Linux

48740 readers

1180 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

243

What distros have you tried and thought, "Nope, this one's not for me"? (feddit.uk)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

379 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've been using Linux Mint since forever. I've never felt a reason to change. But I'm interested in what persuaded others to move.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

trying to install any software that isn't already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you're quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile

In fairness it does have the PPA system which predates the AUR and does provide a good job of providing third party amd semi-third party software.

But you're right that Ubuntu has sold out on building snaps for software instead of ppas.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The PPAs weren't that useful. I mean they worked fine for the purpose, but if you used too many of them you'd eventually get your system into a dependency hell. That meant packages were stuck without updates and also blocking others from updating.

The other thing was that even if you kept clear of PPAs it was anybody's guess if you could upgrade to the next release. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't and you'd have to reinstall from scratch.

Put together it meant after a while you didn't bother upgrading period, or upgraded only major releases but by reinstalling from scratch every single time (and preserving /home). It was a chore and I resented it and kept putting it off.