this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2024
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Linux
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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.
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The Term
The issue is that, no Ubuntu is not "the Windows" of Linux.
First of all this statement makes no sense. You could say "the Samsung of the Android world" as Samsung Android is a Distribution that looks nice and many people think it is nice to use (leaving out that it is the most spyware-riddled software on locked devices with horrible customer treatment)
Windows is just one OS. Android is an easy variant of Linux, and Ubuntu was one too.
Nowadays, uBlue Aurora/Bazzite would be my "best Desktop Linux", because they implement all the great, easy and modern stuff of Fedora Atomic Desktops, while also removing stupid opinionated things, and adding packages they legally simply cannot ship.
Updates & Upgrades
Ubuntu is not easy anymore. Distro upgrades are a mess and break. I had 12 laptops, all had the same 3 issues and updates took forever.
Ubuntu requires a sudo account for them to even work, a nonsudoer gets an update message but clicking it does nothing.
I.e. they dont use polkit, unlike Fedora for example.The paradigm of
Is just bad. Android works without root since forever, and I would say it is the easiest Linux distro out there.
Style
They have their own strange icons, which look worse than GNOMEs. They have their own strange store instead of using and improving GNOME Software.
Their design sucks in comparison to Manjaro if you ask me. Most personal point of this list. Many other Distros just ship GNOME, do the packaging and leave the Branding to small changes, and the upstream DE.
Snaps
Snaps are not cross platform, while Flatpak exists and is cross platform.
Ubuntu doesnt even have uptodate flatpak and dependencies in their repos so the Flatpak project maintains like 6 PPAs just to run them on Ubuntu.
Snaps are not cross platform because they rely on AppArmor for sandboxing, and afaik custom AppArmor patches that are not in upstream.
This means Snaps on Fedora and others would run Snaps unsandboxed.
Technically they are fine. Pretty normal approach. But their repo hat big malware issues and they only allow a single one, which is a total nogo for any opensource project.
Snaps installed by other users with sudo cannot be opened by other users. You need to install them per-user, no other option possible.
Flatpak requires wheel/sudo too, I need to make a Fedora Change request to fix that, my previous one got rejected...
Variants & LTS
They only ship KDE on the LTS variant, which means by now it is very outdated. KDE is the most windows-like desktop, and also has the most features, by far. I tried GNOME and made a writeup on Fedora discuss.
Bloat
They bloat (at least) their (LTS) variants with tons of deb packages.
Safety & Snapshots
They dont integrate timeshift or other backup systems. Linux Mint and OpenSUSE are better here. Fedora Atomic Desktops too, while traditional Fedora not.