way too much for them.
That leaves a bad taste. It is not clear why they need to release their additions and modifications in such a way, but for me as a new Linux user it was one of the most interesting revelations that I could (un-) install several desktop environments without any problems, this was a huge learning motivation.
So unfortunately this POPOS thing must be declared as a "false" attempt on how to distribute software for Linux. I still would recommend Ubuntu for newcomers, but teach them that several problems that might come up still exist - that is the price for software freedom you have to pay. Still snaps are not a real problem for many users and I understand why they exist, but personally find them horrible, too.
I manage the laptops and desktops of a >50 company.
And I've installed PopOs on almost all of their systems (some have Ubuntu)
I'm very happy with the stability and indeed the sane defaults.
Most users are happy with it and a lot of them are new to Linux.
Learned of PopOs through buying some System76 laptops.
Being able to download a nvidia version of the iso image has really helped as well.
Whenever I try to use Mint theres always something weird that happens that won’t seamlessly install or something, most recently it was steam games not being able to start. A couple of years ago I installed Pop and the automatic tiling paired with Gnome was very offputting (I’v e gone back and forth with Pop Os because of gnome seemingly eating up memory), when, in previous installs, the tiling thing didn’t happen. Also I dont really like/understand relying on websites and browser extensions to modify gnome bits. I switched to Kubuntu and it was great… with an AMD gpu. I upgraded to a 6700xt a couple of months ago from a rx480 and it was great, but I sent it back and switched to an nvidia 3060ti because of being interested in dipping my feet in video editing. I found trying to use the nvidia gpu with Kubuntu was a real hassle I couldnt figure out (I couldnt log in even after running a command in safe mode installing nvidia drivers) so I went back to Pop and kind of grin and bear gnome because my new system has 64gigs of ram, the Pop team is working on their rust based DE, and because Pop can come with Nvidia drivers included. Regarding snaps, I really like that PopOS tells you whether a given package is a snap or deb and that you can choose (for now at least), but I try to avoid snaps myself.
I also tried kubuntu starting out because i wanted a plasma desktop but found it a bit janky defaults wise. I settled on Manjaro KDE tho. Much nicer defaults, much more software available after checking some boxes in the software centre and choosing the nvidia drivers was relatively easy. (a neat menu to choose between the various options of open source or nvidias own stuff)
I really have a hard time moving away from debian (really ubuntu at this point) based distros because of all the support and howto articles written for this family of distros and the dearth of little doo dad apps written for the debian eco system (such as the thinkpad power manager or the debian specific implementation of that old os x app caffeine just as examples). Its really not based on laziness or close mindedness, but just that I want to get going with doing things on my computer.
I've been using Pop_OS for 4 years and installed it on about 5 machines. The set-up is well-documented. IMO the latest versions have shifted the desktop experience closer to MacOS than to Windows/Ubuntu.
That said I think it's still a fine distro to explore for folks new to Linux.
