Being supportive of Ubuntu seems to be a minority, but I picked it over others simply because it felt more like what I wanted from the Debian lines. And I haven’t had any major issues at all. The main project I’ve got ahead of me is to remove Snap, as I see that’s a problem, mainly due to updates being so far behind (plus I’m pretty sure it’s a resource hog, I can see it there in Btop all the time). I’ve had several apps that I originally used Snap (I mean, it’s right there, why not) to find the version is old and missing newer features. So I just find the Apt or deb version, or even AppImage, and I’m back running. The OS itself is solid, and I so, so love just booting up and going within seconds, as well as shutting down right away. Not the classic Windows “hang”.
But I get that some people run into incompatibilities sometimes with hardware, so you do have to look around and find what works best for you. An example of mine on that was an old MacBook I had that simply was stuck since the OS isn’t supported anymore. So I put Kubuntu on it (since it needed a light OS), and it works fine for what it is.
The need to think about and deal with snaps is the reason I don’t recommend Ubuntu to noobs in general. It’s confusing and unnecessary and adds to the frustration of being forced to make judgement calls about things you don’t want to understand just to do your thing (we have enough of that as it is). And if you do decide against snaps, it’s a bit of an uphill battle and it’s easy to start feeling that the OS, like what they came from, is antagonistic. Canonical decided to isolate and take control of part of the Ubuntu ecosystem with snaps and that has made the distro a bit more niche compared to before.
For better or worse Ubuntu is also known to be on the edge with new developments on the desktop. Switching to new shiny desktop environments between major versions, being very early on Wayland-first, etc. Having to learn new OS UI after an upgrade is not ideal if you are not an enthusiast.
Other than that, Ubuntu can be a fine distro, both for server and desktop. If you either accept the particularities like snaps or know how to work around them, it can be a very good experience and it’s well-maintained in general. But it’s less of a no-brainer and more situational if it’s appropriate or not.
Like Alpine or Gentoo: Great distros but for different reasons not anything I would recommend a non-technical Linux virgin to replace their Windows or macOS with.
Maintained, a bit slow on the updating sometimes, as I mentioned. But a big factor for going with Ubuntu was if you’re looking at software out in the wild, chances are they’ll have either an Ubuntu version or something that will work with it. I’m not a fan of compiling stuff (although maybe with more Linux exposure that will change too).
In hindsight that’s probably not a great reason, after all it’s why Microsoft dominated the field for so long.
Being supportive of Ubuntu seems to be a minority, but I picked it over others simply because it felt more like what I wanted from the Debian lines. And I haven’t had any major issues at all. The main project I’ve got ahead of me is to remove Snap, as I see that’s a problem, mainly due to updates being so far behind (plus I’m pretty sure it’s a resource hog, I can see it there in Btop all the time). I’ve had several apps that I originally used Snap (I mean, it’s right there, why not) to find the version is old and missing newer features. So I just find the Apt or deb version, or even AppImage, and I’m back running. The OS itself is solid, and I so, so love just booting up and going within seconds, as well as shutting down right away. Not the classic Windows “hang”.
But I get that some people run into incompatibilities sometimes with hardware, so you do have to look around and find what works best for you. An example of mine on that was an old MacBook I had that simply was stuck since the OS isn’t supported anymore. So I put Kubuntu on it (since it needed a light OS), and it works fine for what it is.
The need to think about and deal with snaps is the reason I don’t recommend Ubuntu to noobs in general. It’s confusing and unnecessary and adds to the frustration of being forced to make judgement calls about things you don’t want to understand just to do your thing (we have enough of that as it is). And if you do decide against snaps, it’s a bit of an uphill battle and it’s easy to start feeling that the OS, like what they came from, is antagonistic. Canonical decided to isolate and take control of part of the Ubuntu ecosystem with snaps and that has made the distro a bit more niche compared to before.
For better or worse Ubuntu is also known to be on the edge with new developments on the desktop. Switching to new shiny desktop environments between major versions, being very early on Wayland-first, etc. Having to learn new OS UI after an upgrade is not ideal if you are not an enthusiast.
Other than that, Ubuntu can be a fine distro, both for server and desktop. If you either accept the particularities like snaps or know how to work around them, it can be a very good experience and it’s well-maintained in general. But it’s less of a no-brainer and more situational if it’s appropriate or not.
Like Alpine or Gentoo: Great distros but for different reasons not anything I would recommend a non-technical Linux virgin to replace their Windows or macOS with.
Maintained, a bit slow on the updating sometimes, as I mentioned. But a big factor for going with Ubuntu was if you’re looking at software out in the wild, chances are they’ll have either an Ubuntu version or something that will work with it. I’m not a fan of compiling stuff (although maybe with more Linux exposure that will change too).
In hindsight that’s probably not a great reason, after all it’s why Microsoft dominated the field for so long.